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Question

[ANN] IdExtenso: InDesign JSX Framework

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
April 24, 2017
6 replies
4968 views

Hi colleagues,

I'm open-sourcing IdExtenso—a (new) ExtendScript framework for InDesign scripters—and I'd be happy to get feedback, issue reports, requests, etc.

The core structure may seem a bit esoteric but the key idea is really simple: delivering rich and efficient modules thru an easy-to-use API embedded a single object ($$). You can already test nice features such as JSON, HTTP, localization helper, but that's the tip of the iceberg, I hope 😉

Thanks for joining, or sharing: GitHub - indiscripts/IdExtenso: ExtendScript Framework for InDesign Ninjas

Best,

Marc

Scripting

This topic has been closed for replies.

Marc AutretAuthor

Legend

Hi colleagues,

Just a quick note to mention that a completely unsuspected bug has been discovered in ExtendScript CS4/CS5 (not the most up-to-date environment, I agree, but this may still be of some interest to researchers!) It turns out that the basic expression myString.indexOf(…) is unreliable when processing byte strings or similar encoded streams that may contain '\u0000' aka '\0' characters (U+0000 in Unicode).

→ Further detail:
https://github.com/indiscripts/IdExtenso/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#230628

Unnoticed until today, this critical malfunction can be worked around by rewriting String.prototype.indexOf, which has been done yesterday in the special string extension available in IdExtenso.

→ Patched code:
https://github.com/indiscripts/IdExtenso/blob/9e9d28a129699763b0954ae018e09b41f38ba0bf/core/Ext/%24%24.string.jsxinc#L580

(Do not hesitate to give me feedback or open a GitHub issue if you detect any problem with that code.)

Best,

Marc

Loic.Aigon

Legend

Out of curiosity, what's the DAM of yours ?

D

dustinwilson80

Known Participant

Loic, we use one called ResourceSpace (Open Source Digital Asset Management (DAM) Software: ResourceSpace ). It suits our needs well, and it's open source. Our goal is to eventually have a panel in InDesign that our team can use to pull in images and JSON data from our other sources.

D

dustinwilson80

Known Participant

Hello! We've been experimenting with IdExtenso a bit. Specifically, the PlaceWebImage test. It seems like the exact thing we're looking for. However, It sometimes works, and sometimes does not, and we can't seem to figure out exactly why. One issue seems to be HTTPS, is there support for that? If so, could you point me in the right direction of pulling in an image from HTTPS?

Using the default image as an example (http://indiscripts.com/blog/public/IndiscriptsLogo.png ). This works just fine and places the image in. If I add the HTTPS (https://indiscripts.com/blog/public/IndiscriptsLogo.png ), it fails with the error: Cannot place this file. No filter found for requested operation. Even though the image appears to be valid in my browser. I've also tried pulling in from random sites, and some seem to work, but others throw the same error (even if they're not HTTPS). Could you possibly shed some light on why this error is occurring?

I've included the log that is generated below, if that helps.

=======  New Logging Stage:  TRACE (2019-03-14 16:28:37) =======
               001  [TRACE]  $$ > IdExtenso is loading in engine 'main'...
               003  [TRACE]  $$ > Env [190311] Calling onEngine().
               005  [TRACE]  $$ > Env [190311] Calling onLoad().
               009  [TRACE]  Env > OS: Windows 10/64 10.0  
                             InDesign:        CC14 (14.0.1.209) [Dark UI]
                             ExtendScript:    4.5.6 (build: 80.1060872)
                             ScriptUI:        6.1.8 (core: 6.2.2/Drover)
                             IdExtenso:       1.90303 [run #6]
                             Engine:          "main" [non-persistent]
                             Script (JSX):    PlaceWebImage.jsx [~/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/InDesign/Version 14.0/en_US/Scripts/Scripts Panel/IdExtenso-master/tests]
                             DOM version:     14.0 [OK]
                             Undo Mode:       SCRIPT_REQUEST
                             Preferences:     Redraw=true ; Level=INTERACT_WITH_ALL ; Unit=AUTO_VALUE
                             Display:         Screens: 1 ; 96 ppi ; Primary #0: [0,2560]x[0,1560] ; Workspace: [0,2560]x[0,1560]
                             User:            "djwilson" on DUSTIN
                             Locale:          ENGLISH/en_US
                             Running Code:    JSX Stream
               011  [TRACE]  $$ > File [180307] Calling onLoad().
               013  [TRACE]  $$ > IdExtenso is now loaded. (Loading time: 12ms.)
16:30:07     89512  [TRACE]  Web > https required for uri "https://indiscripts.com/blog/public/IndiscriptsLogo.png".
             89533  [TRACE]  Web > HTTP Header Content-Type: "image/png".
             89535  [TRACE]  Web > HTTP Header Content-Length: "2271".
             89537  [TRACE]  Web > HTTP Header Alt-Svc: "quic=\":443\"; ma=2592000; v=\"35,39,43,44\"".
             89538  [TRACE]  Web > HTTP Header Expires: "Thu, 21 Mar 2019 21:28:26 GMT".
             89540  [TRACE]  Web > HTTP Header Last-Modified: "Mon, 23 Oct 2017 22:36:49 GMT".
             89542  [TRACE]  Downloaded data: "\u5089\u474E\u0A0D\u0A1A"
             89551  [WARNG]  ERROR (wild) > Cannot place this file. No filter found for requested operation.
                             Stack: [PlaceWebImage.jsx] :: receiveError_$Error$_([Error:Error: Cannot place this file. No filter found for requested operation.])
16:33:45    307588  [TRACE]  $$ > IdExtenso is unloading (KEEP_DORMANT=false)...
            307591  [TRACE]  $$ > Log Calling onUnload().
            307593  [TRACE]  $$ > Env Calling onUnload().
            307596  [TRACE]  $$ > IdExtenso is now unloaded. (Unloading time: 8ms.)
-------  End Logging Stage:  TRACE (307603ms) -------

Marc AutretAuthor

Legend

Hi Dustin,

Thanks a lot for your bug report.

HTTPS is really the hard part of the Web module, specially on the Windows side. (In my opinion, VBS is the worst of all scripting languages.)

Anyway, your trace log helped me discover an important clue. The downloaded data string (89542) is obviously truncated:

"\u5089\u474E\u0A0D\u0A1A"

Fortunately, those few bytes show what's going wrong: XMLHTTP returns a responseBody property in 'raw bytes' form. The CStr() function cannot digest these data. Also, since the initial bytes of a PNG are known to be

89 50 4E 47…,

we see how the downloaded stream

\u5089\u474E…

should be interpreted and ordered.

So I rewrote the routine that runs the VBS and parse the result. In VBS, a poorly documented function—Escape(str)—allows to recover the entire stream in a strange format ("%u5089%u474E…") That's weird but the string is no longer truncated. From then I invoke a short replace function through the regex /%u[\dA-F]{4}|%[\dA-F]{2}|./ and it seems to properly unescape the result.

I then tested PlaceWebImage with the following urls:

https://forums.adobe.com/community/image/3331/2.png

https://images.pexels.com/photos/1159670/pexels-photo-1159670.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&dpr=2&h=650&w=940

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTI4ZmNmNjgtMDAwOS00Mzc2LTg0YzMtODc0ODQ0NTQ2NzRjXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjQ2MjQ5NzM@._V1…

and it worked :-)

Now, I'm surprised that https://indiscripts.com/blog/public/IndiscriptsLogo.png did not instantly fail, since SSL is not available on my server. Here again, your trace log reveals interesting things:

Web > HTTP Header Alt-Svc: "quic=\":443\"; ma=2592000; v=\"35,39,43,44\"".

which relates to a HTTP Alternative Service (another obscure topic, I'm afraid.)

Please, give a try to the updated Web module and keep me informed:

IdExtenso/$$.Web.jsxlib at master · indiscripts/IdExtenso · GitHub

Best,

Marc

D

dustinwilson80

Known Participant

Marc,

Thank you so much for taking a look a this and getting back to me. The updated version works perfectly! I don't have too much experience with VBS, but I feel for you!

This solves our first issue of getting images from our DAM into InDesign, which has been a very large pain point for us!

Our next task is to tackle getting JSON data into our InDesign documents, and while you're here I may ask if you have any quick examples of that we can work off of?