Fixing leading by script

[Rogerio5C09]

Hi everyone! 

I have a document where the leading is not consistent across the paragraphs. I would like to set them all to "14.4.pt" and also add a 2 mm space before each paragraph. For that, I came up with the below the script, but for some reason nothing happens when I run it. Could anyone help me to figure out why? 

function fixLeading(){

var doc = app.activeDocument;

var leadingPoints = ["17pt","18pt","19pt","20pt"];

for (var i = 0; i < leadingPoints.length; i++) {

    app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = null;

    app.findTextPreferences.leading = leadingPoints[i];

    app.changeTextPreferences.leading = "14.4pt";

    app.changeTextPreferences.spaceBefore = "2mm";

    doc.changeText();

    }

}

[Peter Kahrel]

What you enter in the Find what and Change to fields.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What you enter in the Find what and Change to fields.

By @Peter Kahrel

But it can be run globally on the whole document? 

Or am I missing something? 

[Peter Kahrel]

Did you try that?

[m1b]

@Peter Kahrel I tried it just now and it worked as I expected, on multiple stories in the document. Are we talking about the same thing?

- Mark

[Peter Kahrel]

Ah, like that. But then you'll have to run it for 17, 18, 19, and 20 pts separately because you have to have something in the Find what field and/or the Find Format panel.

[m1b]

Yep exactly! Easily done in 30 seconds. Just a funny observation.

[Peter Kahrel]

Funny indeed! Still, you'd have to hope that those four are the only point sizes used. But I take your point, a good one.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Rogerio5C09

How/where do you call your function fixLeading()?

Because you've declared it - but when/where do you run/execute it? 

[brian_p_dts]

@Robert at ID-Tasker I hate when I forget main() at the end of the code!

[m1b]

Hi @Rogerio5C09, Robert and Brian noticed this, but I'm not sure if you understood. You have wrapped your code in a function `fixLeading`, with is fine, but nowhere in your code do you *call* the fixLeading function so nothing will happen when you run the code.

Add this line at the end:

fixLeading();

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

@Rogerio5C09 -- Look no further than the two lines that @Robert at ID-Tasker suggested, repeated here for convenience:

doc.stories.everyItem().leading = '14.4pt';
doc.stories.everyItem().spaceBefore = '2mm';

 This is all you need. But for interests' sake, apart from the comments that you didn't call your function, the function is inefficient because it resets the find/change preferences at every iteration. Get these settings out of the for-loop. o your script would look as follows:

function fixLeading(){
  var doc = app.activeDocument;
  var leadingPoints = ["17pt","18pt","19pt","20pt"];
  app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = null;
  app.changeTextPreferences.leading = "14.4pt";
  app.changeTextPreferences.spaceBefore = "2mm";
  for (var i = 0; i < leadingPoints.length; i++) {
    app.findTextPreferences.leading = leadingPoints[i];
    doc.changeText();
  }
}

fixLeading();

By the way, why do you look for those four point sizes? Are they the leading values in your document? The two-liner doesn't care about existing leading, it simply sets all text to 14.4pt leading.