Unlock of text boxes with transformation assets in Adobe InDesign.

Introduction

XML content, which is placed in Adobe InDesign documents via an XSL transformation, is editable within Adobe InDesign to apply both style and content changes.

You can remove the content lock (file link) of a text box using an action in the contextual tools menu of the censhare layout query window: “Remove content lock”.

As a result, the file link to the text is removed and the text is inlined into the document. No content lock is set on the box any longer. Now you can change the style or even the content of the text box. When a new version of the placed text becomes available, a content update flag occurs. Whenever you resolve the content update, only certain sections of the text, which are marked by special tags (see below), will be updated. Text outside of those tags stays as it was in the layout before. Text inside of those tags is replaced by the text from the source asset. However, the styling is retained as far as possible.

Text sections

Even though it is possible to unlock any text box having a text placed via transformation, the resulting ICML text should be marked with special XML tags, so-called “censhare content tags”. This ensures that only the content of those tags will be updated during a content update. The XSLT will add those tags to the produced ICML.

Syntax of content tags

<censhare:content id=“123” update-source=“true”>XML content goes here…</censhare:content>
It’s necessary to set the attribute “update-source” to true on the tags. Otherwise, the content will not be updated when executing a content update. 
Every tag must have an ID attribute, which acts as an identifier for the tag and must be unique within the ICML text (it need not be unique within the whole document). The ID can be an arbitrary string, which must not change for a particular tag over multiple invocations of the same transformation. The ID is used internally to identify censhare content tags during a content update operation.

Content update

The text within censhare content tags is updated. Local style changes are applied afterwards automatically to the best of knowledge. Manual rework might be necessary afterwards to make the styling as desired.
All text outside of censhare content tags is unchanged and not touched by the content update.
• A selection and confirmation dialog appears for every unlocked text box, which shows the changes of every tag and lets you decide, which modifications to confirm or discard. This dialog can be suppressed by deselecting the new checkbox “Update content tags” in the InDesign interface settings of the censhare Client.

Geometry update of layout geometry variants

All text boxes, which were already unlocked in the variant layout, are saved at beginning of the action and restored afterwards. No automatic replacement happens for such boxes. This also means no style or content changes are taken from the master layout for those boxes.

All unlocked text boxes of the master layout, which do not yet have a corresponding unlocked box in the variant, are copied from the master. The transformation is then executed again to place the correct text variant. But only the content of the censhare content tags is replaced, keeping styles if possible. Afterwards, the text box is unlocked in the layout variant, too.

• Unlocked text boxes are never updated by the censhare Render Client within an automatic content update. The content update flag is not removed. The content update has to be resolved manually within InDesign using the censhare Client.
• To enable this feature, a new permission key must be added in Admin Client to the user’s role permissions:

app_indesign_remove_content_locks

Remove content locks

Dialog entries

  • In the dialog to update censhare content tags only tags with differing content are shown to be updated.
  • Automatic difference calculation (which has to be enabled in Client • Setup Adobe InDesign) : in definable intervals all boxes with censhare content tags are checked for changes and the update content flag will be set accordingly.
  • Special character filtering behaviour: a list of characters can be defined (in the Client settings file javaclient-preferences.xml) which are excluded from the difference calculation and the content updating.
  • The auto-content update of own assets is disabled if a box with censhare content tags exists.
  • The Tools menu item “Remove content lock for scripting” works just as “Remove content lock” in the “Tools” menu of the censhare InDesign panel. This does not unlock the content of the selected boxes to change content directly.

Rules

The rules for removing content locks in combination with layout geometry variants are as follows:

  • If an unlocked frame exists in the master and does not exist in the child layout, then pass over this frame from the master.
  • If an unlocked frame exists in the master and in the child layout, but there it is still locked, then pass over the position of master frame to the child layout. But keep the content lock as in the previous version of the child layout. Then replace its content with the child content according to the asset structure settings.
  • Finally, if a locked frame exists in the master and also exists in the child layout, but there it is not locked, then pass over the position of the master frame to the child layout. But keep the removed content lock, as in the previous version of the child layout. Then replace the content with the child content according to the asset structure settings.

You can press the ALT key when performing a content update in a layout with many unlocked content fields. This suppresses confirmation dialogs for each individual censhare content tag.