InDesign

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Map XML tags to styles

XML tags are merely data descriptions; they carry no formatting instructions. As such, you need to format XML content after you import it and lay it out. One way to do that is to map XML tags to paragraph, character, table, or cell styles. For example, the Byline tag could be mapped to the Author character style, so that all imported and placed XML content that is tagged Byline is automatically assigned the Author character style. Mapping tags to styles makes formatting imported XML content easier and less time-consuming.

You don’t need to map every tag to a paragraph or character style. Some elements may not appear in the layout and others may be easier to format one at a time. Moreover, child elements take on the paragraph or character style that is assigned to their parent, which can cause confusion unless you are careful to map parent and child elements separately.

Important: The Map Tags To Styles command reapplies styles throughout a document, sometimes with unwanted results. When you map a tag to a style, text that was previously assigned to one style may be reassigned to another, depending on its XML tag. If you’ve already formatted some text, you might prefer to apply styles manually to prevent your paragraph and character style choices from being overridden.
  1. Choose Map Tags To Styles from the Tags panel menu or the Structure pane menu.
    A menu of styles appears for each tag in the Map Tags To Styles dialog box

  2. Do any of the following:

    • To import styles, tags, and mapping definitions from another document, click Load, choose a document, and click Open.

    • To map tags to styles individually, click the Style column adjacent to a tag, and choose a paragraph or character style from the menu that appears. (The paragraph symbol identifies paragraph styles in the menu; an “A” identifies character styles.) Repeat for each tag you want to map.

    • To automatically map tags to styles with the same names, click Map By Name. Styles with names that are identical to tag names are selected in the Style column. To match, a tag and style must not only have the same name, but the same case; H1 and h1, for example, are not considered a match. (If the same style name exists in two different style groups, Map By Name doesn’t work and you are alerted to rename one of the styles.)

  3. Click OK.