Hello, folks
First: I am not sure if this is the right forum to ask this question, if so bear with me, please.
We want to make an iPad application with a very tight deadline. For that we would need to process real fast about 70-90 pieces of news in InDesign with the less human intervention as possible (desired aim:none).
Each piece of news would have 1-3 pages of content with one or two pictures. We have build a set of templates with master pages for all of them (About 6-7 very simple variants).
We would like to define a workflow that would satisfy our needs and I believe something as I will describe next would serve them. What I would like from you, please, is telling me if that would be feasible, and if it is a good approach and, if so, what would we need to accomplish it:
- We can place our content formatted as XML into a folder or set of folders.
- This folders would act as hot folders, detected by InDesign (InDesign Server? Enfocus Switch?)
- The software (ID server?) detects the presence of new content and then places the XML into the InDesing template assigned to that folder.
- As we would have used XML-tagged frames in the templates (using InCopy or the content collector), the template would include vertical and horizontal versions (alternative layouts). So, InDesign would be doing automatically what a human would do by hand: Pick template, insert XML, save as ID document.
- The software (enfocus switch? InDesign server?) would then place each appropriated final InDesign document in an oputput folder.
- If we could manage to achieve the assignation of an article AND its upload and inclusion into an Adobe DPS folio in our account that would be SWEEEEEEET... But maybe that would be asking too much.
- The human intervention would be then limited just to sieve the unwanted pieces of news and tweak minor things here and there.
So the question is: How does it sound? Whacky? Feasible? Way too expensive/complex? Any better/simpler idea?
Thank you
Gustavo (Posting from Madrid)