gradient as character style not working

Question

Hey folks, i have a puzzler. 
 
So i have a gradient:

when i want to apply that gradient to text, and make a character style, i find the gradient slider stops need to be moved to different locations for every instance of the same text in every different location:
 
this is the layout:

and all 3 instances of this text need me to adjust the gradient manually to try to make it look consistent

AND!!!
 
if i copy and paste it from one location to another. the gradient is gone:

Why?

rob day · Accepted Answer

Hi Jonathan, I think it is because gradient fills have a starting point and a length, which is relative to the page and not the word.

You can get the word’s position on the page so it would be possible to script the gradient’s position to match the word’s position and length. Something like this might work, where the name of your character style for the gradient is "GradientWord"

var st = app.activeDocument.stories
var cs = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.itemByName("GradientWord")
var b,h,x,x2;
for(var i=0; i < st.length; i++){  
    var w = st[i].words; 
    for(var j=0; j < w.length; j++){  
        if (w[j].appliedCharacterStyle == cs) {
            b = w[j].baseline;
            h = w[j].horizontalOffset;
            x = w[j].parentTextFrames[0].geometricBounds[1];
            x2 = w[j].characters[w[j].length-1].horizontalOffset;
            w[j].gradientFillStart = [h-x, b];
            w[j].gradientFillLength = x2-h;
        } 
    }  
}

rob day · Answer

Also, if there are sequential words with the character style applied, this would be better.

var st = app.activeDocument.stories
var cs = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.itemByName("GradientWord")
var w,b,h,x,x2;
for(var i=0; i < st.length; i++){  
    //a range of words with the same style applied
    w = st[i].textStyleRanges; 
    for(var j=0; j < w.length; j++){  
        if (w[j].appliedCharacterStyle == cs) {
            //the gradient doesn’t work if the text range breaks
            w[j].noBreak = true;
            b = w[j].baseline;
            h = w[j].horizontalOffset;
            x = w[j].parentTextFrames[0].geometricBounds[1];
            x2 = w[j].characters[w[j].length-1].horizontalOffset;
            w[j].gradientFillStart = [h-x, b];
            w[j].gradientFillLength = x2-h;
        } 
    }  
}

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