Harbs, could you please clarify - were the images distorted somehow or was it just suboptimal compression (file size) as Jongware indicates? Thanks, Dirk ... View more

The application object has the very intuitively named methods packageUCF and unpackageUCF, intended to handle IDML files which themselves are ZIP. Dirk ... View more

You are getting closer. Just take into account that others may be using the same trick. Therefor don't make assumptions about the previous value of the ClassID or its underlying implementation (your hard wired use of kDocFileHandlerImpl). Instead, store the previous value of the class ID (e.g. within a private IID_IMYCLASSID on kDocBoss). When you need the original implementation, ::CreateObject with that stored boss class. Btw, I hope I did not cause too much irritation with my choice of the word "install" in the previous posts. It was just meant to describe the step of reading and storing those class IDs in order to adopt a document. Dirk ... View more

How would that work if you open the document "read-only"? Dirk ... View more

UIDs are unique only within their database. You could take the database pointer as unique value, but after close and open another document may receive the same memory location for its database. Another approach is a guid stored within the document meta data, but I don't know how InDesign will deal with duplicated files in this regard. The best would be you internally track open / close document signals and create your own completely unique IDs (with a mapping to the database pointer). For either kind of unique value, you'd have to implement your own scripting property to hopefully expose it to Flex - assuming you go through CSXS. Dirk ... View more

I should re-read twice before posting. The attributes control the composer from the outside - they are input. The highlights are computed by the composer to show how far it stretched or squeezed the line. Dirk ... View more

Please re-read my post. IDocFileHandler is the bottleneck between invocation (the menu actions, or scripts, etc.) and dialogs such as "Do you really want to save ..." . If you want to modify that behaviour (introduce another check, or cause the whole activity to abort silently) you overload the method to your own implementation. If you find the document is not managed by your system, or you aren't interested in the specific activity, or you've ruled out all your objections against the default behaviour, you forward the call to the initial, default implementation which then fires off commands or what else is to do. To get all of this working, you have to install the boss class of your implementation per document (so that's another place where you can check whether you're at all responsible for the document). The best place to perform that installation is during open document / new document signals. Dirk ... View more

Pickory, I try to rephrase Jongware - the attributes control the composer from the outside, where the yellow highlights indicate how far the composer has stretched its freedom as confined by the various min/max/best attributes. At least for the beginning I would not reimplement the whole inner logic of the text adornment (the drawing mechanism responsible for the yellow highlights), but instead just make it think it is drawing to the screen rather than to print/pdf output, and let it do the work. Dirk ... View more

Pickory, my bet would be you need a kGlobalTextAdornmentService that forwards most of IGlobalTextAdornment to kTextAdornmentHJKeepsVBoss, where you only strip IShape::kPrinting from the shape drawing flags. Too bad I have no time to try it myself. Have fun, Dirk ... View more

Search the SDK for IDocFileHandler. To install, your document signal handler stores a classID of your implementation within kDocBoss[IID_ICLASSIDDATA], and from within you chain-call the boss/implementation that was previously stored there. Dirk ... View more

As you describe it basically an individual end user will initiate a script on his very own local, licensed desktop machine. Consult a lawyer how far that is covered by the EULA of your InDesign. Technically, one approach could be: Safari talks to any webserver on the localhost (i.e. Apache httpd). In Apache, any kind of CGI - be it Java overkill, be it a simple shell script, receives arguments and forwards them to InDesign. Google for "shell script cgi" for details. Here a shell script to invoke InDesign: #!/bin/sh osascript << END tell application "Adobe InDesign CS4"   do script "alert('Hello, '+arguments[0]);" language javascript with arguments ["World"] end tell END echo "Content-type: text/html" echo "" echo "<html><head><title>Test</title></head>" echo "<body>Done.</body></html>" Another approach, without any HTTP Server: CSXS (Flash/Flex based Script plugins) can embedd Webkit. That embedded webkit (Safari) can talk to its ActionScript container via events. http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=ScriptingHTMLContainer_1.html From ActionScript you can further invoke InDesign's ExtendScript - see the separate CSXS forum for details. Dirk ... View more

MacOS Classic had a very different way from what is in fashion with nowaday's OSX to specify files and paths. Under the hood InDesign still uses a mixture of the old "Carbon" and the new approach (via ways too many competing wrapper code libraries), and conversions in between. Therefor you'll still occasionally find paths with ":" colon as separator (e.g. in error messages), but more increasingly with the Unix "/" notation. The effect you're seeing is when in the process of conversion an intermediate string is parsed and the code can't decide whether it is a relative file path in the one notation or the other. In that case the current working directory comes into play, which frequently happens to be the last accessed startup script folder. See yourself in Extendscript console: Folder.current.name => "XHTML  For Digital Editions" Similarly ugly effects are XSLs not being recognized from XML import preferences, or files being created in the mid of the InDesign application bundle. Short from filing a bug at Adobe (please do that anyway) I don't have a solution at hand, but I'd try to fool the system and set the current directory to the parent or grand parent folder of myFile before creating the library, or pass myFile in different string forms (absolute or relative path) and so forth. Please tell us if you achieved anything that way. Dirk ... View more

Out of the box, ESTK only knows about the default configuration/port. Sometimes you can connect to other instances, by using an application specifier extended with the configuration name. On different Mac OSX servers I had varying success with that approach - more recent machines have no problems at all, while older installations with 10.5 won't connect (need not be interrelated). I am glad to have no Windows machines in that project, so I can't tell whether it works there the same way. Quoting from the JavaScript Tools Guide pdf which is available from ExtendScript Help menu: For example, for a server launched with SOAP port 12345, the specifier would be indesignserver_configuration_12345. You would then address that instance by a #target line within your starting jsx. #target "indesignserver_configuration_12345" If recognized, the server is added to the application dropdown of ESTK. Dirk ... View more

Some links: http://www.scriptui.com/ http://scriptuibuilder.com/ I don't use any of them. Dirk ... View more

I don't understand your problem. If you really intend to reinvent the existing export for XHTML (also known as "Export for Dreamweaver"), you'd either use the numeric values within an entity reference, as you already have them, or look up the translation, or specify an appropriate charset in the Content-Type meta data matching your file encoding. But all of that has nothing to do with InDesign, instead you need a basic knowledge of web standards. Dirk ... View more

Use String.fromCharCode() to convert a unicode code point (number) to the matching character: String.fromCharCode(app.activeDocument.paragraphStyles.lastItem().bulletChar.characterValue) Dirk ... View more

I tried app.imagePreview because in CS4 Server that variable is bound straight to the app rather than to serverSettings, as verified in data browser and OMV. Anyway, the XMP is still missing. Dirk ... View more

I'm not sure about the use of kInDesignAllLanguagesFS - I have kWildFS in that place but that could be a deprecated approach. As you provide no plural info in your object, this appears to be a singleton object (similar to preferences). In that case you'll need no "create" method at all, instead in the Provider section add ParentProperty { kMyDataPropertyScriptElement, kReadOnly }. In case you want to support multiple of your models, fix the Object to have a plural info. Note that the meaning of Event has changed, it is now "Method" while "Event" is now a notification that feeds scripted event listeners. Besides in CS5 for "create" you should be using CollectionMethod rather than Method, and also provide a "count" CollectionMethod. In CS4 use CollectionEvent instead of Event Dirk ... View more

Such questions are best answered if you try to achieve the same in the UI. If the UI has no way, then InDesign likely does not support the operation. What aspect of the frame do you want to copy? Features that come close are - master pages - object styles Dirk ... View more

Just had a bit more time than the hurried previous reply. You're right, Methods used to be named Event (probably from their AppleEvent heritage). The scripting glue interfaces have seen major renames and cleanups for every other version. As you already found, in the scripting object model the new Event is a special type. With a plugin you can access the IScriptInfoManager and iterate most information matching the .fr resources. I've only right now extended my own reporting plugin to also cover the events, and searched the output for any reference. At least there the built-in events do not have matching object definitions. For an own Object definition (that will not neccessarily work for Event) search the examples for RepresentObject - e.g. BasicPersistInterface does it. I'm afraid you're on your own with that problem, if others haven't figured it out maybe it is time to file a support request. Dirk ... View more

Haven't yet touched that area - too much scripting recently, but if you look at the SDK docs for IScriptEvent,you'll find boss classes that implement that interface. These events also have an IScript interface, so they are just other scriptable objects. Therefor you should be able to add fields via a matching IScriptProvider - plenty examples in the SDK. Dirk ... View more

IMO an announcement of a scripting related plugin is on topic and should be welcome here - and maybe someone will find it useful. Eventually over time it will evolve into the next big thing, when you start a competition with Harbs' Script Bay 😉 Note there is also Adobe Exchange ... http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=productHome&exc=19 Regards, Dirk ... View more

You can modify menus with pure scripts, so there is no need for a plugin. Besides my impression is that the majority of people who decide to go for a scripted solution are hesitant to introduce plugins, be it for maintenance and portability issues (dependency on products not under their control), or just because the plugin complicates the installation by a magnitude that is beyond Joe Average user. On the other hand side, every plugin should also support scripting for unique features that it implements "under the hood". Dirk ... View more

There used to be something called high-level API. Abandoned ages ago because most of us preferred the "real thing" or went to scripting. TextStyleRange like all the other Text scripting objects are second class citizens of the object model - they are created only on the fly as "proxy" objects. On the down side that means they consume memory until the document is released/saved/closed, and may fall apart (point to the wrong chunk of text) after any manipulation in preceding text. Besides the implementation is overkill by several degrees - each instance (I think it was kTextScriptingSuiteBoss) is the equivalent to a whole selection suite boss. That said, you can use IScriptUtils to access kScriptInfoManagerBoss. IScriptRequestHandler is aggregated there to execute script requests. Be warned that constructing such script requests also has some learning curve, and the interfaces in the scripting area are extremely unstable across InDesign versions. Every other version renames methods, classes, adds or removes arguments. You will need plenty preprocessor conditions for cross-version code. From the plugin side I only use that approach where the official interfaces do not work and the working interfaces (as used by scripting) are not exposed. One concrete case is TOP (type on path). Dirk ... View more

Same here, but at the moment I write scripts most of the time so the dialog hasn't even annoyed me enough to search a workaround. Dirk ... View more

I've given up to hard wire all those PDF export values, instead I run an embedded script. You'd need app.pdfExportPreferences.colorBitmapQuality = CompressionQuality.MAXIMUM; app.pdfExportPreferences.colorBitmapQuality = CompressionQuality.MINIMUM; app.pdfExportPreferences.pdfColorSpace = PDFColorSpace.UNCHANGED_COLOR_SPACE; and so forth. The equivalent would be kSetPDFExportPrefsCmdBoss IID_IPDFEXPORTPREFS=>SetPDFExCompressColorImages() Maximum is mapped to kExportCompressImagesAutoLZWJPEGHigh, Minimum is mapped to kExportCompressImagesAutoLZWJPEGLow IID_IPDFEXPORTPREFS=>SetPDFExColorSpace() kExportPDFColorSpacePassthru Dirk ... View more

IColumns and IID_IMARGINS are a strange combination. Retry with IID_ICOLUMNS ... Dirk ... View more

No "from scratch", but some more ideas: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2330637 Dirk ... View more

Steven wrote: > Beware of express editions. There have been issues in the past. Just search the forum The issues I remember and those I found after a quick forum search were related to version mismatch. I can second those (having debugged thru incompatible libraries and glue code myself e.g. during CS1) but I have not had any trouble yet with matching versions. I'd be very interested in details where you saw a difference between VS and the same version VS Express. Thanks, Dirk ... View more