First, my apologies if this is the wrong way to post, I am new and may have misunderstood something.
I am at a small, weekly newspaper. We are contemplating switching CMS to a Drupal-based solution. At the same time, we want to modernize production and have everyone to write in the text editor of Drupal, regardless of whether the story is to appear on the web, in print or any other channel we might consider (or - very rarely - several channels at once). The thought is that we need to cater for print as long as that exists, but we need a modern way of producing all journalistic products. Since we are small and weekly, we have not had the financial power to buy a production system for print, and we write in MS Word today, which is not exactly the future.
To write in the text editor and then export into InDesign, we need to export stories from Drupal to InDesign, using XML. We think we know mostly how to set that up. So far, so good. One problem we can probably solve, is how to connect a story to a given page number in the print edition.
However, there is always late changes in the text, made in InDesign, and we would like to export the story back from InDesign to the Drupal database. If InDesign kan keep the ID of the article, this should probably also be pretty easy to do.
But - the big question is: Has anyone really done this already? It strikes mes as strange if there aren't other small media companies struggling with similar issues...
Comments
"However, there is always
"However, there is always late changes in the text, made in InDesign, and we would like to export the story back from InDesign to the Drupal database. If InDesign kan keep the ID of the article, this should probably also be pretty easy to do." Not necessarily. You'd have to make sure InDesign markup is identical to the XHTML markup you output from Drupal. If you're using a WYSIWYG editor, you'll probably have trouble with malformed XML, and if you use a markup language like Markdown or Textile, you'll have to translate back from the InDesign XML into the markup language. Neither is trivial. Not saying it can't be done, but there may be more fruitful ways to spend your time :-)
From InDesign back to Drupal database
Well, the plan was to export XML/XHTML from Drupal and into InDesign, so the markup into InDesign should be ok, shouldn't it? I am not a programmer myself, but in my simple world, InDesign would not then destroy the structure/markup?
I realise there would be some hours involved making the scripts, but my line of thought is that we then have a script we can use every week, saving a huge number of manual minutes wasted on updating the core database that holds the correct version of everything that is published.
The sooner we get rid of the paper version, the better :-)
Previous related discussions
http://groups.drupal.org/node/2018
http://groups.drupal.org/node/3995
http://groups.drupal.org/node/10012
Probably some more I missed.
It's probably possible to write an InDesign plug-in that bidirectionally communicates with Drupal. But that's applying a technology solution to what is essentially a flaw in workflow assumptions and behaviors -- a management issue.
The easy fix is: Stop editing copy in a page layout program. That's not what it's for. Copy should be publication-ready in the Web system. Think of the print version as a fork of the original. The only changes that should be allowed in InDesign are trims to fit space, which don't need to be pushed back onto the Web.
Stop Editing Copy in Layout? Difficult in Practice
Hello,
When I first read your comment, I thought, technically, that makes a lot of sense. But in practice, it's tough.
A publication has to start laying out content to get the edition ready -- but then, at the last minute (and the more frequent the print publication comes out, the more challenging this is), comes fact checking, copy-editing, proofreading, final editor and/or author tweeks, and last second content updates, in addition to the trims for space you mention. All of these changes (except for trims) would usually be synced between print and web.
If we don't make all of these changes in Indesign, are you proposing exporting a rough draft of the story into Indesign for initial layout, then making all those changes I just mentioned in a drupal editor, and then re-exporting from drupal and re-importing the story into Indesign?
When working on a now-defunct print monthly (we'll be relaunching as a blog platform), we did the proofreading and breaking news edits in Indesign. We never did get the xml export from Indesign to play well with Drupal, despite a few attempts.
So, we ended up, sadly, using the wonderful free RTF textexport add-on for Indesign from Rorohiko (http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/2010/12/28/textexporter-3-0-1-for-inde...). We then had to copy and paste each story, and accompanying metadata (title, author, etc.) into drupal, and upload the appropriate images for the story.
Editor, Peacework
Global Thought and Local Action for Nonviolent Social Change
www.peaceworkmagazine.org (but testing a new OpenPublish-based platform at www.new.peaceworkmagazine.org)
I don't mean to minimize...
I don't mean to minimize the difficulty of getting people to change their work practices. It can be very difficult. Sometimes you have to force the issue, either managerially or with technology.
Before moving to the Web I worked in newsrooms from 600 to 600,000 circulation, and at every one of them, copy editing was never confused with page layout or proofreading, but I'm dealing with one right now that seems to be unable to edit until pages are built. We're fixing that shortly with a combination of technology and major work reassignments.
Pretty much it. I'm not an InDesign expert but I know there are plug-ins that can read the content from a URL. It shouldn't be more complicated than hitting a "reload" button.
I don't know why programs like Scribus don't support HTTP data sources natively. Seems an obvious thing to do.
Unfortunately from experience
Unfortunately from experience I have found that InDesign's XML support can be quite touchy. If you are flowing text directly in rather than small simple frames, it will detect hidden characters like carriage returns and include it in the content. If you strip them, then it won't detect that something is a paragraph. DPCI has been developing a plugin suite for this specifically. Ping me if you would like more information on non-Celsius solutions.
The problem from an editorial standpoint is that you can run into a lot of issues with copy-fitting. What's more, some things common in layout design like ligatures and adjusting kerning, etc. are not stored within Drupal. It is tough to convince editorial staff that are conscious of these things to give up.
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Ben Vanderberg
DPCI
Celsius
We actually have developed a system that does exactly that at the Sun Media Group, based in Maine.
http://www.celsiustechnologygroup.com/
(I know I'm a bit late to the party here. :)
Very interesting
That sounds very, very interesting indeed. Could we hook you up with our developer, provided we choose Drupal as our platform (decision to be made next week)?
InDesign and Drupal
Yes, we faced a similar situation and developed a plugin for InDesign that does bi-directional communication with Celsius, our Drupal based publishing system. As Steve Yelvington mentioned, we strongly discourage the newsroom from making edits in InDesign, though it is a tough sell. We utilized Javascript and Flash to script an interface on top of InDesign (you can interact with InDesign using both. The plugin presents the user with the list of stories from Celsius (Drupal) with a variety of filters right from within InDesign. They can then import the content onto the page. Communication is done via a standard xmlrpc call from the plugin to Drupal. We even save a jpg preview of the page back to Drupal every time the page is saved so the appropriate staff can monitor the pagination progress. We map the InDesign styles into Drupal so they are automatically applied when the content is flowed onto the page. If changes/edits need to be made to the story, they are (hopefully) done in Drupal. The story can then be re-imported onto the page. All styling and layout already done will remain intact. Only the new content is updated.
Again, this sounds promising;
Again, this sounds promising; we are deciding on platform next week, would like to hook you up with our developer as well, provided we choose Drupal.
Plugin available for non-Celsius customers?
Hi Adam,
The plugin you have mentioned sounds very interesting.
Is this plugin available for non-Celsius customers?
If so, then what versions of InDesign is this available for and what would the cost per seat be?
If it is not available to "vanilla" Drupal users is this something that is being considered or is it never going to happen?
Andreas
plugin availability
Hi Andreas,
Currently the plugin is only available to Celsius users. We've build our own stack on top of Drupal to extend the node/story architecture. The plugin currently expects our type of story rather than a standard Drupal node. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for us to modify it to work with a standard Drupal node, we've just been so busy getting it to function the way we want with our system that we haven't spent any time making it more generic. If there was some demand for the regular Drupal version I could probably be convinced to put some resources towards that development. Did you have a specific need in mind for it?
Thanks,
Adam
RE plugin availability
I work for a newspaper and we currently don't have an editorial cms system in place. The process we go through is putting content from Word into InDesign and from there it gets copied out into the website CMS system (non-Drupal).
We are looking at moving to Drupal and want to streamline the process of making articles available on our website. Entering the articles into the website and then having an easy way for this content to be available in InDesign would make the whole process a lot easier and quicker.
Any news on Drupal as editorial (print) system?
This discussion is very interesting. As a consultant I meet many clients that want to switch to Drupal but face the problem: How do we integrate Drupal with the system that we use for our printed magazine or newspaper. If Drupal could handle the print workflow also (integration with InDesign etc.) it would make things a lot easier.
I'm looking for best practises when you built custom solutions and for complete readymade solutions like Celsius...
I'm working on a newspaper
I'm working on a newspaper project -- community type -- and have a need for Drupal-Indesign integration. I'd like to be able to use OpenPublish (or some other profile--currently using OpenPublish) to do content input from writers and editors. I'm building Drupal sites for other aspects of this project -- and really like, for instance, Open Atrium, which does a lot of what I'm looking for, at least in the private group functionality part. If I could press them together and create one stable, working site, I'd be very very happy. I want editors, organized by topic, locale, or "group" (such as a classroom or community organization) to be able to work privately. I've got Managing News for a kind of "wire-service" that will feed into the "groups" in Open Atrium, where they are "processed" (analyzed, summarized, etc.) into blog/article responses and kicked-out to OpenPublish public newspaper site. It would be great to be able to export that finished text to Indesign, since we have a print component to the project.
I'm happy with the use of three different sites, which should not impact our community, but it's probably more complicated than it needs to be and certainly it's more work maintaining all three sites.
I'd be curious to know if anyone has integrated OG into OP successfully (I have not), or if anyone has any solutions for the scenario I'm describing here.
Obviously, we have no money and are on the web mostly because of the cost of printing. On the other hand, our writers are at remote locations (across New York City) so getting them together in one place is prohibitive and thus the web-based OpenPublish presents an amazing opportunity for drafting.
I've also been looking at Nodestream and did a test install. The D7 version is pretty interesting but I had a number of basic problems that I'd need to fix if I was going to use it full time. Since I already have all these other D6 installs, I'll just kick the can down the road and see what happens. I'm a little concerned about Phase2, as I'm hearing grumblings about them--right now I have nothing but gratitude and indebtedness, and pray they continue supporting and developing these tools.
Any developments on this front?
I'm interested in an InDesign to Drupal workflow. Has anything been done since these posts in 2011?
John Callanan