AH Formatter V5.0 - INX Output

AH Formatter can output INX (InDesign^® Interchange File).

Customers must purchase "AH Formatter INX Output Option" to output INX. See also Antenna House website for more details.

Feature of INX Output

INX is the XML file that is used to interchange between InDesign^® and its older version, or other products such as InCopy^®, Golive^®. INX format keeps all of the InDesign^® objects and properties as XML elements or attributes. AH Formatter generates INX file from the Area Tree that is the intermediate format of the formatting.

By outputting INX files, you can edit the formatting result of AH Formatter using InDesign^®.

INX output mode

In InDesign^®, the objects that holds the text is called text frame. The INX output has three kinds of text frame generation methods and it can be specified at output time.

Text area output mode
This mode generates text frame from text area. The text area corresponds to the fo:inline in XSL-FO. This mode can convert most closely to the formatting result of AH Formatter. Sometimes the different decorated successive inline areas are divided into plural text frames in INX output. Thus, it is sometimes difficult to edit after INX conversion using InDesign^® in this mode.
Line area output mode
This mode generates text frame from line area. The line area corresponds to the each line generated from fo:block in XSL-FO. This mode enables line editing more easily than Text area output mode. But the conversion precision is behind in the Text area output mode.
Block output mode
This mode generates text frame from block area. The block area corresponds to the fo:block in XSL-FO. This mode is more easily to edit than above two modes. Instead the conversion precision is lost at expense.

Comparing three conversion modes from the perspective of layout reproduction and easiness of edit are as follows:

Layout reproduction

Good          Wrong

1   >   2  >  3

Easiness of edit

Good          Wrong

3   >   2  >  1

Limitation

Following limitations exist in INX output concerning XSL-FO elements and properties. These limitations concerning XSL also exist in the related CSS formatting.

Table

Texts and images in the table cell are converted InDesign^® anchor object. And the conversion mode is fixed to Text area output mode in the table cell.
Due to the differrence of character placement between AH Formatter and InDesign^®, the text in the cell sometimes go beyond the cell frame.

Border

Border styles other than double, dashed, dotted, dot-dash, dot-dot-dash are assumed solid.
Borders other than table cell are implemented by using Indesign^® line tool.
Border assignment for fo:table is ignored.
A diagonal rule is effective for table cell only.
A radiused rule is not supported. It is converted into square rule.

Graphics

About the graphic, because the graphic size cannot be correctly converted into INX, user must resize the graphic object by hand on InDesign^®.
Supported raster graphic formats are BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF and supported vector graphic are WMF, EMF, EPS. Vector graphic such as SVG, MathML, CGM are not supported. As the PDF is rasterized at reading INX on InDesign^®, the graphic quality degrades.
INX output does not support background-repeat="repeat".
Graphic files are embedded into INX file.

Texts

Due to the difference of character placement between AH Formatter and InDesign^®, occasionally the text frame cannot hold all of the texts. In this case, user must enlarge the text frame by hand.
If letter-spacing is specified, the text frame is made by every character.
Occasionally display result differs between AH Formatter and InDesign, if text-align="justify" is specified in FO and the text contains U+200B.

Font

If non-exist font such as bolded MS-Mincho is specified in XSL-FO, it causes warning error when InDesign^® reads the INX file. It is changed by alternative font.

Leader

Leader styles supporterd are double, dashed, dotted, dot-dash, dot-dot-dash, dots, use-contents. Other is assumed as solid.

Others

PDF book mark becomes unstructured.
INX output does not support crop region.
INX output does not support document information.
INX output does not support annotation.
INX output does not support ICC Color Profile.
INX output does not support complex script language such as Hebrew, Arabic, Thai.
If a line has line number (axf:line-number), the output mode is fixed to text area output mode.
If the upper line and under line is specified at once, the under line takes the precedence. (Because in InDesign^®, upper line is part of the under line.)
If text and graphic exists in one line, the output mode is fixed to text area output mode.
XSL-FO can define multiple page size masters in one document, but InDesign^® cannot do it. INX Output Option adopt first used page master when output INX file.