The engine speaks IDML: frames, stories, paths, tables, swatches. Everything else a publication needs is a plugin written against that engine — and each plugin keeps its content in its own native format. A workbook stays an XLSX, a layered image stays layers, a data session stays its sources and queries. They travel together inside one .paged file, which is itself a valid IDML package, and what lands on the page is native page content InDesign can open.
Plugins — one engine, many instruments
Every kind of content, on the same page
A layout is rarely just text and frames. It is a drawing, a photograph, a table that recalculates, a catalogue that comes out of a database. Each of those is a plugin here — and each one sits in the same document, in the same chrome, on the same engine.
Why plugins
Native formats, one container, one cockpit
- Their own format, kept
- Each plugin stores its source as a part of the .paged container — XLSX bytes, layer stacks, recipes, query sessions — and lowers it to native frames, paths and tables on the page.
- The same chrome
- Tools, panels, menus, undo and the edit context all come from the editor. Double-click a plugin's object and the surface follows you into it.
- Solo mode
- Six of the plugins can boot the editor as their own application: a drawing app, a photo editor, a spreadsheet, a catalogue builder — same code, a narrower cockpit.
- Open to you
- Every first-party plugin is written against the public plugin SDK. A plugin of yours gets the same host, the same object model and the same doors.
The instruments
Eight plugins, one document
Illustrator-class
paged.draw
Illustrator-class vector drawing inside the layout: pen and shape tools, pathfinder, live paint, symbols and blends, on the same page as your text.
Photoshop-class
paged.image
Photoshop-class image editing on WebGPU — layers, masks, adjustment layers, healing and content-aware fill — and a PSD that comes back byte for byte when you did not touch it.
Excel in the layout
paged.sheet
A spreadsheet engine in the page: real Excel workbooks with live formulas, tables and charts that paginate like print, and save back as XLSX.
Database publishing
paged.data
Catalogues, price lists and directories generated from your data: SQL over CSV, JSON, Parquet and Excel in the browser, bound to the layout and kept in sync.
The web, set in print
paged.web
InDesign can't speak web; web tools can't speak print. paged.web lays out HTML and CSS inside frames, flows it across pages, and bakes it to native items InDesign opens.
Word, typeset
paged.doc
Open a Word .docx as native, editable layout — lists, tables, images, footnotes, headers and footers — and save your edits back into the same file.
PowerPoint, typeset
paged.slide
PowerPoint decks on the engine: every preset shape, every built-in table style, charts and SmartArt, laid out within a point of PowerPoint.
IDML and PDF in, IDML out
paged.publish
The format lanes: IDML written back in InDesign's own spelling with untouched parts kept verbatim, and PDFs opened as editable text, vector and image frames.
The facts
Plugin, role, licence, status
| Plugin | Role | Licence | Status | npm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| paged.draw | Vector illustration | AGPL-3.0 OR PMEL | canary — usable, moving fast | @paged-media/draw 0.1.0-canary.16 |
| paged.image | Raster editing on the GPU | AGPL-3.0 OR PMEL | canary — usable, moving fast | @paged-media/image 0.1.0-canary.18 |
| paged.sheet | Live spreadsheets in print | AGPL-3.0 OR PMEL | canary — usable, moving fast | @paged-media/sheet 0.1.0-canary.15 |
| paged.data | Database publishing | AGPL-3.0 OR PMEL | canary — usable, moving fast | @paged-media/data 0.1.0-canary.11 |
| paged.web | HTML and CSS as print content | AGPL-3.0 OR PMEL | canary — usable, moving fast | @paged-media/web 0.1.0-canary.12 |
| paged.doc | Word documents | AGPL-3.0 OR PMEL | canary — usable, moving fast | @paged-media/doc — not published yet |
| paged.slide | Presentations | AGPL-3.0 OR PMEL | coming — not yet in the editor | not published |
| paged.publish | IDML and PDF in, IDML out | MPL-2.0 OR PMEL | canary — usable, moving fast | @paged-media/publish 0.1.0-canary.0 @paged-media/pdf 0.2.5-canary.0 |