Finding the end of line

[Sami Artur]

Is It possible to find and change a character in the end of each line from a block text?

I know Indesign GREP can't do this, GREP only finds the end of paragraph, not lines.

I understand this is a problem because every time the text frame is modified, you have another character being changed.

Is It possible to do this with a script?

I have attached an image of what I would like to do.

The text in the image is Hebrew (R2L language) and the end of line is in the left.

Any help would be great.

Sami

[TᴀW]

Well, if you've got some text (paragraphs, story, whatever):

myText.lines.characters[-1]

will get you the last character on the line.

If you want to change what it is,

myText.lines.characters[-1].contents = "Z"

etc.

Ariel

[Sami Artur]

Thank you Ariel, but I am receiving this message:

Object does not support the property or method 'characters'

Sami

[TᴀW]

It depends on how you're getting hold of the block of text.

Let's say you select a paragraph in InDesign.

So then  you can say:

myPara = app.selection[0];

then the lines in this paragraph are:

myLines = myPara.lines;

so now you can do a loop:

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

now let's say you've set you app.findTextPreferences and app.changeTextPreferences to whatever you want, you can search the line as follows:

myFinds = myLines.findText();

and the last find on the line will be:

myFinds[-1]

so you can change that to whatever you want:

myFinds[-1].contents = "Z";

}

If you want to substitute justification alternatives with regular letters it's obviously a little more complicated (you've got to find the unicode values, etc.) but this is the basic idea.

One thing you've got to be careful about is that if you make a replacement, the lines shouldn't change. If the line breaks change, myLines will no longer be valid and you can get some weird results.

HTH,

Ariel

[Sami Artur]

Thank's again Ariel,

I am a beginner in Java Script and I don't know what I am doing wrong.

Please take a look:

main();

function main(){

          mySetup();

          mySnippet();

          myTeardown();

}

function mySetup(){

}

function mySnippet(){

          if (app.documents.length != 0){

                    if (app.selection.length == 1){

                              switch (app.selection[0].constructor.name){

                                        case "InsertionPoint":

                                        case "Character":

                                        case "Word":

                                        case "TextStyleRange":

                                        case "Line":

                                        case "Paragraph":

                                        case "TextColumn":

                                        case "Text":

                                        case "Story":

                                                  myProcessText(app.selection[0]);

                                        break;

                                        case "TextFrame":

                                                  myProcessText(app.selection[0].texts.item(0));

                                                  break;

                                        default:

                                                  alert("The selected object is not a text object. Select some text and try again.");

                                                  break;

                              }

                    }

                    else{

                              alert("Please select some text and try again.");

                    }

          }

}

function myTeardown(){

}

function myProcessText(myTextObject){

}

var myDocument = app.documents.item(0);

var myPage = myDocument.pages.item(0);

var myTextFrame = myPage.textFrames.item(0);

var myTextObject = myTextFrame.parentStory.characters.item(0);

var myStory = myDocument.stories.item(0);

var myStringArray = myTextFrame.lines.everyItem().contents;

myPara = app.selection[0];

myLines = myPara.lines;

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

    myFinds = myLines.findText(ת);

myFinds[-1].contents = "z";

}

Sami

[Jump_Over · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Assuming your text is inside one or more text frames which are connected. Select one of them and run this:

-------------

myLines = app.selection[0].parentStory.lines;

for (k=0; k<myLines.length; k++){

     if(myLines.characters[-1] == "\r")                         // if there is an end of paragraph

          myLines.characters[-2].contents = "z";          // change a second last character to "z"

     else myLines.characters[-1].contents = "z";     // otherwise change a last character to "z"

}

------------

This is just for show the way.

Hope you step into

[Sami Artur]

Thank you very much Jump_Over!

It works!

Now I am doing the final adjustments.

Sami

[Peter_Stnsz]

Hi there!

I am trying to figure out how to modify the script that can look for last one or two last words (widows/orphans) in the line that starts after the period. Would script be able to add No Break GREP or character style?

Peter

[Jump_Over]

Hi,

It could work with nested Grep which is applying "noBreak" charStyle.

expression for the last word: \x{20}\b\w+\b.$

expression for two last words: (\x{20}\b\w+\b){2}.$

Jarek

[Peter_Stnsz]

Hi Jarek,

Thank you for the answer. Your GREP works, however not the way I wanted. Works quite similar to the solution that I am using at the moment: nested NoBreak style with GREP .{8}$ (so It won't leave any short words at the end of the paragraph).

The solution I am looking for is to find a script that will push these words to the next line (within the paragraph, not only at the end of the paragraph), here is what I mean - I would like to move this 'orphan' word to the next line:

I presume I will be not able to make that with GREP itself?

Peter

[Jump_Over]

Hi,

so maybe try:

\b.{2}\b\s

Jarek

[Peter_Stnsz]

Hello Jarek,

This will actually work. Thanks!