Applying Tags

It's easy to apply tags to text: Simply select the text and click on the tag name in the Tags pane. If you want to replace the tag for selected text, be sure to check the Retag radio button in the Tags pane ‚ otherwise , the original tag will remain and the new tag applied as well. Unless they're style tags, multiple XML tags can be applied to the same object or text. If you choose View ‚ Structure ‚ View Tag Markers, tagged text will display brackets around it in the color of the tag in the Tags pane. Similarly, if you choose View ‚ Structure ‚ Show Tagged Frames, tagged frames and lines will also show a color indicator.

You can remove a tag by selecting the tagged text or object and then clicking the Untag button in the Tags pane.

It gets slightly more complex if you're using the Structure pane to place tagged content imported from an XML file into InDesign objects. Figure 34-3 shows the Structure pane, which opens automatically as you begin using XML tags. (You can hide this pane by choosing View ‚ Structure ‚ Hide Structure, or pressing Option+ z +1 or Ctrl+Alt+1.) The pane shows the document's tagged content, as well as the tags associated with it. The content displays in a hierarchy, reflecting any nesting in the tags (similar to how a character style can be thought of as a subset of a paragraph tag, since it applies to a component of a paragraph).

Figure 34-3: The Structure pane.

To apply XML content to a frame, simply drag the appropriate content (indicated with the Text Content icon) onto a frame. As you apply tags from the Tags pane to selected objects, you'll see icons for text and objects appear along with the name of the applied tags.

You can reorder the tags in the Structure pane to reflect the hierarchy of elements. Do this in coordination with your content engineer, since the hierarchy in the InDesign file needs to match the hierarchy expectations in the XML database or content system.