Counting line in paragraph

[Pinpin Philippe]

Hello,

I usually work with structured FM doc, but for once i need to work with unstructured doc.

I need to make a script that check if there is only few chararter at the last line of a paragraph, and if yes, to apply a "spread -2%". and check if i lost one line.

I was thinking, if i can compare the number of line of a paragraph before and after the "spread -2%" and if it's "after" is smaller than "before".

If yes => i lost one line in my paragraph.

In million paragaph, i can win few pages in my doc (doc large than 1.000 pages)

I already have script to walkthrouth all the paragraph of a doc, another to apply and/or check paragraph values (spread).

But how can i count the number of line in one paragraph?

Do i have to put my cursor in each line of my paragraph and check the FTI_LineEnd (normal, hard, hyphen) to know when i reach the end of my paragraph? Or there is another way?

[Russ Ward]

Hi philippep2776167,

I think the easiest way to count lines in a paragraph is to retrieve the text items, then just look at the length of the array. For example:

var ti = pgf.GetText(Constants.FTI_String);

The length of "ti" will be the number of lines in the paragraph. For example, if the paragraph is 5 lines long, then:

ti.len == 5

Russ

[Russ Ward · Accepted solution]

After posting that, I thought of this, which seems to do the same thing:

var ti = pgf.GetText(Constants.FTI_LineEnd);

If it requires less memory and/or processing, that might be better. I don't know if it does or not.

Russ

[4everJang]

Hi Russ (and Philippe)

The array of strings may in fact have more elements than the number of lines. I cannot give you precise examples for unstructured text, but I did see them. The search for LineEnd is safer.

Ciao

Jang

[Pinpin Philippe]

Hello Russ (and Rick),

I was thinking that the FTI_LineEnd was giving type of the end of line (see something like than in the FM scripting PDF ... but my english not so good, maybe why I understand wrong).

Thanks alot for the help

[4everJang]

Hi Russ,

Yes, the LineEnd markers also include the type of the end of line (hard return at the end of a paragraph, soft return when the line is wrapped because there is no more space for the characters). This is because you can also ask for all the LineEnd markers in a section (or in an element in structured FM), not just in a single paragraph.

But when you get the LineEnd markers in a single paragraph (in unstructured FM), you will only have one hard return and possibly a bunch of soft returns. For your script, you only need to know if the total number of LineEnd markers has changed.

Good luck

Jang

[Pinpin Philippe]

Thanks jang (sorry i put Rick previously, was an error from me )

[frameexpert]

Just a note about Russ's first reply: the number of FTI_String items can be much more than the number of lines. You get a new FTI_String every time there is a property change in the paragraph or if a string is interrupted by a marker, text frame, table, etc. The FTI_LineEnd count is definitely the way to go.

[Russ Ward]

Rick and Jang, thanks for straightening me out!