I'm looking for some way to tell my script that a text frame has been placed or edited, so I can take an action based on that.
All of the documentation I've read doesn't suggest any type of listener for text frames, but I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction!
I've actually already tried using the AFTER_PLACE property, but it didn't work. After researching why, I came across the info that BEFORE_PLACE and AFTER_PLACE is only for placed assets. Meaning the handler will only be called for assets that are placed (anything that shows up in the links panel)
Ok, I didn't know that (I'm not too familiar with event handlers). The only event I use sometimes is afterSelectionChanged. You could use it to check whether a text frame that's deselected has the same content as it did before it was selected. (afterSelectionChanged doesn't tell you whether a selection's content has changed, but whether the selection has changed. Just clicking in a frame is enough to trigger it.)
The only issue I'd face with that is that my users have direct control over whether or not the 'Track Changes' feature is enabled/disabled, so they could potentially compromise my script by turning it off. I don't think I'd be comfortable with a non-absolute script, so I'll have to go back to the drawing board to see if I can handle this without looking for text changes/additions.
tracking changes of one or several text frames would be a huge task. If the user should not change anything, I would provide a PDF as asset and control perhaps only if it is cropped, resized, rotated and positioned at the wrong place, hidden or is none-printing.
I have created a simple script version of the Black Lining change tracking plugin that allows me to preview my tracked changes in live view by moving tracked canges (using InDesigns built in track change engine) into a conditional text context that highlights it yellow. I currently have to run an update script to show these highlights in layout. For my personal use this works fine but I want to allow a few other users to utilise this and they want to see the insertions "live". My thinking is that an event listener could automatically turn on the condition layer if text is inserted, moved, deleted or replaced. Is this possible? How would I enable this?
Yes, I know of three plugins for tracking changes – BlackLining, CtrlChanges and Kerntiff EditMarks.
BlackLining is very expensive, especially if you have a lot of operators needing to use it. The others are somewhat cheaper but still too pricy to purchase on behalf of the company's many freelancers (including me). My solution currently moves all moves and inserts into conditional text with different underline styles for insert and move. Also whenever a delete is found it inserts a custom character from a tiny font I created for this specific purpose. (Instead of BlackLining's caret it has a bold x below the baseline with a thin vertical bar indicating position in the text. The character has a zero width so it usually does not affect layout at all. Then when I accept changes (with a second script) it deletes all these custom deletion icons. Maybe if I create a menu for the scripts user can select an update option whenever they update any text the story will be updated.
I have lost work in the past because I cannot do blacklining on my own laptop when I am off site. That is why I developed my scripts to enable me to provide marked up proofs. An early variation of my system used double pipe symbols at a deletion point which was defined in my font as a ligature that resolved to my special icon. Then just typing the double pipe over selected text for deletion and having a grep style (which has to be included in every paragraph style in the document) that changed to the custom font and applied a colour to this. Insertions also required typing a double exclamation to begin and a double inverted exclamation to end the insert. Again grep took care of hiding the double exclamations and then set a yellow outline to the characters for highlight. My new scripts give a better looking result (almost identical to the BlackLining plugin) and is much easier to apply. Scripts also check that the correct contitions exist and any character styles needed are created. Only limitation is you have to run the update marks script every time you make a change or deletion. Hence my original comment on this thread. Some refinements I am still working on include a version system where you can view only changes made between certain date/times. I plan to store a variable for each version that stores the start date/time. A new script will activate a new level and another will open a dialogue box that will allow a user to select which versions to display (defaulting for the most part to just the latest version). The highlight changes script will also need to be updated to check the version variable for the latest version parameters to use. This should be fairly trivial, just skip changes that outside the current date parameters.
Would anyone reading this thread be interested in seeing the (messy) state of my scripts at present? I would be willing to share in exchange for assistance with refinements and feedback on workability.
Sounds like you are doing really well with this. One problem you will discover, track change deletes are coaleseced, it might be difficult to implement your versions for deletes.
P.
Edited to say: I do not work for CtrlChanges, I work for Kerntiff EditMarks.
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