DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019: Connecting Drupal to Print: Integration into an Adobe InDesign workflow

Christian Kreutzer
ppi media GmbH, Kiel, Germany

During our session we are presenting an interface between Drupal and ppi`s editorial workflow and planning solution CX planner.
The interface allows the user to import articles directly from Drupal into InDesign documents. The import can be done using InDesign-Client Plugins or the web UI of CX Planner. To transfer the content, the user can use drag & drop from Drupal or a search function provided by our interface.
The interface will transfer the Title/Headline of the article, text paragraphs and other paragraphs and images. During the import of the text, formatting options such as headline2, bold or italic will be converted into InDesign paragraph styles. As a result, the text will not only be copied into the document but will as well be automatically formatted. For images, the import as well includes additional information as credit and caption and place it correctly in InDesign.
After the content has been placed, a preview is created and displayed in Drupal as a “print preview”. Any changes applied to the content in InDesign or in Drupal will be updated in the other system. Using the print preview, an editor is be able to write copyfit directly in Drupal without using an InDesign client.
In addition to the online-first workflow described above, the interface supports a Layout before Text workflow as well. The layout of the article can be defined in InDesign and from here a corresponding article can be created in Drupal. This is extremely helpful when working with freelancers, who will only have to use the Drupal editor to deliver their content (images and text).
Beyond the direct connection between Drupal and InDesign our tool offers a lot more:
• Graphical, web based user interface (flatplan) to manage publications and monitor the progress of production and layout
• Use of InDesign based templates to automate and streamline the planning process of recurrently page layouts
• Streamlined correction workflows in media production.
• High quality PDF-generation using customer specific fonts and CI guidelines

I would be glad to get the chance to present our solution.

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