Determine if text is point or paragraph

[Ghoul Fool]

I'm trying to determine via script, if a text layer is either using paragraph text or point (normal) text.

 I think the property is textShape

theLayer.textKey.textShape[0] //  DescValueType.LISTTYPE

However, that doesn't work and my deep dive into Action Manager code gets stuck at the last part - mainly because I don't know how to iterate over a listtype

var srcDoc = app.activeDocument;


// PART 1 
// TOP LEVEL
var str = "Descriptor:\n";
var q = " - ";
r = new ActionReference();
r.putEnumerated(stringIDToTypeID("layer"), stringIDToTypeID("ordinal"), stringIDToTypeID("targetEnum"));
d = executeActionGet(r);

for (var i = 0; i < d.count; i++) 
{
  str += typeIDToStringID(d.getKey(i)) + q + d.getType(d.getKey(i)) + "\n";
}


// PART 2 
str = "Layer properties\n";
var item = "layer";
var r = new ActionReference();
r.putEnumerated(stringIDToTypeID(item), stringIDToTypeID("ordinal"), stringIDToTypeID("targetEnum"));
var d = executeActionGet(r);
for (var i = 0; i < d.count; i++) 
{
  str += typeIDToStringID(d.getKey(i)) + q + d.getType(d.getKey(i)) + "\n";
}


// Part 3
var prop = "textKey"; 
item = "layer";
var r = new ActionReference();
r.putEnumerated(stringIDToTypeID(item), stringIDToTypeID("ordinal"), stringIDToTypeID("targetEnum"));
var d = executeActionGet(r).getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID(prop));

str = prop + " properties\n";
for (var i = 0; i < d.count; i++) 
{
  str += typeIDToStringID(d.getKey(i)) + q + d.getType(d.getKey(i)) + "\n";
}

// Part 4
// Sub property
var subProp = "textShape"; // textShape - DescValueType.LISTTYPE
item = "layer";
var r = new ActionReference();
r.putEnumerated(stringIDToTypeID(item), stringIDToTypeID("list"), stringIDToTypeID("targetEnum"));
var d = executeActionGet(r).getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID(prop)).getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID(subProp))
str = subProp + " sub properties\n";
for (var i = 0; i < d.count; i++) 
{
  str += typeIDToStringID(d.getKey(i)) + q + d.getType(d.getKey(i)) + "\n";
}
alert(str); //FAILS


// Set Display Dialogs back to normal
displayDialogs = DialogModes.ALL; // NORMAL

Any ideas?

[c.pfaffenbichler · Accepted solution]

This should get you »paint« and »box« respectively, the Layer is addressed by its Index in the function.  

alert (someTextProperties(2).join("\n"));
////// check something //////
function someTextProperties (theIndex) {
    try {
        var ref = new ActionReference();
        ref.putProperty(stringIDToTypeID( "property" ), stringIDToTypeID('textKey'));
        ref.putIndex ( charIDToTypeID("Lyr "), theIndex);
        var layerDesc = executeActionGet(ref);
        var textDesc = layerDesc.getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID('textKey'));
        var theText = textDesc.getString(stringIDToTypeID('textKey'));
        var textShape = textDesc.getList(stringIDToTypeID('textShape'));
        var paragraph = typeIDToStringID(textShape.getObjectValue(0).getEnumerationValue(stringIDToTypeID('char')));
        return [paragraph, theText]
    } catch (e) {return false}
};

[r-bin · Accepted solution]

Any ideas?

By @Ghoul Fool

theLayer.textItem.kind

[Ghoul Fool]

if (theLayer.kind == LayerKind.TEXT)

Determines whether the layer is text or not. That's not what I was after. c.pfaffenbichler knows what I was after 🙂

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

@Ghoul Fool 

But that isn't what @r-bin wrote or intended... Perhaps more explanation should have been given as apparently this wasn't as obvious as intended.

Here is my take and why I marked the reply from @r-bin as correct.

Let's make the code from @r-bin a little more generic by removing the variable and putting it in an alert so that we can examine the properties of the active text layer:

alert(activeDocument.activeLayer.textItem.kind);

This alert will return either:

TextType.POINTTEXT

or

TextType.PARAGRAPHTEXT

Depending on the text layer construction...

So the correct conditional check would be something like:

if (activeDocument.activeLayer.textItem.kind === TextType.POINTTEXT) {
    alert(activeDocument.activeLayer.textItem.kind + "\r" + "It's point text, not paragraph!");
} else {
    alert(activeDocument.activeLayer.textItem.kind + "\r" + "It's paragraph text, not point!");
}

Hope this helps!

[Ghoul Fool]

That make more sense! 🙂