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_eLearning_Developer_
Participating Frequently
October 24, 2008
Question

how to add pages and extend textarea to fit imported text

  • October 24, 2008
  • 4 replies
  • 577 views
I would like to create a script that will add a page to my (new) document, and automatically continue the textarea from my first page to the new page.

I am new to InDesign scripting, and not sure how to best approach this.

If I have:

myPage //the first and only page on my new document
myTextArea //the first and only textarea on page myPage

what technique could I use? what properties or methods?

Thank you!
This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

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_eLearning_Developer_Author
Participating Frequently
October 24, 2008
Thanks again - I was confusing my variable name with the object. I came across your blog and find it as helpful as these forums - seems like a very helpful community so far.
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_Dave_Saunders_
Inspiring
October 24, 2008
One thing you're going to need to do to script successfully is call things by their right names. There is no such animal as a textArea, although it's ok to call a TextFrame that (or any other legal name).

If a story threads through several pages, then each page has a text frame. You can get an array of them by using:

myStory.textContainers

where "myStory" is a reference to the story in question.

Dave
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_eLearning_Developer_Author
Participating Frequently
October 24, 2008
Thanks much.

One more question if anyone can address: If I used a textarea.fit after importing text, and it automatically adds and occupies multiple pages, is it technically a single textarea, that I can still reference with the myTextArea variable assigned when it was only on the first page? Or, is it multiple text areas?
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_Dave_Saunders_
Inspiring
October 24, 2008
1. add a page to your document:

var myNewPage = myDoc.pages.add(); // adds to end of document

2. add a text frame to the page that fits its margins

var myNewTF = myNewPage.textFrames.add({geometricBounds:getLiveBounds(myNewPage)});

for this to execute, you need this function in your script: 
function getLiveBounds(page) {

  var bounds = page.bounds;

  return [

    page.marginPreferences.top,

    page.side == PageSideOptions.leftHand ?

      bounds[1] + page.marginPreferences.right :

      bounds[1] + page.marginPreferences.left,

    bounds[2] - page.marginPreferences.bottom,

    page.side == PageSideOptions.leftHand ?

      bounds[3] - page.marginPreferences.left :

      bounds[3] - page.marginPreferences.right

  ]

}


3. Thread that new frame to your existing frame:

myNewTF.previousTextFrame = myTextArea;

That's it.

Dave
Harbs.
Harbs.
Legend
October 25, 2008
Hi Dave,
> myNewTF.previousTextFrame = myTextArea;
>
I think it's better practice to use:

myTextArea.nextTextFrame = myNewTF;

IIRC, the first approach causes the first text frame's story to be appended to the second one's. This effectively removes the original story and creates a new one (with the default story properties). This can cause weird problems if the default properties are different than the existing story's properties...

--
Harbs
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