[AS] Insert "column break" or "frame break"!?

Actually, my reply isn't strictly true. What you wrote will work, but only<br />on pre-OS X 10.5 systems. The reason is that InDesign recognises <2002><br />style codes only when they're in a non-Unicode string. In 10.5.x, all<br />strings are Unicode, so the codes never get recognised.<br /><br />Moreover, if your "foo" was in fact a variable, whether it worked or not<br />would depend on the class of text in it, so to be safe you'd want to add an<br />"as string" to make sure it wasn't Unicode.<br /><br />The whole <2002> thing is going to be useless in 10.5 and later, so my<br />advice is to start weaning yourself off it.<br /><br />-- <br />Shane Stanley <sstanley@myriad-com.com.au>

On 15/11/08 11:50 AM, "chris harges" <member@adobeforums.com> wrote:<br /><br />> Will the same thing happen if I try to combine a unicode character with a<br />> string as in: <br />> <br />> set contents of insertion point -1 to "foo" & <2260><br /><br />Yes. If you're using OS X 10.5.x, you can do this:<br /><br />-- outside tell InDesign<br />set theChar to character id 8800 -- decimal equivalent of 2260 hex<br />...<br />set contents of insertion point -1 to "foo" & theChar<br /><br />If you're using an earlier version of the OS, you'll need to do something<br />like:<br /><br />-- outside tell InDesign<br />set theChar to «data utxt2260» as Unicode text<br />...<br />set contents of insertion point -1 to "foo" & theChar<br /><br />-- <br />Shane Stanley <sstanley@myriad-com.com.au>

Ah ha! Thanks. It didn't occur to me that AS/InDesign would concatenate the string and the special character term.

Will the same thing happen if I try to combine a unicode character with a string as in:

set contents of insertion point -1 to "foo" & <2260>

Hi:<br /><br />I normally write out a tag file to the temporary items directory and immediately place it. This allows you to embed the special strings (eg, "<cpnt:Previous><cpnt:>") for continued from, or unicode characters (eg, non-breaking hyphen is "<0x2011>").<br /><br />To see what strings you need, create what you want in a doc and export the text as InDesign tags.<br /><br />egr

Hi Chris,

By the way, there's an example script in the Scripting Guide that shows how to enter special characters (it's SpecialCharacters.applescript, and you can find it with the other scripting guide scripts at the InDesign scripting home page, as mentioned at the top of this forum).

Thanks,

Ole

On 15/11/08 3:26 AM, "chris harges" <member@adobeforums.com> wrote:<br /><br />> But this doesn't:<br />> set contents of insertion point -1 to ("foo" & column break)<br />> <br />> Do frame and column breaks always have to be entered by themselves?!<br /><br />Yes. Your statement above is asking AppleScript to concatenate "foo" and<br />column break, and pass that to InDesign. But column break is an InDesign<br />thing, so the best AppleScript can do is turn it to something it knows, in<br />this case text.<br /><br />-- <br />Shane Stanley <sstanley@myriad-com.com.au>

"Contents" of a text item is defined as a string
i OR
one of the special characters ('SpecialCharacters enumeration').

I guess that's because these two are totally unrelated. A text string can be seen as a series of ASCII (or rather, Unicode) characters; and it can be read as one. However, there is no provision in Unicode for InDesign's own special characters. (For some there is, such as bullet, copyright, en space; but ID uses the enumeration as shortcuts.)

If you 'read' a text string containing one of the special characters, you don't get ("foo" & column break) returned, you get "foo[!?]", where the [!?] denotes either nothing, or a semi-logical character (i.e., a carriage return would make some sense), or some random placeholder.

To further confuse things:

This works:

set contents of insertion point -1 to "foo"
set contents of insertion point -1 to column break

But this doesn't:
set contents of insertion point -1 to ("foo" & column break)

Do frame and column breaks always have to be entered by themselves?!