[AS CS3] make new section?

[_plain_clothes_]

for starters, I get no results for any searches of the forum. so hopefully, this topic isn't a repeat.

I just upgraded from CS1 and I'm making some transitions. everything has been fairly straightforward, but I can't seem to get this section start to work:

tell myDoc
set thisSection to make new section with properties ¬
{page start:thisPage, page number start:pgNumber, name:sectName,¬
page number style:numStyle, continue numbering:false, ¬
marker:sectMarker, include section prefix:showPrefix}¬
end tell

all of the variables have been picked up from existing info in the doc, and there don't seem to be any problems there. it's making the section that stops it. here's the error message:

“Adobe InDesign CS3 got an error: Can't make class section.”

just for kicks, I tried taking out the props and just making a section, but I got the same error. thoughts?

[_plain_clothes_]

btw, I did try script versioning for that section of the script to no avail. it worked in CS1, but it's not making it through the versioning translation.

[Kasyan Servetsky]

Hi plain*clothes,

This works in CS3 - in a blank 5 pages document:
--------------------------------------
tell application "Adobe InDesign CS3"
set myDoc to active document
tell myDoc
set thisPage to page 3
set thisSection to make new section with properties¬
{page start:thisPage, page number start:2, name:"Prefix",¬
page number style:arabic, continue numbering:false,¬
marker:"Kas", include section prefix:false}
end tell
end tell
--------------------------------------
Check the variables that you use inside the tell myDoc block.

Kasyan

[_plain_clothes_]

thanks for checking Kasyan. I just found pretty much the same thing in another document. my problem seems to be on the doc I started my testing with: a section start for each page of each spread (44a-1a, 44b-1b, etc). I'd forgotten that this had posed a problem for me at one point with CS1 and I solved it. I guess I need to find the work around in CS3 now. I check back when I have something... hopefully soon!

[_plain_clothes_]

-- scratch that ... I'll post an update shortly. --

[_plain_clothes_]

okay, now I'm up to speed. CS1 apparently allowed me to "make section" over the top of an existing section. CS3 is not so soft. that very helpful "can't make class selection" error message was trying to tell me that there was already a section start in place and if I wanted to make changes I needed to access the "applied section properties".

I don't need to change existing sections, I'm just making the spreads movable without losing page numbers (don't ask). my solution was to run through and compare the section start to the page itself. if they matched, the script just moves on and doesn't worry about creating a start. here's the code, if anyone's interested. feel free to critique my methods.

(* begin script *)

set thisSpread to object reference of spread i of myDoc
set thePages to object reference of every page of thisSpread
set thisPage to object reference of page 1 of thisSpread
set thisSect to applied section of thisPage
set sectStart to page start of thisSect

-- if there's already a section start, then don't worry about it
if sectStart is not thisPage then
-- gather the necessary info
end if

-- does the second page of a spread need/have a start
if number of items in thePages is not 1 then
set nextPage to object reference of page 2 of thisSpread
set nextSect to applied section of nextPage
set nextStart to page start of nextSect
if nextSect is not equal to thisSect then
if nextStart is not nextPage then
-- gather info
end if
end if
end if

-- check the findings above and apply sections if needed

if sectStart is not thisPage then
set thisSection to make section with properties {page start:thisPage, page number start:pgNumber, name:sectName, page number style:numStyle, continue numbering:false, marker:sectMarker, include section prefix:showPrefix}
end if

if (count of pages) is greater than 2 then
if nextSect is not equal to thisSect then
if nextStart is not nextPage then
set nextSection to make section with properties {page start:nextPage, page number start:nxtPgNumber, name:nxtSectName, page number style:nxtNumStyle, continue numbering:false, marker:nxtSectMarker, include section prefix:nxtShowPrefix}
end if
end if
end if

(* end script *)

ps: why can't we use the 'code' tag to make this stuff look right? am I missing something.

[Rastakaya1]

This worked for me, although I'm not sure it will work in all situations. Just thought I'd throw in my script as another option.

global fileList
global pageCount
set pageCount to 1

tell application "Adobe InDesign CS3"
    set myDoc to active document
    tell myDoc
        set docPrefs to properties of document preferences
        set numPages to pages per document of docPrefs
        repeat with p from 1 to numPages
            set thisPage to page p
            set thisSection to make new section with properties ¬
                {page start:thisPage, page number start:p, name:"Prefix", page number style:arabic, continue numbering:false, include section prefix:false}
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell