Anchored images disappear after script replaces text

Question

I have a script that changes the encoding of an Indic document to Unicode by iterating over textStyleRanges. The encoding change is based on existing well-tested JS code and works great except that the anchors text-colors all move or disappear on conversion.  function ascii2unicode(text){
        var words = text.split(' ');
    
        // To stote converted words
        var op_words = [];
    
        // Process and append to main array
        words.forEach(function(word, k, arr){
            op_words.push('mwe-text');                      
        });
    
        // Return converted line
        return op_words.join(' ');
    }
    
    var doc = app.activeDocument;
    var stories = doc.stories;
    var textStyleRanges = stories.everyItem().textStyleRanges.everyItem().getElements();
    
    for (var i = textStyleRanges.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
        var myText = textStyleRanges[i];
        if (myText.appliedFont.fontFamily.toLowerCase().indexOf('nudi') == 0) { 
            var converted = ascii2unicode(myText.contents);
            if (myText.contents != converted) {  
                myText.contents = "";                 
                myText.appliedFont = app.fonts.item("Tunga");
                myText.contents = converted; 
                myText.composer="Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer";
            }
        }
    }

Marc Autret · Accepted Answer

OK, not outside the realm of triviality. Something like this might work. Still don't know what's going on with your asciiToUnicode function, and if the length of the text you're replacing changes, then the anchor is going to move with it.

var doc = app.activeDocument;
app.findGrepPreferences = app.changeGrepPreferences = null;
app.findGrepPreferences.appliedFont = "Tunga";
app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = "[^~a]+";
var fs = doc.findGrep();
var i = fs.length;
while(i--) {
    fs[i].contents = ascii2unicode(fs[i].contents);
}

Hi all,

@brian_p_dts's approach seems to me the way to go—as long as GREP slow perfs are not an issue.

Anyway, the original problem is interesting: how to skip over problematic characters (anchored objects U+FFFC, but also tables U+0016, note references U+0004, and so on) when processing an array of Text Style Ranges?

That's tricky! We probably need to sub-split each individual text range with respect to special characters that must be preserved. But then we have to resolve the sub-ranges and take care of text indices while replacing the contents.

Here is a quick proof of concept:

TextConverterPattern.jsx

Should solve the particular issue that @Suhaib Husain posed. But above all, this might serve as a skeleton for more general converters intended to run fast on long documents. Of course, special text containers like notes or tables are not adressed here—since the target is myDoc.stories.everyItem().textStyleRanges.everyItem().

Hope that helps.

Best,

Marc

brian_p_dts · Answer

If you use .contents to replace you're going to wipe out the insertion points containing anchors. You can try using findText() instead.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded