Overview and installation

Beginning with version 1.2 pdfChip comes with an Adobe InDesign export filter that allows users to create their templates in InDesign. InDesign is the most commonly used layout tool with many features for the creation of print content.

It is easily possible to export an InDesign file to HTML with InDesign itself, however, this export will create rather big and unstructured files with various elements that are not required if the HTML is going to be converted to PDF. In addition it lacks of support for the pdfChip specific contents, e.g. of CMYK or ICCbased colors.

The export2pdfChip export filter will:

  • export all fonts that are used in the InDesign file into the HTML template (TrueType and OpenType are supported),
  • create CSS colors for all InDesign color swatches that are used in the InDesignFile (including CMYK); for color spaces that are not supported in HTML it will in addition create an alternate color that will be used by an HTML renderer, e.g. a web browser,
  • create @page rule entries for the page geometry of the InDesign file including TrimBox and BleedBox, when the HTML is converted to PDF the result will have as many pages as the InDesign file
  • will take over most important text formatting rules from Paragraph and Character Styles,
  • create some basic vector objects from any such objects in the InDesign file.

The main purpose of the export filter is to make it possible to use the layout features of InDesign for the creation of HTML templates for pdfChip, the main purpose is not to create an as good as possible HTML rendition from any InDesign file.

Installation

Open the Scripts Utilities in Indesign

Open the Scripts Utilities in Indesign

For installation in InDesign go to Window, Utilities and select Scripts. This will open the Scripts palette.

Scripts palette

Scripts palette

The Scripts palette shows scripts that are available for the user or for the application (all users on the computer). Pick the one that is appropriate in your case and open the options menu and select "Reveal in Finder".

Install the export filter

Install the script by copying all content from the pdfChip program folder "additional tools/InDesign to HTML export" into the Scripts Panel folder in the Scripts folder.

The script and a "js" folder are now listed in the Scripts palette

The script "export2pdfChip.jsx" is the actual export script. It can be used by double clicking it there in the Scripts palette.