Indiscripts

Automating InDesign since 2009

So What's New in InDesign CC Scripting DOM

Considering the size of the PDF, below, you could think that InDesign CC offers plenty of new features. But that's just an optical illusion! In fact, the vast majority of members introduced into the Scripting DOM regard QR Code's API, which is based on the recurring methods createEmailQRCode(), createHyperlinkQRCode(), createPlainTextQRCode(), createTextMsgQRCode(), and createVCardQRCode().

Apart from that a very small number of innovations is identifiable in the scripting area of InDesign CC—most are relative to look-and-feel and EPUB Export options. What is not highlighted here, however, is the fact that many ScriptUI features are now broken, or partially locked. The new InDesign skin subsystem introduces drastic limitations in the way scripters can customize oldschool user interfaces. For example, ScriptUI fonts do not seem to be supported anymore, and many event types or listeners (focus, onDraw…) are quite defective for various widgets. Also, FlashPlayer embedding leads to critical issues—as it has been reported that invokePlayerFunction() just does not work anymore. In short: very bad news for InDesign developers!

Download “What's New in InDesign CC Scripting” (PDF)

• See also:
“So What's New in InDesign CS6 Scripting DOM”
“So What's New in InDesign CS5.5 Scripting DOM”
“So What's New in InDesign CS5 Scripting DOM”

IndyFont 1.1 | Public PRO Release and User's Guide

This is a great day for both typography lovers and InDesign fans! IndyFont is a complete typeface builder for InDesign CS4/CS5/CS6/CC. This new and amazing tool created by Jongware can generate clean and functional OpenType fonts in just a few seconds. Did you ever need to have custom bullets available in your layout? Did you ever imagine to design your own character set, including your logo or any required pictogram, with the ability to edit ligatures, diacritics, oldstyle figures, swashes or any alternate? You no longer have to buy and master a complex font editor to have it done! Check out IndyFont and enjoy drawing from A to Z pure OTF fonts in InDesign…

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InDesign Scripting Forum Roundup #4

Welcome in the new episode of the Scripting Forum Roundup series. Today I decided to focus on solid tricks and in-depth topics that might be of interest to experienced script developers…

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IndyFont 1.1 Sneak Peeks

As announced in June 2012, IndyFont is a mind-blowing InDesign script that makes it possible to design and distill pure OpenType fonts from scratch! Theunis de Jong and I put all our energy in having the final release available as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let's watch short sneak previews…

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Meet Loïc Aigon, Automation Expert!

My colleague Loïc Aigon recently updated his professional website: loicaigon.com. I take this opportunity to let him unveil axis and motions of a misknown job: automation expert

Loïc's Home Page / Design: Doopix.fr

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Making String.split() support U+0000 in ExtendScript CS4

For obscure reasons ExtendScript 3.x is somewhat allergic to the character "\x00" (U+0000). Some String and RegExp routines become silently defective as soon as your source string contains one or more NUL character. Although most of these bugs have been fixed in CS5 (ExtendScript 4.1), this still leads to compatibility and portability issues. Here is a snippet that allows to split any string and get proper results in all versions.

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140+ InDesign and Creative Tasks            You Didn't Know You Could Automate

140+ InDesign and Creative Tasks -- Top 2012 ReTweetsNew tools, new solutions, new ideas, emerge every day for and from InDesign and Creative Suite heroes. But strangely enough, most graphic designers and InDesign end-users still ignore—or cannot measure—the power of automation. As a kind of proof of concept I decided to start the year with a celebration of the most noticeable scripts, tools and resources that have shaken 2012 in this area. Since I use Twitter as a bookmarking platform, it seemed fun to compile a selection of links I've tweeted or re-tweeted during the last 12 months. This is also an opportunity to pay tribute to my colleagues, scripters, developers, trainers, and time-savers! Now make yourself comfortable and enter in the Productive Dome…

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InGutter | Inset Spacing, Gutter and Global Width

InGutter users often ask the following question: “When the script creates inner rules it also creates an inset around the whole frame. But my layout needs to go the full width of the text frame. How could I prevent InGutter from adding unwanted left and right inset?” The short answer is: you can't! OK, so can we deal with that constraint?

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Space Invaders Game in InDesign!

Layout Invaders for InDesign CS5/CS6, script created by Philipp Geuder.

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HurryCover 2 | Public PRO Release and User's Guide

24-May-2024 OUTDATED POST. Please, go to the main product page for further details.

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Pasteboard Expander for InDesign CS5-CS6

Is there a way to enlarge the pasteboard in that particular area?

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How to Augment and Process Nested Groups (CS4-CS6)

Dealing with groups is a major headache for InDesign scripters. On one hand, the Group object has no injection method to offer, which makes difficult to append existing page items into a given group. On the other hand, although the Groups API exposes a promising add() method, nobody has ever managed to use this feature from any PageItem.groups area, so we seem doomed to perpetually rebuild groups from scratch.

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“ScriptUI for Dummies” (2.0)

My colleague and friend, Peter Kahrel, just put online the version 2.0 of his great eBook, “ScriptUI for Dummies”, a free PDF which teaches us everything about designing and scripting user interfaces based on the Adobe CS ScriptUI module.

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The Shortest-Ever Aphorism Generator

As an InDesign scripter, you probably know that PageItems, Paragraphs—or any other collection—exposes a method named anyItem() which randomly digs up a sample in the set. The only question is: what the hell can it be used for?

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InDesign Scripting Forum Roundup #3

Here is the third episode of the Scripting Forum Roundup(s), a selection of 18 recommended discussions and sample codes which I have contributed to over the last six months. Enjoy!

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HurryCover 2 | Book Covers and Dust Jackets Made Easy

24-May-2024 OUTDATED POST. Please, go to the main product page for further details.

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IndyFont | Build OpenType Fonts from within InDesign!

Theunis de Jong—aka Jongwareannounces today the most spectacular script I have ever ran. IndyFont (for InDesign CS4, CS5+, and CS6) allows you to save any set of vector arts as a “real, true, valid OpenType font”

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So What's New in InDesign CS6 Scripting DOM

InDesign CS6 is full of new features, which explains the size (98 pages) of the Object Members part in our tracking-change PDF below. Of course many additions regard interactivity, form behaviors and the related events. The Scripting DOM now includes the following ubiquitous collections: checkBoxes, comboBoxes, listBoxes, radioButtons, signatureFields, textBoxes. A number of existing objects have been extended accordingly.

Besides, there are many interesting additions to discover and experiment. Have fun!

Download “What's New in InDesign CS6 Scripting | Object Members” (PDF)

Download “What's New in InDesign CS6 Scripting | Enumerators” (PDF)

• See also:
“So What's New in InDesign CS5.5 Scripting DOM”
“So What's New in InDesign CS5 Scripting DOM”

ScriptUI Fonts Facts

Skinning a user interface with ScriptUI may be tricky as soon as you want to apply custom fonts to specific fields or controls. Besides the ScriptUI object model does not offer intuitive solutions to that purpose, we also have to cope with a few cross-platform issues…

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The Hidden Way to Highlight Styles

StyLighter main dialog (JS Script for InDesign CS4, CS5, CS6, CC)

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