@Raykor11: It would be best to move that question to scripting forum for InDesign. But one solution could be: 1. Read out the property kerningValue from the insertion point between the two characters: //if two characters are selected: var _kerningValue = app.selection[0].insertionPoints[1].kerningValue; 2. Measure the exact distance between the characters, so you can decide if you want to increase or decrease the distance //Two characters are selected: var _twoCharacters = app.selection[0]; var _charLeft = _twoCharacters.characters[0]; var _charRight = _twoCharacters.characters[1]; var _temp1 = _charLeft.createOutlines(false) //false = does NOT delete original var _bounds1 = _temp1[0].visibleBounds; var _temp2 = _charRight.createOutlines(false) //false = does NOT delete original var _bounds2 = _temp2[0].visibleBounds; var _distance = _bounds2[1]-_bounds1[3]; _temp1[0].remove(); _temp2[0].remove(); alert("Distance between: "+_distance); Be aware that there are a lot of other factors that will apply to character distance if you change the kerning value (like tracking, kerning method, composer, desiredGlyphScaling, desiredLetterSpacing, horizontalScale … just to mention a few), especially if the paragraph justification is set to JUSTIFIED or FULLY_JUSTIFIED. Uwe ... View more

Follow up: You can also refresh your variable "myParagraphs" to make this work. See also the following link (it's in german, but the scripting part should be self-explanatory): http://www.hilfdirselbst.ch/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=476391#476391 Uwe ... View more

@Brian: Same story with me. It must be a bug! At first I tried this: $.writeln(myParagraph.contents);  // output is: Short. myParagraph.contents="Something Longer."; //document shows "Something Longer." as the new, updated paragraph. mydoc.recompose(); $.writeln(myParagraph.contents);  // output is still: onger. But to no avail. What does the trick was: first delete the contents, then apply the new contents $.writeln(myParagraph.contents);  // output is: Short. myParagraph.contents=""; myParagraph.contents="Something Longer."; //document shows "Something Longer." as the new, updated paragraph. $.writeln(myParagraph.contents);  // output is: Something Longer. Tested with InDesign CS5 (7.0.4) on Mac OSX 10.6.8. Uwe ... View more

@Green4ever: app.menuActions.itemByID(78612); performs same action when it is Untag Text or Untag Frame. Of course! There are no inconsitencies in that behaviour. The menu action with ID 78612 is the little "Untag" button in your screen shot. It can untag all kind of objects that have tags. Uwe ... View more

Hello, Hans! Sorry, that might not be helpful at all, but: be sure that your version of ESTK is 3.5.1 or try ESTK for CS5.5. There you could have access to InDesign CS5 as well. It's a bit strange… In my case right now I have access to InDesign CS5 AND InDesign CS5.5 in ESTK 3.5.1. I have installed CS Design Premium for CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 on Mac OSX 10.6.8. Uwe ... View more

@Green4ever: … but "Untag Frame" is a valid menu action. It is activated after you select any  text frame and right cilck it. … I can click it in the UI, but therefore it's not necessarily part of the menu actions. Jongware's suggestion is working in my test case: app.selection[0].associatedXMLElement.untag(); My suggestion for untagging is okay, if you want to use menu actions: First select the object and then: app.menuActions.itemByID(78612).invoke(); My test case consists of a single rectangle autotagged and selected. If that is not working for you, I think we just need a test IDML for playing around… Uwe ... View more

@Green4ever: can you accomplish your task in the UI? I mean is your "parentFrame" a valid object for "Untag Frame"? Is "Untag Frame" a menu action at all? I can see "Untag Text", "Untag Element", but not "Untag Frame" in the available list of menu actions. "Tag Frame" is also available… I'm using a german version of InDesign so I'm not 100% sure about that… There is an option in my german InDesign Tags palette that reads "Entf." which means "Del.". It's ID is "78612". So possibly you can do: app.menuActions.itemByID(78612).invoke(); Uwe ... View more

@Green4ever: nothing special here. Menu actions work this way. If you have no object selected the menu action is greyed out in the UI. And therefore "Untag Frame" is not valid. To use "Untag Frame" as menu action you have to: myObject.select(); Uwe ... View more

@csm_phil: in that case you will not get the contents of tables or footnotes. To be precise: you'll get the (one) special character that indicates a table, but not the table contents and you'll get the (one) special character that indicates a foot note. So you have to iterate through all tables and footnotes to get the length of its contents, too. For tables, where the contents is an array, it's best to look after: _allTables.contents.join("").length And of course you will count all paragraph signs, all newline signs and all table indicators as characters… Not to forget tables inside tables, tables inside footnotes… Uwe ... View more

@John: and I thought you mean the "limitation" that if you use exportFile on a group you always get the whole page… 😉 One afterthougt: a severe problem with group.exportFile could be, that underneath or above the group there could be  other page objects positioned you don't want to export. So we have to include a further step in the script to  isolate the group first (move it to a separate layer, do not include all other layers while exporting). Plus: if we want to go the Acrobat pdf-route, we need some Acrobat scripting and a way to transfer visibleBounds-data of the group to Acrobat to change MediaBox, CropBox, TrimBox etc.. I think (at least for me) it's less complicated to use InDesign instead and exporting twice. Uwe ... View more

@Peter: You need CROP marks, not bleed marks, to make this guy happy. With an decent pdf workflow this guy would be happy with a TrimBox that fits. @TTPub: are you really sure you see the TrimBox (the red rectangle in your screenshot)? Go to the "Crop Pages"-panel in Acrobat Pro and check for that. If that's the case why is this print guy still complaining? You leave me  speachless… Uwe ... View more

In AcrobatPro oder AdobeReader go to: "Preferences…/Categories: PageDisplay/Page Content and Information" and check: 1. Show art, trim & bleed boxes 2. Always show document page size and set "Use Overprint Preview" to "Always" This last step is optional, but I would recommend it. Then do a screenshot of the lower left corner of your pdf shown in Acrobat. Just like the screen shot here (perhaps a bit more to see): The green box is the TrimBox (the net size of your page), the blue box is the BleedBox (in my case 3 mm apart from the TrimBox). Grey rectangle is an object on my page that "bleeds" to the left. The document page size shown here is the size of the CropBox (and the size of the MediaBox which is invisible to the "Crop Pages"-panel in Acrobat Pro (something Adobe should have fixed years ago)). Uwe ... View more

Hi, Matthew! I'd play save and would do the following: 1. export whole page to EPS 2. store visibleBounds, not geometricBounds of the group for further use 3. add new doc with the visible bounds of the group 4. place the EPS so that your group elements are in the exact center of that new doc (you can do so by calculating the page bounds against the visible bounds of your group) 5. export again to EPS Background: if you duplicate a text frame to a new document it is not unlikely that you end up with new text wraps. Consider also the possibility that your text base line will shift because your paragraph styles are set to "align to baseline grid" and the baseline grid of your new document differs from the source. Uwe ... View more

Tarek, yes, " app.undo()" takes its time… Instead of undoing every "createOutlines()" action I would prefer "createOutline(false)" which duplicates the character to an path object. After doing your calculation on that new path object you can remove it by "myPathObject.remove()". Also to sample the results in an array it is faster not to use the "myArray.push(results)" method. Instead use myArray=results. For that finding a big applause to Marc Autret at: http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2011/06/comparing-the-performance-of-extendscript-snippets See the following example code (please, before starting script execution, set the rulers of your test document to "millimeters" and select a bunch of characters). The results, simple width and height calculations on the path objects, will be written to a new table left from page one on the paste board of your document: start_time = Date.now(); var _d = app.activeDocument; var _selection = app.selection[0]; var _charactersArray = new Array(); var _charDimensionsArray = new Array(); var _charCount = _selection.characters.length; for(var n=0;n<_charCount;n++){     var _character = _selection.characters ;     var _noError = true;     //In case of a blank there will be no path created, so we need a fall back scenario:     try{     var _characterToPath = _character.createOutlines(false);         }catch(e){_noError = false}; //~     _charactersArray.push(_character.contents);     //The faster method:     _charactersArray =_character.contents;     if(_noError == true){         var _bounds = _characterToPath[0].visibleBounds;         var _width = _bounds[3]-_bounds[1];         var _height = _bounds[2]-_bounds[0]; //~         _charDimensionsArray.push("w x h = "+_width+" x "+_height);         //The faster method feeding the array:         _charDimensionsArray = "w x h = "+_width.toString()+" x "+_height.toString();         //The faster method without using "app.undo()":         _characterToPath[0].remove();         }     else{         //In case of a blank just store:         var _width = _character.insertionPoints[1].horizontalOffset - _character.insertionPoints[0].horizontalOffset; //~         _charDimensionsArray.push("w = "+_width);         //A faster method to feed the array:         _charDimensionsArray = "w = "+_width.toString();         };     }; var _resultTextFrame = _d.textFrames.add({geometricBounds:[0,-210,297,0]}); var _resultTable = _resultTextFrame.insertionPoints[0].tables.add({     columnCount:2,     bodyRowCount:_charactersArray.length     }); _resultTable.columns[0].width = 20; _resultTable.columns[0].contents = _charactersArray; _resultTable.columns[1].width = 190; _resultTable.columns[1].contents = _charDimensionsArray; end_time = Date.now(); elapsed_time = end_time - start_time; alert(((elapsed_time/1000)/60)+" in minutes for "+_charCount+" characters."); For around 1.600 characters  script execution took around 1.7 minutes on my MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3-ram. Time will differ if you use it on varied fonts and character sizes. Hope that helps, Uwe Message was edited by: Laubender (just deleted some comments in the script) ... View more

@Jongware: Hm. Maybe it's better to set p=1 so we can catch the [Basic Paragraph] style. Uwe ... View more

Hi Green4ever, If it's not [Basic Text Frame], I wonder why that will happen… Do you have an idea? Uwe ... View more

And I could trace this behaviour of the ScriptLabels palette back to InDesign CS3, CS4 and CS5. It's a rather old bug. @all: is that a known bug? Are there any bug reports on that issue? Uwe ... View more

After rereading my post: "… if you then add column 2 to the selection, the ScriptLabels palette shows you the same entry as for row 1. In fact there are no entries set to row 2 or to all cells in row 2" should read as: "Unfortunately, if you then add column 2 to the selection, the ScriptLabels palette shows you the same entry as for column 1. In fact there are no entries set to column 2 or to all cells in column 2" Same goes for rows. The conclusion is all the same… Uwe ... View more

@mlavie: as you have stated, there is no label property for columns (additionally: there is no label property for rows, too). There is a label property for  [Table] and [Cell] objects, What you have here is a problem that relies to the UI and the ScriptLabels palette. Sometimes the ScriptLabels palette is wrong in showing you  entries that only rely to one part of the user's selection. This might be one case. However, in the UI you can apply the same ScriptLabel to different cells at one time, if you select more than one cell and then apply a new label. Take your example: if you select the first row of your table and apply a label through UI's ScriptLabels palette you individually do that to every cell in that row. Unfortunately, if you then add column 2 to the selection, the ScriptLabels palette shows you the same entry as for row 1. In fact there are no entries set to row 2 or to all cells in row 2. I think this behaviour of the ScriptLabels palette is a bug. Uwe ... View more

Green4ever: Use strokeColor and strokeWeight together. myFrame = myDoc.pages[1].textFrames.add({ strokeColor:"None", strokeWeight:0 }); I think your problem stems from the default object style [Basic Text Frame] automatically applied to every new text frame. So check the properties there. Uwe ... View more

Thank you, Marijan & Jongware to point to the right property "contentType" and to app.select(null). I think the line: _storyAllTextFrames .contentType = ContentType.UNASSIGNED; needs a try-catch-wrapper: try{     _storyAllTextFrames .contentType = ContentType.UNASSIGNED;     }catch(e){}; It could be that a threaded text frame has no contents because the contents is too big to fit inside. contents === "" will perfectly match such an empty text frame, but you cannot asign a new contentType to it. See my screen shot: Uwe ... View more

I just tested your code ok in InDesign CS5.5 (7.5.2) on Mac OS X 10.6.8. A bug in the windows version perhaps? Provided the #targetengine statement is present, of course. Uwe ... View more

@John! I found a way to run the script into an error. just add a comment to the function "ResaveInPS" like that: function ResaveInPS(imagePath) {     var psDoc;     app.displayDialogs = DialogModes.NO;     psDoc = app.open(new File(imagePath));     psDoc.changeMode(ChangeMode.GRAYSCALE);     psDoc.close(SaveOptions.SAVECHANGES);     //Comment here     app.displayDialogs = DialogModes.ALL; } I'm not exactly sure why is that, but I think it has to do with the .toSource() command in line 25. Uwe ... View more

Thank you for sending me the test files. I looked into it, tested my script on it and all went fine… So I really don't know what's going wrong on your end. You'll get my results by e-mail. Annotation: since you work in inches just let's make the new text frame with the gathered texts way smaller. Just change the following line from: geometricBounds:[0,0,100,100] to, let's say: geometricBounds:[0,0,10,5] But it should work either way. Also tested that with InDesign CS5.5 v7.5.1 (german). Uwe ... View more

@Faith-Action I sent you a private message with my e-mail address via the forum software. To reproduce the problem it would be best to look into  your document. If you are interrested you could send me one single page exported as IDML file for testing. Uwe ... View more

The script should work as well. Did you put the name of your paragraph style between quotation marks? Did a error message pop up? Uwe ... View more