15 KiB

Raw Permalink Blame History

IDconvert — Project Brief

Last updated: April 2026 Status: Pre-development — Phase 1 MVP ready to build

The Problem

Designers build documents in Adobe InDesign. Their clients — NGOs, professional associations, corporates — need editable Word versions to update content themselves. Rebuilding a document from scratch in Word is unbillable, time-consuming, and beneath a professional designer's workflow.

The only serious existing solution is ID2Office by Recosoft — a native InDesign plugin at $229/year that requires InDesign to be installed. There is no standalone web tool that accepts an exported IDML file and returns a clean DOCX without InDesign.

The Solution

IDconvert — a web-based IDML to DOCX conversion tool. No InDesign required. Upload the IDML file, receive an editable Word document that preserves layout, typography, images, tables and reading flow.

IDtag — a free InDesign ExtendScript that prepares complex multi-column documents for more accurate conversion. Phase 2 only.

Products

IDtag (Phase 2 — Free)

Plain .jsx ExtendScript file
Designer runs it inside InDesign before exporting IDML
Tags threaded text frames with metadata for accurate multi-column reconstruction
No licensing, no activation, distributed freely from the website
Serves as a top-of-funnel entry point into IDconvert

IDconvert (Phase 1 — Paid)

Web SaaS, no software installation required
Upload IDML → scan → confirm → download DOCX
Credit-based pricing
Pre-conversion scan report with font warnings and layout notices

How It Works (User Flow)

1. Designer runs IDtag in InDesign (Phase 2, optional for single column)
2. Designer exports IDML from InDesign normally
3. Designer or client uploads IDML to IDconvert
4. IDconvert scans the file — shows font report and warnings
5. User reviews notices, confirms conversion
6. DOCX downloads — ready to edit in Word

What the DOCX Contains

All text, fully editable, with paragraph and character styles mapped to Word equivalents
Layout preserved via anchored linked text boxes — single and multi-column
Images embedded and positioned to match original layout
Tables with structure and formatting intact
Hyperlinks active and clickable
Page numbers as native Word footer fields, matched font/size/colour
Clear warnings for anything that could not be perfectly replicated

What It Does Not Do

Pixel-perfect PDF replication (not possible in Word)
Master page headers and footers (Phase 1 exclusion)
Complex contour text wrap (simplified to square wrap with warning)
Keynote export
Require InDesign to be installed

Target Users

Maya — Graphic Designer

Freelance, 6 years experience. Designs annual reports, brand guides, cookbooks, association publications in InDesign. Needs to hand off editable Word documents to clients as a standard project deliverable. Builds IDconvert into her production workflow and bills clients for the conversion as part of her production fee.

Pain: Client always asks for Word version after the PDF is approved. Rebuilding it is unpaid time.

Richard — Operations Manager

Regional engineering firm. Receives designed documents from an external studio. Needs to update figures, swap names, and edit body copy before board submissions — in Word, because that is what his team uses.

Pain: Designer sends a PDF. Richard cannot edit it. He needs a Word version that still looks professional.

Competitive Positioning

	ID2Office	IDconvert
Requires InDesign	Yes	No
Price	$229/year	From $9 (credit pack)
Delivery model	Native plugin	Web tool
Multi-column support	Yes (years of iteration)	Phase 2
Pre-conversion warnings	No	Yes
Font report	No	Yes
Caribbean market focus	No	Yes

Pricing

Credit Packs

Pack	Price	Per Conversion
Starter — 5 credits	$19	$3.80
Studio — 20 credits	$59	$2.95
Agency — 60 credits	$149	$2.48

Free tier: 1 conversion. Gated by email verification, browser fingerprint, and file hash. No ads. Premium positioning — ID2Office charges $229/year with no scan report, no font intelligence, and requires InDesign installed. No subscription at MVP — introduce after observing real usage frequency.

Technical Architecture

IDML Structure

IDML is a ZIP archive of XML files:

designmap.xml — master manifest
Spreads/*.xml — page geometry, frame positions
Stories/*.xml — text content with formatting
Resources/Fonts.xml — all fonts used
Resources/Styles.xml — paragraph and character styles

Content (Stories) and layout (Spreads) are separate data sources joined by a ParentStory attribute on each text frame.

Conversion Pipeline

Upload IDML
    ↓
SCAN: lightweight XML parse
  - Count pages, stories, images, tables
  - Classify fonts (safe / professional / unknown)
  - Detect text wrap types
  - Detect threading complexity
  - Collect warnings array
    ↓
Display scan report to user
    ↓
User confirms → CONVERT
  - Parse Spreads for frame geometry
  - Parse Stories for text content
  - Join on ParentStory ID
  - Build DOCX:
      Every frame → anchored text box
      Threaded frames → linked text box chain
      Images → anchored DrawingML
      Page numbers → native Word footer field
      Styles → mapped Word paragraph styles
    ↓
Download DOCX

DOCX Layout Model

All content uses anchored text boxes — unified model, no strategy switching:

Single frame → anchored text box, no linking
Threaded story → linked text box chain via w:linkTxbx
Images → anchored DrawingML at matching coordinates
Text wrap → wrapSquare for all detected wraps (downgraded, user warned)

Unit Conversion

IDML: points
DOCX positions: EMUs (1 inch = 914400 EMUs)
DOCX font sizes: half-points (DXA)
Formula: emu = points * 914400 / 72
IDML frame positions are relative to spread center — must offset by page width

Two API Endpoints

POST /scan      costs 0 credits — returns scan report JSON
POST /convert   costs 1 credit  — returns DOCX file

Scan result cached by session. Convert reuses cached parse.

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
InDesign script (Phase 2)	ExtendScript .jsx
Web frontend	Vue 3 + Vite + Tailwind CSS
Backend API	FastAPI (Python)
IDML parsing	Python zipfile + lxml
DOCX generation	python-docx
Font registry	Custom Python classification dict
Auth + credits	PocketBase
File storage	S3-compatible object storage
Payments	Stripe
Deployment	Dokploy
Phase 2 pipeline	n8n

Pre-Conversion Font Report

Every font in the document is classified and reported before the user spends a credit:

FONTS
─────────────────────────────────────────
✓ Arial              Available in Word — no action needed
✓ Georgia            Available in Word — no action needed

⚠ Freight Text Pro   Not a Word system font
  Used for:  Body text (pages 1–8)
  Action:    Install on client machine
  If missing: Word substitutes Georgia — minor reflow possible

⚠ Proxima Nova       Not a Word system font
  Used for:  Headings, captions (all pages)
  Action:    Install on client machine
  If missing: Word substitutes Calibri — spacing may differ

◎ DM Mono            Unknown font
  Used for:  Pull quotes (pages 2, 8)
  Action:    Verify availability or supply to client
  If missing: Word substitutes Courier New
─────────────────────────────────────────
💡 Supply a /Fonts folder alongside the DOCX
   and ask your client to install before opening.

File Validation and Security

Every uploaded file passes a strict validation gate before any processing occurs. This protects against malicious uploads, renamed files, raw .indd files, and ZIP bombs.

Validation sequence (in order):

File size check — reject above 50MB before touching the file
Magic byte check — read actual file signature, not the extension. Must be application/zip
Open as ZIP — reject corrupted or fake archives
ZIP bomb protection — sum uncompressed sizes before extracting anything. Reject above 200MB uncompressed
Entry count limit — reject archives with more than 500 entries
Path traversal check — reject any entry with ../ in the path
IDML structure check — must contain designmap.xml, Spreads/, Stories/, Resources/
XML validity check — parse designmap.xml to confirm it is real XML, not injected content
Executable content check — reject if any entry has an executable extension (.exe, .sh, .py, .js etc.)

Common innocent mistake — .indd instead of .idml

The most frequent user error is uploading a raw InDesign .indd file instead of an IDML export. This gets a specific, helpful error message:

"This appears to be an InDesign document file. Please export it as IDML first: File → Export → InDesign Markup (IDML)"

All other rejections get a clear but non-specific error — never tell a malicious actor which check they failed.

Layer 1 — Email verification with disposable domain blocking (Abstract API or Kickbox) Layer 2 — Browser fingerprinting via FingerprintJS (free tier) — persists across sessions Layer 3 — File hashing — same IDML file cannot be converted free across multiple accounts Layer 4 — IP rate limiting via slowapi — 1 free conversion per IP per day

Start with layers 1, 2, and 3 at MVP. Layer 3 is especially effective for this product since IDML files are project-specific assets.

UI Design Direction

Reference: ilovepdf.com and tools.pdf24.org

Core principle: upload zone is the entire hero. No marketing content above the fold on the tool page.

┌───────────────────────────────────────┐
│  IDconvert logo            Login/Signup│
├───────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Convert InDesign to Word.            │
│  Upload your IDML file to begin.      │
│                                       │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────┐  │
│  │   Drop IDML file here  or       │  │
│  │      [ Browse files ]           │  │
│  └─────────────────────────────────┘  │
│  🔒 Files deleted after 1 hour        │
├───────────────────────────────────────┤
│  SCAN REPORT (appears after upload)   │
│  ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐           │
│  │ 12 pages │ │ 8 stories│  ...      │
│  └──────────┘ └──────────┘           │
│  FONTS                                │
│  ✓ Arial              Safe            │
│  ⚠ Freight Text Pro   Install needed  │
│  NOTICES                              │
│  ⚠ Text wrap simplified — pages 4, 7 │
│  1 credit · 4 remaining               │
│  [ Cancel ]    [ Convert → ]          │
├───────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Footer — minimal, links only         │
└───────────────────────────────────────┘

Palette:

Background: #F8F9FA
Primary CTA: #1a56db (Convert button only)
Warning: #F59E0B
Success: #10B981
UI type: Inter or DM Sans
Technical/filenames: DM Mono

Development Timeline

Phase 1 — IDconvert MVP (Weeks 1–5)

Week 1 — IDML Parser

Unzip and read IDML structure
Extract tagged text frames in correct order
Extract paragraph styles and map to Word styles
Extract inline images
Font extraction and classification

Week 2 — DOCX Builder

Anchored text box generation from frame geometry
Linked text box chains for threaded stories
Paragraph and character style mapping
Image embedding as anchored DrawingML
Page number footer generation

Week 3 — Scan Endpoint + Warning System

Lightweight pre-conversion parse
Font report with substitute mapping and usage context
Wrap detection and downgrade warnings
Warnings array with page-level detail
Session-based scan cache

Week 4 — Web Tool UI + Credits

Vue 3 frontend — upload zone, scan report, font report, warning list
PocketBase auth and credit system
Stripe credit pack checkout
Convert endpoint wiring
File deletion after 1 hour

Week 5 — Testing and Launch

End-to-end test with real annual report, brand guide, and cookbook files
Edge case cleanup
Soft launch

Phase 2 — IDtag + Multi-Column (Weeks 6–9)

Week 6 — IDtag ExtendScript (frame tagging, thread metadata, panel UI) Week 7 — Parser update (read IDtag metadata from IDML labels) Week 8 — DOCX builder update (enhanced multi-column reconstruction) Week 9 — Testing with magazine layouts, multi-column reports, release

MVP Feature List (User-Facing Language)

Layout preserved — your document opens in Word with the same page structure, columns and content positioning as the original design
Text is fully editable — all text can be selected, edited and reformatted directly in Word without any special software
Styles carried over — headings, body text, captions and other text styles are mapped to equivalent Word styles so formatting stays consistent when you edit
Images included — all images from the original design are embedded in the Word document and positioned to match the layout
Tables converted — tables come across with their structure, content and basic formatting intact and ready to edit
Clickable links preserved — any hyperlinks in the original document remain active and clickable in the Word version
Page numbers matched — page numbers are reproduced in Word using the same font, size and colour as the original design
Font report included — before converting, you are told exactly which fonts need to be installed on your computer for the document to display correctly
Honest warnings upfront — any design features that cannot be perfectly replicated in Word are clearly explained before you convert, so there are no surprises

Accepted Limitations (Document Clearly in UI)

Text wrap inside anchored text boxes is unreliable — simplified to square wrap, user warned
Font reflow when client lacks designer's fonts — user warned with install instructions
Heavy text editing may cause text box overflow in Word — include how-to-edit guide with download
Master page headers and footers excluded at MVP
Pixel-perfect PDF match is not the goal — structurally identical and editable is the goal

15 KiB Raw Permalink Blame History Unescape Escape