Here is the new season of the InDesign Scripting Forum Roundup series! In this new episode we shall probe various counter-intuitive concepts and behaviors of the Scripting DOM …and attempt to deliver appropriate solutions!
JsxBlind | The First JSXBIN Obfuscator for ExtendScript
December 21, 2015 | JsxBlind | en
As Christmas is approaching I wish to share with the scripting community a very unexpected utility, which for legal reasons I can hardly tell anything detailed! Paradoxically, as you shall see, JsxBlind aims to protect script authors from being despoiled…
“InDesign automatisieren,” a Scripting Bible (in German)
December 01, 2015 | Extras | en
It took me time to read the second edition of Gregor Fellenz' InDesign automatisieren since I do not speak German (!) but this book certainly is the best print reference for discovering InDesign scripting realm. Non-German speaking readers might find it pointless to review this book on my website. However it fills a huge gap and should be considered a model by many of us…
Coordinate Spaces & Transformations in InDesign — Chap.1-3
October 18, 2015 | Tips | en
Dealing with coordinate spaces and transformation matrices is one of the most obscure and underappreciated exercises in InDesign scripting and programming. The fault mainly lies with Adobe documentation, especially the Scripting DOM reference, which does not clearly explain the topic and some of its essential keys. The following document (PDF, Chapters 1-3) attempts to shed some light on the beast…
Using IndexMatic² in conjunction with Wordalizer
September 07, 2015 | IndexMatic² | en | fr
IndexMatic² is very good at finding recurring text patterns in a document (brands, products, proper names, URLs…) and Wordalizer is very good at making customizable word clouds based on item frequencies. Here is how you can branch the former to the latter…
InDesign Scripting Forum Roundup #8
August 10, 2015 | Snippets | en
Summer is the ideal time to deepen your knowledge of InDesign scripting, isn't it? In this new episode of our roundup series we will investigate Page objects, style groups, and a nice selection of practical snippets. Feel free to grab and share the good stuff…
Introducing Equalizer 3 for InDesign CS4-CC (UPDATE)
June 23, 2015 | Equalizer | en | fr
Suppose you need to shift a bunch of text frames by 10mm from the central axis of your layout (10mm to the right for right-hand pages, 10mm to the left for left-hand pages). Or suppose you have to reset to 90% the height of every picture owned by your "Thumbnails" layer… over the whole document! Or imagine any other daily boring task that involves changing locations and/or dimensions of objects in a repeated way. Equalizer 3 is just a powerful tool for designers who want to save their phalanges.
Wordalizer 1.512 | Fixed the Infamous Pasteboard Bug
June 10, 2015 | Wordalizer | en | fr
For over a year, a sneaky bug was preventing Wordalizer from working in some CC environments. A few users had reported a pasteboard-related error that seemed to occur without definite cause—mainly in InDesign 9.0—and the question was, how to fix a bug which I cannot reproduce on my own testing platforms? Thanks to the patience and responsiveness of Pedro Eisner, a user from Argentina, we finally hit on a solution…
Reconsidering Array.sort( ) in ExtendScript/JavaScript — Part 2
May 20, 2015 | Tips | en
In my previous post I introduced some key concepts and tools for benchmarking Array.sort() and took you through the “standard model” of optimizing the callback function. We also emphasized that, of course, it is impossible to go faster than the native method. If these clues made you sit up and take notice, it's time to go one step further…
Reconsidering Array.sort( ) in ExtendScript/JavaScript — Part 1
May 13, 2015 | Tips | en
The pattern array.sort(compareFunc) is widely used by JavaScript programmers when elements being sorted are not supposed to represent basic strings in the sense of UTF16 ordered character sequences. In particular, sorting numbers forces you to provide that stupid custom compareNumbers routine which, in most cases, just looks like function(x,y){return x-y}. And even when you have to sort actual strings, there are countless situations where the default Unicode code point order is inappropriate. But a question arises: what is the performance cost of using a non-native comparison routine?
InDesign Scripting Forum Roundup #7
February 20, 2015 | Snippets | en
Do you want to stretch your InDesign-scripting power? Check out the new episode of the ISFR series and improve your skills in managing text, characters, styles, page items, events… in an automated manner.
Introducing RagingHull for InDesign CS4-CC
February 03, 2015 | RagingHull | en | fr
While studying bounding boxes and transformations I realized we could get nice patterns based on successive rotations applied to a given shape. As InDesign instantly determines the coordinates of the enclosing rectangle whatever the page item transform state, I had fun in drawing those boxes while varying strokes and angles. Jongware made similar experiments with its famous Spirographs script. RagingHull is just another free toy that reveals the bounds of a spinning object…
‘Ultrafluid’ Line Wrap in InDesign
January 28, 2015 | Extras | en | fr
A typographer friend of mine wonders about the most convenient way to create text samples having arbitrary line wraps without hyphenation. Such layout is commonly used in foundries when preparing typographical specimens. Customers should be able to visualize the native behavior of the typeface without justification artifacts, therefore the sample text must be left-justified with no custom tracking/kerning/scaling applied…
How to Operate IndexMatic & BookBarcode in InDesign CC
December 01, 2014 | Tips | en | fr
For the time being, neither IndexMatic nor BookBarcode is supposed to properly work in InDesign CC. New releases are being implemented, but this takes much more time than expected. Anyway a few weeks ago Eddy Van Hoeke from Scriptopedia found an amazing trick that makes both iX² and bB virtually compatible with the latest InDesign versions. And it boils down to one instruction…
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