I found the solution in these forum posts: ConvertToButton using script and How to convert textframe to button.
In case anybody else needs this, I try to document, what I put together.
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It seems not to be possible trough the DOM. One can use a MenuAction, to invoke a menu item via script.
This is (to my understanding) identical to selectiong the menu by hand.
A minimal script could look like this (heavily inspired by the mentioned posts):
#targetengine "session";
function rect_to_checkbox(rect){
var to_checkbox = app.menuActions.item("$ID/$$$/Menu/CreateCheckBox");
// select the rectangle
rect.select();
// menu item is only available, if something is selected.
if( !to_checkbox.isValid ) return false;
// Invoke the menu action:
to_checkbox.invoke();
}
function main(){
var rect = app.documents[0].rectangles[0];
rect_to_checkbox(rect);
}
main();
To make this work:
- you need the menu string ("$ID/...", see below)
- the item must be selected before invoking the menu item.
A big drawback is the necessity of a selection. This will slow down a script dramatically. And it looks ugly.
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In the post invoking menu - language it is described, how to get the locale-independent version of a menu string.
From what I understood, the ID of a menu action is not reliable. Obviousely the same applies to localized menu strings.
I made a small script, to get a list of all menu strings. The basic idea is from How to open any menu item …
My script uses Peter Karels scrollable alert to show the result.
The result is tab-delimited and can be pasted to a spreadsheet:
// Based on:
// http://kasyan.ho.ua/tips/indesign_script/all/open_menu_item.html
var myActions = app.menuActions;
var myActionsList = Array();
myActionsList.push("area\tname\tid\tkey");
for(var i = 0; i < myActions.length; i++){
try{
var key = app.findKeyStrings(String(myActions[i].title));
} catch(e){
key = "";
}
var this_line = String(myActions[i].area) + "\t";
this_line += String(myActions[i].name) + "\t";
this_line += String(myActions[i].id) + "\t";
this_line += key;
myActionsList.push(this_line);
}
// Scrollable alert function (by Peter Kharel)
function alert_scroll (title, input){
if (input instanceof Array) {
input = input.join ("\r");
}
var w = new Window ("dialog", title);
var list = w.add ("edittext", undefined, input, {multiline: true, scrolling: true});
list.maximumSize.height = w.maximumSize.height-100;
list.minimumSize.width = 800;
w.add ("button", undefined, "Close", {name: "ok"});
w.show ();
}
alert_scroll("MenuActions", myActionsList);
Here are the menu strings to convert an object to any interactive item:
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