DiStyler

[trinkaltbier]

I posted this to the import export forum, but maybe the best place for it is here. I am looking for Faustino Forcen, plug-in maker of abstrakt.com, who seems to have disappeared! We want to change the DiStyler plug-in (which exports quark tags) and make it export InDesign tags...please read on and thanks for your suggestions!

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After a couple hours of Internet searching, I have decided to post my delimma here.

We publish a newspaper with 7 different editors across the country. We used to import Word files into Quark, but 1) production got sick of being bombarded with Word emails and 2) importing Word files brings in all sorts of extra styles and screw up our styles.

I found and started using a nifty program called DiStyler from Abstrakt, which lets you export Quark tagged documents from FileMaker to individual text files and thus maintains your bolding, italization, etc, when imported into Quark. We use FileMaker Server for the editors to post their stories and then production outputs them when ready...

Now the delimma:

We are itching to move to InDesign and InDesign does not accept Quark tagged text.

A member of the Adobe forum said I should just change the plug in to export InDesign tags. The maker of DiStyler has split and his website does not function anymore, so I cannot ask him to do that. If I knew how, I'd open the plug in and change it to the IDD tag structure (am I allowed to do that? How do you do that?)

I was also thinking I could get the text to export in styled XML: but I do not know how to do that either.

I have looked for alternatives to what we are doing now, but they all come at great expense per seat. If someone knows of a very low cost alternative, please let me know! We are but a small grass roots enterprise.