JS CS4: strokeDashAndGap question

[Guest]

var myOutsideGuide_Left = app.activeDocument.pages[0].graphicLines.add (app.activeDocument.layers.item ("Die"));
myOutsideGuide_Left.geometricBounds = ["0 in", "3 in", "10 in", "3 in"];
myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeDashAndGap = ["3 p", "3 p","3 p","3 p"];
myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeColor = app.activeDocument.colors.item("Black");

"myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeDashAndGap = ["3 p", "3 p","3 p","3 p"];" this line errors out and I'm stumped at what I'm missing.

Insight is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

John

[Jongware · Accepted solution]

myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeType = "Dashed";

It seems you can only set the dash properties if the line is tagged as 'being dashed' in the first place!

[Guest]

Thank you very much for taking the time to help with novice questions. It is greatly appreciated.

To recap:

(the following is for other uninitiate like me)

var myOutsideGuide_Left = app.activeDocument.pages[0].graphicLines.add (app.activeDocument.layers.item ("Die"));
myOutsideGuide_Left.geometricBounds = ["0 in", "3 in", "10 in", "3 in"];
myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeType = "Dashed";
myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeDashAndGap = ["3 p", "3 p","3 p","3 p"];
myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeColor = app.activeDocument.colors.item("Black");

Not using "myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeDashAndGap = ["3 p", "3 p","3 p","3 p"];" will use the default of whatever dash and gap is recorded in the stroke palette "Dashed" setting.

Thanks again for the help!

[Jongware]

... whatever dash and gap is recorded in the stroke palette "Dashed" setting ..

I was wondering about that. This will still fail on other language versions of InDesign (because "Dashed" will be "Gestrichelt" or something like that), but I can only find one way of setting a line to a dashed style without knowing the name: loop over all stroke styles and use the first one that has a property "dashArray". Seems a bit ... troublesome?

[Laubender]

Hi, Jongware!

$ID/

does it:

myOutsideGuide_Left.strokeType = "$ID/Dashed";

I tested that line on a German version of InDesign CS4 6.0.3 and InDesign CS3 5.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.5.7.

Without "$ID/" there was an error.

Greetings,

Uwe

[Jongware]

Hi Uwe,

Thanks for posting that! It seems this invokes the built-in auto-translator, and having an English version only, no way I could have found that out, or even could've checked if it worked ...

Theun (aka [Jongware])

[Laubender]

Hi, Theun!

Search for "$ID/" or "Localization" in the pdf or html-documentation of the InDesign CS4 SDK:

Feature development with Scripting.pdf

p12 "Localization"

or to clarify the issue:

ar42s03s05.html

see also:

idml-specification.pdf

p224 "IDML Example 62. Default StrokeStyles"

Greetings,

Uwe