The following blog post by Marc Autret should make it all more than clear: http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2009/10/work-around-the-width-height-gap Uwe ... View more

John, hm, I don't think your untested script will work in a predictable way. Technically it will work a bit. Just tested it. But: 1. if you loop from index 0 to the end, even if you loop from the end to index 0 you will mess the index of the pageItems when moving them to a different page => I recommend grouping all pageItems on the specified layer, so that we have to move only one pageItem, the new group 2. problem with move() to another page is, that you cannot retain the original page coordinates of the moved object, it will get 0,0 coordinates automatically => we have to store the coordinates of the group first, then move, then apply the old coordinates 3. in a real-world scenario we should deal with the possibility of locked pageItems 4. Furthermore we have to make sure that the layer is not locked The following example will unlock all pageItems on that layer and will lock them after they are moved: //Move all objects on a layer of a page to a different page var   d=app.activeDocument,   src=d.pages[0], dst=d.pages[1],   layer=d.layers.itemByName("Layer 2"),   i; var myItemsToMove = new Array(); var myItemsLocked = new Array(); for (i=0; i<src.pageItems.length; i++) {     if (src.pageItems.itemLayer === layer) {         if(src.pageItems.locked){             myItemsLocked.push(src.pageItems.id);             src.pageItems.locked=false;           }         myItemsToMove.push(src.pageItems);   } } //Check, if layer is locked: if(layer.locked){     var layL = true;     layer.locked=false;     }; // create a group on the source page: var newGroup = src.groups.add(myItemsToMove); var gB = newGroup.geometricBounds; //We have to move only ONE object, the new group //To the destination page newGroup.move(dst); //To the old coordinates newGroup.move(undefined,[gB[1],gB[0]]); //Restore the state of the pageItems //Ungroup them once: newGroup.ungroup(); //Relock the former locked objects: for(n=0;n<myItemsLocked.length;n++){     d.pageItems.itemByID(myItemsLocked ).locked=true;     }; //Relock layer if it was locked: if (layL){layer.locked=true}; Uwe ... View more

Me too! Congrats, Maureen!! Why is it working? A miracle… I'd like to see one PDF page of an working example. Can you provide one? Uwe ... View more

John, yes. It's sick… And support of pdfmarks in PDF Library through InDesign is null. But it seems to me that more and more features show up in the PDF export dialogs. Just think of PdfMagnificationOptions, openInFullScreen, pdfPageLayout … And for the URLs with specific hyperlink settings the workflow could be: export multimedia without the hyperlinks => PDF1 print the EPS (pdfmark with Acrobat JavaScript-hyperlinks) only => PostScript => distill => PDF2 merge PDF1 with PDF2 in Acrobat Pro with the "Import as Layer"-feature THAT is sick… Uwe ... View more

Here a follow-up: indeed it's possible. The Code for the EPS file would be something like this: %!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 %%BoundingBox: 0 0 100 100 %%EndProlog [ /Rect [ 0 0 100 100 ] /Action << /Subtype /JavaScript /JS (app.launchURL\("PLACE-YOUR-URL-HERE", true\);) >> /Subtype /Link /ANN pdfmark %%EOF Of course, BoundingBox and Rect coordinates should be adapted to fit the url text in InDesign. The EPS could be placed as an inline object above etc., etc. I hope you get the idea. Uwe ... View more

John, sure, thank you for pointing this out. Furthermore I recommend reading "indesigncs3_transform_tutorial_javascript.pdf". Also as a hint to myself 😉 Uwe ... View more

stoereee, getElements() creates and returns an array. See details at: http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2010/07/on-everyitem-part-2 And when you are at it part 1 is a recommended read as well. Uwe ... View more

Maureen, it should be possible to send over the Acrobat JavaScript code for the postprocessing phase in Acrobat Pro through pdfmarks embedded in EPS files on the InDesign page. Downside is that you need Acrobat Distiller to generate the PDF. EPS files could be simple text files generated by ExtendScript and placed according to your URLs. Just a thought… Not tested. For code samples of pdfmarks and the whole process look for the PostScript & PDF Bible by Thomas Merz and Olaf Drümmer. Especially see chapter 11.8 JavaScript with pdfmarks. Uwe ... View more

John, I just tested that with CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5: app.activeDocument.textFrames.everyItem().textFrameIndex; + your 3 threaded text frames (first one 1 column, second one 3 columns, third one 2 columns) Results: CS3: 4,1,0 CS4: 4,1,0 CS5: 2,1,0 CS5.5: 2,1,0 Obviously this bug was fixed in CS5. Uwe ... View more

Another typo? length>2 Should be length<2 in the if-statement… Uwe ... View more

@John, thank you for that line of code. I just experimented a bit with that (InDesign CS4 6.0.6 German Version). In the case of footnotes I get strange results. If my selection is a single footnote, $.writeln returns absolutely nothing to the JavaScript console. If my selection is a footnote plus an arbitrary character (could be a second footnote), JavaScript console is showing both characters. In the case of two footnotes: 0    <4>' '      1399221837 1    <4>' '      1399221837 In the case of a footnote it seems there must be a always a second character to trigger a result. Uwe ... View more

But check for the overflows property as well. A text frame or a cell might be empty and overset at the same time. Uwe ... View more

And that will change to "normal" scripting in InDesign CS5.5. See Marc Autrets "en_ID-CS55-DOM-WhatsNewObjects.pdf", page 12 at www.indiscript.com. Uwe ... View more

Chuck, I wonder If your script will work in every case. I had occasional issues and "interesting" results in testing it with InDesign CS4 6.0.6 (German). It seems to me that a special relationship between text frame size and picture size is necessary. Somehow unpredictable… See screen grabs from two working examples and two not working example (resulting in text overflow; in my German version tagged as "Übersatz" in the story panel, thus the "UE" in the links panel instead of a page number). Working example 1 BEFORE script execution (notice the ratio of the text frame): Working example 1 AFTER script execution: Working example 2 AFTER script execution (this time a more extreme ratio of width x height): And here an example for a not working situation resulting in text overflow: First I thought it would be wise to end the text with end paragraph, but the following example shows, that there could be text overflow as well: It seems to me there must be a minimum height or width of the text frame depending of size and/or ratio of the picture you want to place. Btw, there's no difference if you use points or millimeter. Tested both. Uwe ... View more

@Matthew Laun As InDesign CS5.5 is on the horizon, can we expect a new bug fix round for InDesign CS5? A version 7.0.4 that adresses the known issues with PDF export? Uwe ... View more

@Lloyd: by thinking more deeply of your task, it seems to me, that you will go the following route: You start with an existing IDML file you want to manipulate (you stated so by choosing the title of this thread by "Update IDML"), no need to change the source: 1. Unpack the IDML file with scripting (see "unpackageUCF (ucfFile: File, destinationFolder: File)" in the documentation) 2. Do your stuff 2.1 search all story.xml files for your text string and it's parent story you want to change or by identifying your story using "idmlComponentName" on the source 2.2 do the change by reading and writing the xml-file 3. Repackage the IDML file and give it a new name (see "packageUCF (sourceFolder: File, ucfFile: File)" in the documentation) However, if you want to place an updated snippet, you can use the place command as usual; be aware that there are additional options in preferences to export and place a snippet to confirm to its IDML-format during export and there is a "place in original location" option for placing: DocumentPreferences: snippetImportUsesOriginalLocation application: snippetExportFormat: SnippetExportFormats.INX_EXPANDED_FORMAT (for generating an IDML-snippet instead of an INX-snippet) Uwe ... View more

@lhanneman: A different workflow: you could try to export that text frame as a snippet (*.idms) from InDesign. Basically a snippet in InDesign CS4 and above is nothing else as a chunk of IDML, so you can easily edit it with a text editor or via scripting, then place it back to InDesign. Note 1: the story identifier <Story Self="sometext" is apparently the same, both in the idms-snippet and in the idml-file of the whole document. Note 2: stories inside an IDML are stored separately by their idmlComponentName plus the .xml-suffix in the Stories-subdirectory. Note 3: also look for the javascript property idmlComponentName of the story of your text frame… Example: idms: <TextFrame Self="ue3" ParentStory="ud1" idml: Story_ud1.xml : <Story Self="ud1" InDesign scripting: myTextFrameOfInterest.parentStory.idmlComponentName => "Story_ud1" Hope that helps. Uwe ... View more

And if you want to know, if there are labels already used, just export your InDesign file to IDML and have a closer look at "designmap.xml" and the <Properties><Label>-sections. See also: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2549168#2549168 Uwe ... View more

@Peter: if that's the case, and I have no doubt, but can't test it right now, is there a rule how many additional characters will go into "-sometext"? You could then strip them from the file name by manipulating the string. Uwe ... View more

Muppet Mark is right: to catch all nested groups one would need a while loop: var G = app.activeDocument.groups; while (G.length != 0) {      G.everyItem().ungroup();      }; Uwe ... View more

@brettpolo: Marc Autret showed a wonderful method to change table properties document wide in his blog post "On "everyItem" - Part 2" in the section "Using everyItem().properties": http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2010/07/on-everyitem-part-2 Don't miss part 1! A must-read for all ExtendScript-scripters… Uwe ... View more

I hope I get the link right this time: http://indesignsecrets.com/forum/general-indesign-topics/pdf-export-problems-with-cs5 Uwe ... View more

chumeister wrote: "Any suggestion from any user…" @chumeister: to quote myself 😉 : P.S. I posted a ExtendScript (JavaScript) at the InDesignSecrets  forum for exporting to PDF as a foreground process. Feel free to try out  the code: http://indesignsecrets.com/forum/general-indesign-topics/pdf-export-problems-with-cs5#2709 Uwe P.P.S.: the forum system messes up the URL above. Just eliminate the blank character in the word "problems" to get the link right… ... View more

@Herr Mueller: No, that wouldn't do the trick. What's needed here is a "view"-option in Acrobat showing left and right pages side by side. Edit: With single pages intact. Uwe ... View more

@Yulia: You can set all "open"-options with Acrobat Pro and you can automate this with a batch process under "Advanced => Document Processing => Batch Processing". Also there is a way to do that through pdfmark instructions inside a placed EPS. Documentation for doing a "Two-Up (Cover page)" with pdfmarks is not available in the pdfmarkReference_v9.pdf for the PageLayout-tag. And of course you have to use Distiller to get the pdfmarks working, no chance doing that trick with PDF export. Here is the pdfmark-code for an EPS you can work with (found and adapted it from the "PostScript & PDF-Bible" by Thomas Merz and Olaf Drümmer): %!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 %%BoundingBox: 0 0 72 72 %%EndProlog /pdfmark where {pop} {userdict /pdfmark /cleartomark load put} ifelse [ {ThisPage} << /Trans << /S /Dissolve >> >> /PUT pdfmark [ {Catalog} << /PageLayout /TwoColumnRight >> /PUT pdfmark %%EOF Save the code as a plain text file with the ".eps" suffix. Place it on any page you want to print of your InDesign layout, write a PostScript file and distill it to pdf. You should get a "Two-Up" view when opening it in Acrobat. Meanwhile (after doing a little research on the web) it seams that all possible "/PageLayout" parameter pairs are indeed documented, but not in the pdfmarkReference_v9.pdf, but in the PDF32000_2008.pdf on page 73: SinglePage     Display one page at a time OneColumn     Display the pages in one column TwoColumnLeft     Display the pages in two columns, with odd-numbered pages on the left TwoColumnRight     Display the pages in two columns, with odd-numbered pages on the right TwoPageLeft     (PDF 1.5) Display the pages two at a time, with odd-numbered pages on the left TwoPageRight     (PDF 1.5) Display the pages two at a time, with odd-numbered pages on the right Default value: SinglePage. Uwe ... View more

@Raphael: did you try an alternate route for exporting PDFs beneath printing to PostScript like using export scripts mentioned somewhere in this thread? I think one of them was Page Exporter Utility 5 by Scott Zanelli. Maybe that will work. @To all: at the Swiss/German InDesign-forum hilfdirselbst we recently had a discussion going on about a bug when exporting to a flattened PDF where the flattener was unable to convert text to outlines (paths) when freshly set up in InDesign CS5. However old InDesign CS4 settings imported to InDesign CS5 were working flawlessly. Some of us reported to Adobe. As far as I know there is no response yet. Here the link to the thread: http://www.hilfdirselbst.ch/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=442934#442934 I tried working around that bug by scripting and was able to inject new flattener settings during background export. No problem with that; all text is converting to outlines. However, before publishing the script I will have to do some extend testing. Some strange things are still going on and I'd like to find out more about them… So, maybe it is worth trying a script for PDF Export to circumvent any problems, be it a background process or not. For background processing look for the term asynchronousExportFile in the scripts, for plain old foreground processing simply look for exportFile. You can exchange one with the other to get either background or foreground export operations in InDesign CS5. Uwe P.S. I posted a ExtendScript (JavaScript) at the InDesignSecrets forum for exporting to PDF as a foreground process. Feel free to try out the code: http://indesignsecrets.com/forum/general-indesign-topics/pdf-export-problems-with-cs5#2709 ... View more

@Raphael: can you specify what's going on exactly? What conditions (if any) forces the spaces to occur? Uwe ... View more