What is Indiscripts about?
Installing a “script”
List of Magic Keywords
Discovering the Goodies
Free Material vs. Commercial Products
Repositories and Additional Links
Questions and Answers


What is Indiscripts about?

Indiscripts mainly focuses on automating InDesign in daily tasks or more advanced topics: typography, fonts, GREP queries, word indexing, text styling, footnotes, layout management, barcodes, transformations, book covers, etc.

Some pages, aimed at InDesign experts or programmers, contain highly technical information that you probably don't want to read at all! But this website also provides cool stuff that you can easily benefit from, whatever your InDesign skills.

See also: Legal Mentions | Copyright & terms of use | Privacy.

 


Installing a “script”

A script is a piece of code, a program, that performs some interesting actions. InDesign scripts are based on plain text files which you could even write or edit yourself in any text editor. Those files usually have the suffix JSX (sometimes JSXBIN) which refers to a programing language (ExtendScript for JS) that InDesign and other Adobe applications are able to interpret on both Mac and Windows platforms.

In order to make a script available in the Scripts panel, all you have to do is to put the script file, e.g. MyCoolScript.jsx, inside a specific folder. The easiest way to find its location is to do as follows:

Quick access to the 'Scripts Panel' folder.

    1. Run InDesign.
    2. Open the Scripts panel—going into Window > Automation > Scripts (CS4), or Window > Utilities > Scripts (CS5 or later).
    3. Right-click on either Application or User.
    4. From the context menu, choose Reveal in Finder (Mac), or Reveal in Explorer (Windows).

My colleague Dan Rodney has a great tutorial, including video demo, on Installing InDesign/InCopy Scripts.

 


List of Magic Keywords

What kind of scripts and tools are available on this website? And, which of them might fit your needs? Here is a short selection of keywords that lead to the most interesting topics for newcomers:

BAR - FOO GRE - OPE PDF - STO STR - UNI
Barcode GREP PDF Strokes
Bounds Game Page Item Styles
Button Link Page Table
Characters Localization Pasteboard Text
Color Measurement Sort Transformation
Font Menu Spread Typography
Footnotes OpenType Story Unicode

Do not overlook our integrated search engine. Type any specific keyword in the search field (at the top right corner of the home page) then press Enter.

 


Discovering the Goodies

As Indiscripts is a blog based website where entries are stacked from oldest to newest, there is a good chance you missed interesting scripts, tools, or tutorials, that are not visible anymore on the front page.

Here is a selection of those hidden gems, showing either full downloadable scripts, code snippets (that you can copy-paste as well), or IdExtenso-related source codes. The most noticeable utilities appear in bold.

SHORT NAME DESCRIPTION
ActionListener Record and replay simple InDesign actions.
Align2Left-Top Align all items to the left and top margin.
AphorismGenerator Randomly generate valid sentences.
ArabicStyle Use a special composer for Arabic styling.
Arc Drawing circle arcs in InDesign.
AutoStick Build diagrams by just pressing TAB and ENTER.
ButtonReporter Report behaviors associated to buttons.
BasicSwapItems Quickly swap page items.
ChangeMissingFonts A simple font replacement routine.
CleanupPasteboard Clean up the pasteboard (removing extra items).
CompareParagraphSpacing Compare paragraph spacing structures.
CropExportPages Crop pages then export to jpeg.
CurveNodes Add small circles along a curve.
DeepWordCounter Count words with respect to footnotes and tables.
DoubleClickHandler Detect textframe double click event.
DrawSpiral Draw Archimedean spirals.
DrawWave Draw clean sine waves.
ExtendImageTest Test whether a container extend beyond its image.
FileCloseAll Add a “Close All” feature in the File menu.
FillBleed Make your images meet the bleed edge.
FitFontSize Fit font size to text frame.
FitHorizontal Adjust text frame width to the optimal value.
FitOverset Apply fit-frame-to-content to all overset frames.
FixTableWidows Quickly apply a “widow policy” to tables.
FlyingButtons Automate PDF portfolios.
GetMD5 Prompt the MD5 hash of the input.
GetProxyPageName Find the nearest page of some page item.
GetStory Access the parent story from anywhere.
GroupItemsByLabel Group items having the same script label.
HTMLEncode Basic ID-to-HTML encoder.
InGoogle Invoke Google from InDesign.
InSpreadCoords Get the spread coordinates of anchored objects.
InstantUnicode Quickly insert Unicode characters.
InstantVariable Quickly edit your text variables.
InTetris Play Tetris inside InDesign!
InhibitsAlerts Remove alerts when executing a JSXBIN-based script.
JsxBlind JSXBIN Obfuscator for ExtendScript.
MagnetGroup Make a graphic group responsive to resize or moves.
MarkovShuffle Text scrambler based on Markov chains.
MigrationAppels Reposition footnote calls (French rules).
MirrorSelection Two ways of mirroring the selection across facing pages.
MultiplePDFExport Export distinct PDFs from layer sets.
NormalizeSwatches Remove duplicates and normalize CMYK swatches.
PageBorder Create a custom border around pages.
PageWalker Duplicate and position a page item by uniform steps.
PageToolDisclaimer Alert on PageTool usage.
PasteboardExpander Reveal items that flow over the pasteboard.
PathArea Calculate the area of any polygon.
PDFImportCropPref Change the Crop options of a placed PDF.
PhysicalSize Check your layout at its actual size.
ReFoot Convert markup text into footnotes.
RegexTester Test regular expressions in a dialog box.
ReleaseAnchoredObjs Release all anchored objects at once.
ReorderPages Reorder the pages of an entire document.
RemoveConditionalText Selectively Remove Conditional Text.
RemoveEmptyGroups Remove empty style groups.
ReplaceStyle Generic style replacement routine.
ReportPageHyphens Inventory hyphens that occur between two pages.
RichPaste Paste with minimal formatting.
ScanStateContainers Scan all State containers in a document.
ScriptTemplate Build advanced IdExtenso projects.
SelToPng Serialize the selection into a PNG.
SelToPlaceholder Get the selection “lorem-ipsumed”.
ShowHideLocalFormatting Reveal local formatting in your document.
ShowHideQuotes Manage GREP style for highlighting quotes.
ShuffleParagraphs Shuffle the selected paragraphs in a random order.
ShuffleWords Shuffle the selected words in a random order.
SmartCellMerge Improve the way you merge table cells.
Speeech! Turn any shape into a speech balloon!
StepTints Increase/reduce tints by constant steps.
SwatchSorter Sorting color swatches.
SymbolToGreek Translate Symbol characters into Greek (Unicode.)
SynchronizeID-AILayers Sync InDesign and Illustrator layers.
TotalRescale Slightly translate and/or scale an entire layout.
TransformSpread Apply weird transformations to spreads!
UnBaseStyle Remove "basedOn" style while keeping attributes.
UnFoot Restore footnotes into the story.
Up2Bottom-Left2Right Sort images based on their 2D position on the page.
WebColorPicker Specify and create web color swatches (#RRGGBB).

Best way to stay tuned to our freshest stuff? Follow us on Twitter!

 


Free Material vs. Commercial Products

Most scripts, utilities, and resources available at Indiscripts are, and will remain, free material—at least, “free to try.”

Our greatest tools for InDesign (referred to as “products”) are all listed in the Main Product Page, which relates as well to free scripts as beta versions, trial versions (TRY flag), and/or commercial versions (PRO flag). Each product has its own quick-access icon in the top navigation bar.

Quick access to Indiscripts Products.

To keep an eye on our products, bookmark this address: indiscripts.com/category/projects.

On the process of purchasing a product, check out our Terms and Conditions of Sale.

See also: Indiscripts Product License Agreement.

 


Repositories and Additional Links

Enjoying InDesign automation? Interested in extending Adobe apps and exploring new solutions? Indiscripts is also the right place to learn, experiment, and discover. You will find a nice selection of external links at the right side of the home page.

In addition, here is a set of repositories and resources for digging deeper:

Top 80 Autumn Links (2009)

50 InDesign Scripts and Tools for End Users (2010)

140+ InDesign and Creative Tasks You Didn't Know You Could Automate (2013)

Indiscripts Temporary Archives

Want to learn InDesign scripting in depth?

All our PDF resources at a glance…

IndiscriptsTV (screencasts and tutorials)

@indiscripts (our Twitter's thread)

GitHub Repository