Translating Final Draft files (FDX/FDXT) | XML problems with Final Draft (FDX) files

Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Translating Final Draft files (FDX/FDXT)
Poster: Mark Daniels
Post title: XML problems with Final Draft (FDX) files

Bumping this thread - I have also been given FDX files to translate, and I get that they are XML format - the trouble is that it's a really messy format with tonnes and tonnes of tags. In fact each individual word has it's own set of formatting tags, like this:

<Text> </Text>
<Text AdornmentStyle="-1" Background="#FFFFFFFFFFFF" Color="# [phone removed] " Font="Courier Final Draft" RevisionID="0" Size="12" Style="">jednog</Text>
<Text>. </Text>
<Text AdornmentStyle="-1" Background="#FFFFFFFFFFFF" Color="# [phone removed] " Font="Courier Final Draft" RevisionID="0" Size="12" Style="">dana</Text>
<Text> </Text>
<Text AdornmentStyle="-1" Background="#FFFFFFFFFFFF" Color="# [phone removed] " Font="Courier Final Draft" RevisionID="0" Size="12" Style="">bio</Text>
<Text> </Text>
<Text AdornmentStyle="-1" Background="#FFFFFFFFFFFF" Color="# [phone removed] " Font="Courier Final Draft" RevisionID="0" Size="12" Style="">jedan</Text>
<Text> </Text>
<Text AdornmentStyle="-1" Background="#FFFFFFFFFFFF" Color="# [phone removed] " Font="Courier Final Draft" RevisionID="0" Size="12" Style="">èovek</Text>
<Text> </Text>

The result is that when I import it into SDL Studio each word gets its own TU/segment, which is obviously useless. All these tags are completely superfluous - any idea why it does this, or how to simplify the XML to consolidate the tags, or how to get SDL to ignore this redundancy? I should mention not all the UTF-8 characters are showing correctly either (è instead of č), but I guess I will have to live with that.

At the moment we are exporting into RTF and then importing it back, but I believe some of the metadata gets lost that way, I would rather deliver in a format the client can then use in Final Draft just the same as the original.

[Edited at 2015-12-01 10:03 GMT]