Issue Indesign Script. Trying to mirror words

Hi Rob,

I thought about something like the below code where I do not use texts[0].words[n].contents, but move every single character. Depending on what should be considered a word separator one could get different results. In my screenshot below I am using two different word separators. A simple blank and a regular expression ( that could be refined 😞

Below the code that is working on a selected text frame or selected text with the scope on the story and every character in it:

var textFrame = app.selection[0];
var story = textFrame.parentStory;

/*
	let's define a word separator.
	This is a really simple one:
*/
var wordSeparator = " ";

var wordSeparator = /[ .!?,“”-]/;

var index = 0;

// Create a new text frame that can be thrown away later:
var tempFrame = app.documents[0].textFrames.add();

/*
	Always move the first character of the story.
	Change the insertion point of the target after a word separator character was moved.
	Do that until all characters are moved.
*/

while( story.characters.length != 0 )
{
	
	// Word separator detected
	// With a more ambitious word separator we could use a regular expression at this point
	// E.g. opening and closing quotes or any punctuation.
	
	if( story.characters[0].texts[0].contents.match( wordSeparator ) )
	{
		story.characters[0].move
		( 
			LocationOptions.AFTER , 
			tempFrame.parentStory.insertionPoints[-1] 
		);
		index = tempFrame.parentStory.characters.length ;
		continue
	};

	story.characters[0].move
	( 
		LocationOptions.BEFORE , 
		tempFrame.parentStory.insertionPoints[ index ] 
	);

};

/*
	Then move the whole new story back to its old text frame:
*/
tempFrame.parentStory.move
(
	LocationOptions.BEFORE ,
	story.insertionPoints[0]
);

/*
	Finally remove the temp text frame:
*/
tempFrame.remove();

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Still, I would do this with method move() of the Character class.

Why? Because formatting will move along and special characters like anchors for anchored objects or tables will move along as well. Not so if one uses property contents.

Btw: Word of the Text class sometimes can give strange results.

More about this by Marc Autret:

What Exactly is a Word?
Marc Autret | September 04, 2011
http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2011/09/what-exactly-is-a-word

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

I have problems with the characters that are not letters or numbers. When it’s not a number or letter the script adds a number (see the captions) and the character ¿why?

Hi Nicosh,

you discovered that there are special characters with text that are represented by enumeration.

1397256787 is the number for SpecialCharacters.HAIR_SPACE.

See the list of special characters here:

https://www.indesignjs.de/extendscriptAPI/indesign-latest/#SpecialCharacters.html#d1e76630

You could test this if you select an insertion point in the text and run the following script:

app.selection[0].contents = SpecialCharacters.HAIR_SPACE;

If you like to move characters around better do not use the contents property, but use object character with method move();

Or see into this article by Marc Autret to understand what options are available when working with property contents:

Deciphering Special Characters in Text Entities
1. How do I check whether myCharacter.contents is a SpecialCharacters entity?
2. How can I safely convert a single Character (or any Text) into a clean JS string?

http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2016/12/indesign-scripting-forum-roundup-10#hd1sb2

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Maybe try something like this:

var s = app.activeDocument.stories;
var w;

for (var i = 0 ; i < s.length ; i++) {
    w = s[i].words;
    //a reverse loop that works from the end to the beginning of each story
    for (var j = w.length-1; j > -1; j--){
        //get the insertion point at the end of each word and set its contents to the reversed string
        w[j].insertionPoints[w[j].length].contents = reverseChar(w[j])  
    }; 
}

//reverses the content of the provided word
function reverseChar(w){
    var rs="";
    var c = w.characters;
    for (var i = 0 ; i < c.length ; i++) {
        rs += c[c.length-(i+1)].contents
    }
    rs = " " + rs
    return rs
}