These numbers are generated on the fly, as part of composition. Have a look at the wax. Dirk ... View more

I'm using roughly the same approach, only that I keep the +2 version offset for InDesign versions rather than Suite versions. The obvious candidate would then be kMajorVersionNumberForResource, but I once had trouble with a resource compiler's limitation on name length so I actually used #ifdef __FiredrakeBuildNumber_h__ and so forth. The approach of Bartek to use numeric comparison is very important, I completely stopped to use convenience macros that look for an exact version. Further into the code, I try to keep everything up to date matching the latest interface signature. Forget about EVENT, from now on everything is METHOD! If a C++ method has changed in parameters or undergone naming cleanup like this, I use intermediate adapter classes that translate for older versions. This way legacy support is isolated into separate sources and your main source stays in shape. In general the renaming orgies really make sense, for example the macros for the script version that now name the version rather than mystic code names. Push them back into older SDK versions (by additional version specific sources, in a separate tree per each SDK version). For auxiliary data types - does anybody know what brew of Rect was in use at what version? - I use own macros that lead to the name in fashion for this season. SysFile vs. IDFile, you name it. Actually SysFile is one of the few exceptions, my macro still is like MySysFile for IDFile. This works very good - I have sources that should still compile for InDesign 2. Note that most larger software houses that I know use branches per version. I see more disadvantages than advantages in that approach. Dirk ... View more

You could observe kActionManagerBoss for kMenuManagerMenuStatusChangeMessage, protocol IID_IMENUMANAGER. Unfortunately that does not give any hint about the actual action (the void* is null), and I have not tried keyboard shortcuts. I'd also consider suppressed ui, but that is supposed to do its magic before invoke. Do you want to see actions in general (e.g. for a kind of action recorder?) or a specific action? Most of the latter have much better own notifications in the model. I think there are also some special tracing interfaces for system builders that want to analyse crash situations, but these are outside the regular SDK and I have not had the time to try them out so I can't tell whether they cover your problem. Too much scripting recently. Dirk ... View more

> should I make my own interface to wrap pointer? The InDesign object model has its benefits. > As a side note, I'm using ... tinyxml When I have to parse XML I just implement ISAXContentHandler. > So your saying, we basically make it up, and hope ... You would still use the official page to allocate your ScriptID from the official registry, so it is at least a degree less "make it up". > laughing when I saw the words over simplified Ok, let's add "in that regard". On the other hand they also leave out too many things as exercise. It can be worse though, e.g. if you had to accept some well known external flavor out of a multitude of flavors in the same data object, where you have to compete with internal implementations for existing targets... Dirk ... View more

Bartek is right. Instead of tweaking the .rsp files (plural! - you'll also need one for the .fr compiler) of the SDK, I usually have a local copy per project. This helps if you arrange your 2000 private source files into sub-folders 😉 Dirk ... View more

Yup. I just do not advertise it because the functionality is incomplete - you can only read the selected entities of the various panels, but can't select e.g. another page/swatch/etc. Besides my activation mechanism is a pain, asking for a rewrite whenever I find the time. Even worse, I just realised my webserver is down so I can't point you to a demo download. Dirk ... View more

Make sure no InterfacePtr is referring to the document any more. Dirk ... View more

This is a public user to user forum, with only rare participation of Adobe staff on their private spare time. Even then, they keep very tight lips on any details beyond the official announcements - the most concrete I've seen is that InDesign 7 will have features that are not in InDesign 6. So do not expect any miracles by posting here. To eventually find out more, try to contact Adobe directly. As far as I know (I am external like most others here) the official way is this: Go to http://partners.adobe.com which redirects to the partner portal https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/partnerportal/index.cfm. In the right column, follow the link "Solution Partner program" - that means us external developers. In the description of the different levels, you'll see points such as "debug software versions" or "pre-release software". Use the "Contact Us" link to request any details on your specific questions - e.g. whether InDesign falls into any of these categories, time frames, preconditions for participation and so forth. If you are already member in any of the partner programs, you should have local contact information (e.g. phone number, email, request forms behind the login) and ask there. Dirk ... View more

As far as I know the principle sketched out in the blog is still valid, even if a few links are broken. For example the membership levels have been renamed. Note that Mark has given his email address for direct contact - the middle 2) entry. As a developer evangelist he's always been very helpful to pull the right strings. The equivalent to the broken links: http://partners.adobe.com which redirects to the lengthier https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/partnerportal/index.cfm From now on links are localized. Several years ago I had trouble with them, but as my browser is now preset to an en_US locale I have not had the problem for a while. Right column, click "Solution Partner program". That should take you to a page describing the available levels in detail. In the middle of the page note the further links e.g. "Program membership application", again modified per locale. Your application will be revisited by a human in your locale or country (e.g. Germany), so expect some delay. Once you pass thru that, you'll have a personalized page in the partner portal (login on top of the page), which should include options for downloads. Dirk ... View more

Harbs, there is no need to upgrade to CS4, it was just a suggestion to keep the software up to snuff, for a feature that definitely has improved. Besides I mentioned plenty alternatives, including doubts whether the problem was reentrancy at all or just recursion. On the other hand let me strongly support your general suggestions on memory management, also considering an unrelated project that I recently inherited ... Dirk ... View more

John is right, this is more of a plugin/SDK question, I would have expected it in that forum first hand. Hans has cross posted this question into a swiss/german scripting forum with more details, and I've given a few suggestions. It broils down to the fact that the plugin access to scripting in CS3 had to address the JavaScript scripting subsystem rather than talk to a specific engine. And my strong guess is that the RunFile function triggered by the idle task of the first plugin is not reentrant so the second plugin can not invoke a method the same way. My suggestions, in brief: upgrade to CS4 where engines are independently addressible. Alternatively, one can try the other methods to invoke the script - RunScript rather than RunFile, or even use the callback mechanism that underlies the event listener registration. Easily accessible from the same interface class. Of course for the reentrancy problem I would not expect a Stack overrun error, so maybe it is not reentrancy at all but just the obvious - the second plugin calling itself in recursion. A breakpoint should easily tell. Dirk ... View more

Your users/administrators can do everything from InDesign Desktop. You can script your own repository browser UI, scripts can watch for menu actions and substitute them with their own functionality such as export as IDML (zipped XML packages), upload. The support for http operations is very limited though with regular scripting, there are some scripted implementations floating around in the internet that are based on the Socket class built into ExtendScript. On the other side ActionScript/Flex has a richer library as you appear to know, so you might want to implement that part with PatchPanel. InDesign Server comes into game if you want to off-load functionality such as data merge into templates, the IDML export, PDF rendering and automated document manipulations to the server side, because your users don't want to wait a perceived eternity during every other open or save while all those scripts do their duty. As InDesign Server does not have a Flash runtime, you better from the beginning implement that part with ExtendScript. There are also tasks where it is preferrable that the users have no InDesign Desktop - e.g. just trigger another data merge or PDF generation from wherever they work. If you have users restricted to text operations you should also have a look at InCopy. Regarding your images - you can again write a browser UI with whatever technology you prefer, and then trigger a script that puts the image file into the "place-gun" cursor of your InDesign desktop. Also have a look at Bridge, which comes with InDesign and is also scriptable. Drag&Drop functionality out of scripted UI is not supported, but I do not know enough ActionScript to be sure in that regard. For comparison, writing an image browser from scratch, for an existing backend will take an experienced plugin developer roughly two months. As you appear to prefer PHP, I'd suggest you also have a look at WoodWing's enterprise product. They have plenty functionality, also supported by plugins which still allow a better UI integration than scripts. Dirk ... View more

InDesign Server is a "faceless" blackbox to open and manipulate InDesign documents in automation environments. It can be controlled from your choice of "custom backend systems" such as Java, PHP, .Net - e.g. the user submits data in a web form, the application server behind your CMS triggers InDesign Server, which does a kindof mailmerge (e.g. interpreting XML by script) and delivers the ready PDF. InDesign plugins extend InDesign and/or InDesign Server with additional functionality, the same way as Adobe does it. Combine a team of experts in C++, others that know the publishing features of InDesign, give a few man years to work thru thousands of classes, patterns and dependencies, and you can develop a custom solution utilizing these technologies. At a higher level of abstraction there is also scripting, both at the client side (InDesign Desktop) and server. It allows to utilize (rather than extend) the functionality. While the UI side has been a bit limited in comparison to the full access on the document, there are now interesting new possibilites with the "PatchPanel" technology (basically Flash/Flex UI components that access InDesign thru an ActionScript library). You'd still have to code all your management features, e.g. write upload methods and UI that connect to your backend, and force your users thru your bottlenecks. Still some effort, but doable. Your alternatives are prebuilt solutions that go with the buzzwords "workgroup" or "enterprise" publishing, and matching price tag. See the partners listing of Adobe.com for solution providers, e.g. for newspapers and magazines see Atex, Censhare, DTI, Vjoon, WoodWing among others, also available thru resellers / consultants in the local markets. Some of the traditional big systems also have stripped down solutions for corporate publishing (e.g. you don't need to monitor feeds from 7 image agencies, squeeze 10 editors on single page, produce 50 slightly different local editions). There are also providers that focus on the needs of catalog publishers, technical documentation etc. https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/partnerportal/index.cfm?event=partnerfinder&pn=1&sortby=3&sortorder=1&sol_advnc_on=true&adobe_product=R_ADOBE_INDESIGN&solution_type=R_COLLABORATION Dirk ... View more

This is the first time I heard about "findKeyStrings", and I have no suggestion how you can discover them for scripting. I use a list created via plugin, where we have the same problem but fortunately also a solution. Following that list, the key string for the View menu should be something like "$ID/&View" - several of the menus have the ampersand inserted where Windows will display the underline. Same goes for "$ID/&Type", "$ID/&Font", "$ID/Displa&y Performance", "$ID/&Object", "$ID/Displa&y" and more. Again, I do not know how to assign a sticky keyboard shortcut to a scriptMenuAction. Maybe it works (I did not try) to assign the shortcut to your script and use the shortcut's associated "script action" (a different beast) rather than "script menu action" as starting point for your menu. E.g. var trackAction = app.menuActions.itemByName("test.jsx"); Dirk ... View more

Eliezer, this is the forum for plugin development using the InDesign SDK and C++. C# uses the high level bindings like several other scripting languages, therefor you'll find to some degree better support next door in the scripting forum, you may also want to search the archives there. I wrote "some degree" because the generally preferred language is cross platform JavaScript (ExtendScript), with minorities using the platform specific languages VBScript and AppleScript. The farther you move away from these languages to stronger typed languages e.g. newer brews of VisualBasic, or worse, C# - the more hassles you'll encounter because InDesign is mainly optimized to support the weak types. You'll also better have serious experience with your language of choice, e.g. how to use reflection features to determine class types and invoke methods that are otherwise inaccessible. For InDesign Server specific questions there is the server forum. You better make yourself familiar with the basic concepts of InDesign Server - it is no system for workgroup publishing and multi-user workflow, but just an optimized faceless "service" component. Kindof a big code library to open and work on InDesign documents, just running in a separate process. For example it is used by many third party workflow systems for tasks that do not require user interference, instead controlled by their application server. To get an idea of the required efforts to build such a workgroup system from scratch, we're talking of many man years even if your engineers already know most involved technologies and required concepts - nothing that you'll learn from occasional spoon-fed answers in a free forum. Back on topic: for those rendering objects (colors), the color values are stored at IColorData. They will be most likely in CMYK color space, though. Dirk ... View more

You can aggregate your observer to any easily accessed boss that's permanently around. For example kSessionBoss already has 15 observers, kAppBoss has 7 observers. You would use a private IID, though. Invoke AutoAttach from a StartupShutdown service. Given that, you're probably wrong architecture-wise by watching the selection without UI involved. There are plenty other notifications, besides there are also different mechanisms to watch the selection from closer on (e.g. SelectionExt). Can you give more details on your intent? Dirk ... View more

Search the SDK for ErrorStringService ... ... View more

When you say "action" do you mean some menu item's associated action? I've recently posted the following snippet in a different thread: (function(){ var m = app.menus.itemByName("$ID/Main").submenus.itemByName("$ID/&File"); $.writeln(m.menuItems.everyItem().name); var mi = m.menuItems.itemByName("$ID/File Information..."); var a = mi.associatedMenuAction; a.invoke(); })(); Somewhere deep in the examples there is a script that dumps all menu and action names. Btw, the $.writeln output of above goes into the "JavaScript Console" panel of ESTK! Another, desparate move would be to fire off system events using OS specific scripting, this way move the mouse, click and press keys. Dirk ... View more

Composition style is an intermediate state produced by the composer. For each property there, at any valid location (e.g. text index or range), the composer finds the matching attribute and copies the value. To change a value, you have to apply an attribute. E.g. tabs reside within kTextAttrTabsBoss. To apply an attribute to the selection, see ITextAttributeSuite. If you have the text model, see ITextAttrUtils. ... View more

From memory, it's been a while and not in my source: Grab an IScriptManager from service registry. Set up a RequestContext for it. Use Utils<IScriptUtils>()->QueryScriptRequestHandler() to obtain the IScriptRequestHandler. Let the IScriptManager construct a script event, fill it in the same way as you would receive it in an own script provider. The IScriptRequestHandler dispatches the event to the responsible script provider. Dirk ... View more

A similar case was type on path, at least a few major versions ago. The public API offers one command while internally TOP used a different one with missing interfaces. Guess which one did not work. I worked around via scripting, you could also talk to the responsible script provider 😉 Dirk ... View more

We already discussed that the JS functions defined by scripts are not included. Therefor my suggested trick had nothing to do with ePub, it was about invoking menu actions from within JS. As you now bring up InDesign Server: IDS has no UI and therefor no menu actions, so you either keep it just as license and let InDesign Desktop do the work, or it is really time to file a support case, especially as you're still targeting to CS3! Now getting off topic: In the OMV you only see the object model equivalent to the VersionedScriptElementInfo resources that describe your (and all the others) script providers. If in that resource you use the kCoreScriptManagerBoss, your script provider will work in all languages. If it does not show, your plugin might not be recognized by IDS - maybe you forgot to enable IDS in the plugin info? If I had to implement something similar to your method, I'd change at least these points: the method should be parentend by the addressed spread rather than the application words within method and property names should be lowercase (except acronyms) and separated by spaces. ScriptInfo will reformat (capitalize) those according to language specific rules. If you really have a native implementation backing that export as epub functionality, I'd forget about script providers and turn the export into a true export provider. Otherwise it does not make sense to run a script that invokes a plugin that invokes another script, just do it from the top level script. Dirk ... View more

Trivial case: The first is the getter to retrieve your object from its parent. Solution: dispatch on the given scriptID. If you got that covered, you could still be targeting multiple objects. // this will iterate all items app.whateverCollection.everyItem().doSomething(); Dirk ... View more

How do you preset that dwBufferSize variable? ... View more

Thanks for the example. Please see http://forums.adobe.com/message/2424384 for alternatives to $.sleep() ... Dirk ... View more

Ah, I always forget that Socket also has its own .encoding variable. Just make sure it is set correctly. Dirk ... View more

The second wrapper should not be required if your web site is supposed to deliver UTF8. Instead you'd add a conversion step within ExtendScript. E.g. use one of the JS UTF8 decoders from the web, or write the raw bytes out into a file then adjust the File.encoding variable for re-reading. File.encoding is described in JavaScript Tools Guide, see the ESTK help menu. Dirk ... View more