Better Text Object Selection Based on Text Characteristics or Object Type

[billgregg]

I'm wondering if there are scripts or plugins (or a built-in feature I've overlooked) that can:

(1) Select all the text objects that share all the same formatting characteristics, including things like horizontal scale or baseline shift – a full-featured typographic equivalent of Select > Same > Appearance for paths. (Yes, Select > Same > Appearance does technically work with text objects, but ignores many formatting details and selects text objects with differents appearances.)
(2) Select all instances of text on paths.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Text on Path can be searched by the plugin Select Menu (free) and by FindReplace (subscription, Astute Graphics)

I'm not sure if there is a plugin that searches for same attributes. Maybe scripting can search for specific attributes.

[billgregg]

Thanks so much, Monika. I'll check those plugins out.

[billgregg · Accepted solution]

I did some searching this morning and found an Applescript that selects text objects based on character formatting. I modified it slightly to fit my needs. In case anyone in the future has the same need, here's the version that selects any text object containing text whose horizontal scale is less than 100%. Modifying it to look for other text characteristics would be pretty easy:

tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
tell current document
set theText to every text frame whose editable is true
repeat with t in theText
try
set s to horizontal scale of text of text 1 of t
if s < 100 then
set selected of t to true
else
set selected of t to false
end if
end try
end repeat
end tell
end tell