Measure text/chars and leading

[Luis27099811ehw5]

Hi! I'm trying some ideas with Indesign Scripts. I've been looking for a way to obtain the size of the chars (width and height) inside a textbox, ideally measured in the same unit as the geometricBounds function. So far I've tried with pointSize of the Style, but it doesn't seem to make sense (I got a charsize of 2mm in a textbox of 14mm wide, but the textbox had more than 7 characters in each line). It's very possible that I just don't know how fonts work and I've got the measurements wrong.

Another thing I'm looking for is the leading, measured in mm as well. Am I looking in the wrong places?

[m1b · Accepted solution]

Hi @Luis27099811ehw5, for your first quesiton, have a look at my script for this thread. The function getTextOutlineBounds returns a bounding box for the selected glyphs.

- Mark

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

The easiest way to get width of character / text - if it's in the same line - is to subtract HorizontalOffset of InsertionPoints before and after - without converting to outlines. 

[m1b]

Yes exactly, but please note that this width also includes the sidebearings (the whitespace on either side of the glyph shape, which can be positive or negative). That's why I wrote my function—to return bounds of the actual glyph path(s).

- Mark

[m1b · Accepted solution]

For your second question: to get the leading, in mm, have a look at this:

(function () {

    // this is the default, usually
    app.scriptPreferences.measurementUnit = MeasurementUnits.PTS;

    const mm = 2.834645;

    var doc = app.activeDocument,
        text = doc.selection[0];


    // sanity-check
    if (!text || !text.hasOwnProperty('leading')) {
        alert('Please select some text and try again.');
        return;
    }

    // raw value in pts
    var leadingPT = text.leading,
        leadingMM;

    if (leadingPT === Leading.AUTO) {

        // calculate auto leading by multiplying auto leading percentage with point size
        leadingMM = Math.floor(((text.autoLeading / 100 * text.pointSize) / mm) * 1000) / 1000

    }

    else {

        // just choose one of the following, depending on your taste:

        // (a) calculate millimeters, method 1: manually (rounding is optional depending on needs)
        leadingMM = Math.floor((text.leading / mm) * 1000) / 1000;

        // (b) calculate millimeters, method 2: the UnitValue object handles it all
        leadingMM = UnitValue(text.leading, 'pt').as('mm');

    }

    alert('Leading in mm: ' + leadingMM);

})();

I prefer this method (I don't change the measurementUnit from points), but you may prefer to do so in your case. You can do this:

(function () {

    // explicitly set measurement unit to millimeters
    app.scriptPreferences.measurementUnit = MeasurementUnits.MILLIMETERS;

    var doc = app.activeDocument,
        text = doc.selection[0];

    // sanity-check
    if (!text || !text.hasOwnProperty('leading')) {
        alert('Please select some text and try again.');
        return;
    }

    // raw value in MILLIMETERS this time
    var leadingMM = text.leading;

    if (leadingMM === Leading.AUTO)
        // calculate auto leading by multiplying auto leading percentage with point size
        leadingMM = Math.floor(text.autoLeading / 100 * text.pointSize * 1000) / 1000;


    alert('Leading in mm: ' + leadingMM);

})();

[Luis27099811ehw5]

Great, both answers. Thanks!