ExtendScript changes text area line count; now will not center text

Question

Thanks in advance for your help with this:I have a comp with a Text Area with 5 lines of English placeholder text in the project. The text layer is centered over a shape layer. When my ExtendScript replaces the 5 English lines with its Russian translation, which is 6 lines, the Text Area grows horizontally … at the bottom; now the text is no longer horizontally centered over the shape. To fix this centering issue, I have the following script for the “Anchor Point”: s=sourceRectAtTime();[0,s.top+s.height/2]+value; Works beautifully as you can see. BUT: the paragraph alignment, which was set to “Center Text” somehow gets changed to “Left Align Text” (red rectangle)!Even if I force alignment after changing the text with : textDocument.justification = ParagraphJustification.CENTER_JUSTIFY; Makes no difference, the text remains left justified.Abbreviated code:  for (var gg = 1; gg <= numLayers; gg++) {
    if (app.project.item(y).layer(gg).property("Source Text") !== null) { 
   
        replaceText =  (4 lines of text from a JSON file)

app.project.item(y).layer(gg).property("Source Text").setValue(replaceText); // replaceText with the 4 lines

textProp = app.project.item(y).layer(gg).property("Source Text");
        textDocument = textProp.value;    
 
        textDocument.justification = ParagraphJustification.CENTER_JUSTIFY;     //   Force Center Justify 
    }
}

Paul Tuersley · Accepted Answer

Yes I've used that same solution of breaking up the steps myself. As I wrote it untested I was a bit worried you might run into some issue. AE scripting has plenty of quirks/bugs you have to find workarounds for. Glad you got it figured out.

I wrote it that way to show you the alternate way to set the text string but you can probably simplify it to this:

textProp.setValue(replaceText);

textDocument = textProp.value;    
textDocument.justification = ParagraphJustification.CENTER_JUSTIFY; 
textProp.setValue(textDocument);

Paul Tuersley · Answer

The problem is that your script isn't actually setting the justification. When you read the 'value' of the TextDocument object, think of it like making it separate copy rather than a live link. So once you've made changes to that copy you need to set it back onto the SourceText property. SourceText is kinda odd in that you can either set its value using just a string to change the text or a textDoc object to change everything.

for (var gg = 1; gg <= numLayers; gg++) {
    if (app.project.item(y).layer(gg).property("Source Text") !== null) { 
   
        replaceText =  (4 lines of text from a JSON file);

        textProp = app.project.item(y).layer(gg).property("Source Text");
        textDocument = textProp.value;    
 
        textDocument.text = replaceText;
        textDocument.justification = ParagraphJustification.CENTER_JUSTIFY;     //   Force Center Justify 
		
        textProp.setValue(textDocument);
    }
}

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