Folio format spec now available

Hello Bob Bringhurst, in this thread you said that I can create our own dps app viewer. Can you ( or other ) explain how can I do it?

You have to hire a team of developers and write a lot of code. Why would you want to write your own DPS viewer when we have one available for iOS, Android, and Windows?

Neil

Hi Bob,

There is no way for me to access the link to Folio format download page . Could this be because I am located outside the US (in France)? Or has the link been updated?

Emmanuel.

I have deleted a response to this thread that pointed to a non-Adobe location to access the folio format specification. As a reminder, when you accept the license agreement to view the folio format specification you are agreeing to the following:

3.1          Copies.  You will not make or distribute copies of the Specification, or electronically transfer the Specification outside your company.

I'm checking to find out what the correct link is to access the folio format spec since the ones posted in this thread are no longer working. Once I have the updated link I will post it here.

Neil

Neil, can you also post a link to that license agreement, if it's not included in the spec link?

The link is now working again. It directly points to the license agreement that you must accept before being able to download the specification.

Neil

Thanks!

Thanks Neil, it's working for me.

Now I am trying to understand what Bob wrote at the beginning of this thread:

Marketplaces that accept the license for the .folio file format specification will be able to create their own native viewers capable of displaying .folio files

We are currently building such native viewers for our Librelio solution, the technical specs are clear. However, I don't understand what's the intended way to produce .folio files. From what I understand, there is no way to export directly .folio files from InDesign; the only way is to subscribe to DPS, which does not seem to make a lot of sense. Am I missing something?

There is no documentation or so for creating folio-Files. Basically a folio file is just an XML-File describing page contents that can be PDFs or jpegs. Those elements have serveral information like coordinates or metadata. In the Folio-Producer-API there are information about how to interpretate this data but not how to produce it.

I guess as long as Adobe doesn't publish guidelines on creating .FOLIO-Files without InDesign the only way is to produce them by looking at finished Folio-Files - so just reverse engineer it. But this is something that I personally wouldn't do.

From a strategic point I don't think that letting developers produce Folio-Files without InDesign (except HTML-Folios with AEM) is in Adobes interest.

@mham187 I agree that it certainly does not make sense to try producing .folio files outside of InDesign. Our intention is to develop alternative viewers, not alternative methods of producing the .folio files. What I don't understand is why it is not possible to generate .folio files from InDesign, and why (from what I understand), a DPS subscription is needed to "export" the .folio files. This looks complicated from a user's perspective, and this does not seem to make sense, because the users will not need DPS if they use third party viewers. Again, maybe I am missing something, I am just trying to understand Adobe's logic.

You do not need a DPS account to produce folio files.

Thanks Bob, but can you explain how it is possible to "export" folio files from InDesign? The folio format is not listed in the "Export..." menu. Additionally, when googling "indesign export folio", the first result is this Adobe Help Page which seems to indicate that DPS is needed.

Again, sorry if I am missing something obvious.

To create a .folio file from Indesign, you need to open the the folio builder panel, create a folio, and add articles (Digital Publishing Suite Help | Creating folios).

When you create your folio choose the create offline option. After adding your articles, choose to preview your folio from the folio builder panel (either with the desktop previewer or on a device). This will create the .folio file on your hard drive. on a Mac it will be /Users/[user]/Library/Preferences/StageManager.[LongSTring]/ Local Store/dmp and on Windows C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\StageManager.[LongString]\Local Store (Re: Where do I find the .folio data and linked data?).

Thanks for the info @joev. However, this does not seem to be the intended way of producing .folio files. I am still wondering how Adobe expects the users of 3rd party viewers to produce their .folio files.

By using InDesign.