Perhaps even better: my amazing preptext.jsx (http://www.jongware.com/binaries/preptext.zip).

It runs under CS4 and has a plethora of other formatting combo's that it checks. It also has a progress bar

ad a. You got me there. The script forcibly creates new styles with the exact attributes it should -- i.e., if not "Italic" or "Bold", well, then ... it's "Regular". It's a pain to edit these styles afterwards, and in fact the version I use (daily) doesn't do that any more. Remind me to upload that one instead.

ad b. You got me there. Small scripts can be copied-and-pasted into forum messages, but larger ones cannot be attached to messages. So if I write a larger script, I zip it (to prevent download issues), dump it on my site and post the link here.

Every now and then I visit Peter Kahrel's scripting pages and think, "When I have the time ..."

http://www.jongware.com/binaries/preptext.zip is refreshed to the new version that does not forces every attribute to be set or clear.

Can you tell me what the script exactly do and how to use it ?

I suspect i need it but there it lacks some infos…

Ok Thanks, it works very well. Now let me ask a dumb question : Why i would want to do that ?

I mean if i don't so that i will loose the italics for exemple ?

I have another question : if i use 2 fonts and they don't use the same name for italics :

— italic

— book italic

It seems the script is lost with it, what can i do about it ?

Yes sorry…

So it's not possible to update the script and make it create 2 styles i guess ?

Maybe is should try that…

Another way to do that would be to change the name of the font 'book italic' to 'italic' but i don't know how to do that, should be possible… ?

No i mean change something in the font file that would change the name of the italics.

But i don't know where is that code and how to change that…

You lost me there. You don't change the font itself, you change the font used in your document. Then you run the script. It tags all italicized text with one unique character style for "Italics". If you don't have a regular italic in the font used, all you have to do is change the character style.

It sounds as if the text you work on has already been formatted. Running scripts that mess with texts over "almost finished" texts may have been an invitation to disaster ...

Aha -- your footnote font differs! Yes -- sometimes I have to mix two fonts that apply different naming schedules, and in that case the script straightens things out that should stay crooked

You can make a new character style named "Book Italic" (with its style set to the correct italic font). Then do a search and replace; search for "Formatting" -> Character Style "Italic" and Paragraph Style "(your footnote paragraph style). Replace with Character Style "Book Italic".

That, unfortunately, depends on your definition of a word

If you click your text cursor in a text frame, InDesign shows you the number of "Words" (and Characters, Lines and Paragraphs as well) in the Info panel.

This thread http://forums.adobe.com/message/2151036#2151036 shows an alternative way of counting.

It only occurred to me this morning -- there is no problem at all with 'other italics'!

Simply first replace "Book Italic" with a custom character style, and then run the script. The script is smart enough to leave existing character styles alone.

#5. Any formatting other than those mentioned is not preserved or changed by this script. If you suspect your document has other types of formatting you want to preserve, replace these by hand with character styles. The script is hardcoded to ignore text that already has a character style,  something you can use in your advantage (when done properly).

So, in a fresh document (that has no character styles!), you can safely apply a custom character style to the text in the "Book Italic" font.

• Create a new character style for the Book Italic font -- you should not call this style "Italic", obviously!
• Call up the Find/Change box
• In Find Formatting, enter the name of your font and "Book Italic" as the font style
• In Change Formatting, set the character style to the one you created.
• Check if "Include Footnotes" is on
• Hit "Replace All"

Then run my script -- it will not change existing character styles.

Yes, but that's because the script did not pick up the 'book italic' in the first place ...

Suppose you have a document with Times Italic and Helvetica Italic, and you want both to be preserved in their own font. Then you would have to change at least one of them to another style before you run the script -- to prevent both fonts get tagged as "Italic".

I have to do this almost every day, so for me it's becoming 2nd nature ...

mariana pineda wrote:

A super script. How to use it also in foonotes?

Super-script -- also known as "superior"!

It needs nothing special, it already should work just fine in footnotes, as well as in tables. The script searches the entire story. (An important note is that anchored objects contain "their own story" -- it does not work through to these as well.)

Ehm, the 'color' part is not entirely clear. Do you mean you want to see your italics (etc.) also in another color? When the script is finished, you can change the automatically created character styles and add some color to them.

Is there any possibility to adapt preptext to run on a bunch of files, without first putting the cursor in a text frame? I was thinking in using it with Peter Kahrel's batch script, but this manual step prevents it to work in batch. Thanks for any light you can share on this.

Thanks for the hint Peter, but I received an error message at the end of script execution for each file I tried to process:

"undefined is not an object (at line 74)"

I tried using preptext with other batch script (Batcher, from Rorohiko), but it didn't work either.

I think it's because preptext needs the cursor inserted in a text frame before execution. Is there any way to automate this manual step?

Peter Kahrel wrote:

If it's true that the script needs some selection, then it could be changed. Jongware would be the one to do that, let's see if he feels like it.`

Sure.

PageLab wrote:

I think it's because preptext needs the cursor inserted in a text frame before execution. Is there any way to automate this manual step?

Yep. Follow the next steps carefully.

1. Remove the top braced statement, from "if (app.activeDocument.selection .." to "exit(0); .. }" -- the entire 5 lines. These are the lines that check if the cursor is inside a text frame.

2. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the script. The other line to change is the very final statement (excluding the last two braces; leave those alone, please).

3. Change the line

app.activeDocument.selection[0].parent.changeText (false);

to

app.activeDocument.changeText (false);

-- i.e., remove "selection[0].parent."

4. Save the script, preferably under a new name.

5. Run it as usual, through the Script Panel, to see if it does work (you don't need to click the text cursor inside a text frame anymore), and if it does, try it with one of the script batchers.

6. Sit back with the warm feeling of a job well done.

Thank a bunch sir, nice and easy! I just had to remove "selection[0].parent." on line 96 too, and it worked great with no cursor inserted!

Now, the batch part worked fine with Rorohiko's Batcher, but it didn't worked with Peter's excellent batch script (it keeps processing the doc over and over, with no error message).

This is really a time saver. Here's the complete adapted preptext script with the code to run flawlessly with Batcher:

//DESCRIPTION: Jongware's PrepText (adapted to run with Batcher, by Rorohiko)

var myMaximumValue = 63;
var myProgressBarWidth = 384;
var myIncrement = myMaximumValue/myProgressBarWidth;
myCreateProgressPanel(myMaximumValue, myProgressBarWidth);

myProgressPanel.myProgressBar.value = 0;
myCreateProgressPanel(100, 400);
myProgressPanel.show();

for (b=0; b<2; b++)
{
     for (i=0; i<2; i++)
     {
          for (s=0; s<2; s++)
          {
               for (u=0; u<2; u++)
               {
               //     Don't process strikeout
                    for (k=0; k<1; k++)
                    {
                         for (c=0; c<3; c++)
                         {
                              if (b+i+s+u+k+c)
                              {
                                   myProgressPanel.myProgressBar.value = 32*b+16*i+8*s+4*u+2*k+c;
                                   findAttr (b, i, s, false, u, /*k*/false, c, "");
                                   if (s)
                                        findAttr (b, i, false, s, u, /*k*/false, c, "");
                              }
                         }
                    }
               }
          }
     }
}
myProgressPanel.hide();

exit(0);

function myCreateProgressPanel(myMaximumValue, myProgressBarWidth)
{
     myProgressPanel = new Window('window', 'Prepping text');
     with(myProgressPanel)
     {
          myProgressPanel.myProgressBar = add('progressbar', [12, 12, myProgressBarWidth, 24], 0, myMaximumValue);
     }
}

function findAttr (bold, italic, superscript, subscript, underline, strikeout, small_all_caps, StyleName)
{
     app.findTextPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
     app.changeTextPreferences = NothingEnum.nothing;
     app.findTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles[0];     // "[None]"

     app.findTextPreferences.fontStyle = "Regular";
     app.findTextPreferences.position = Position.NORMAL;
     app.findTextPreferences.capitalization = Capitalization.NORMAL;
     app.findTextPreferences.underline = false;
     app.findTextPreferences.strikeThru = false;

     if (bold)
     {
          if (italic)
               app.findTextPreferences.fontStyle = "Bold Italic";
          else
               app.findTextPreferences.fontStyle = "Bold";
     } else
     {
          if (italic)
               app.findTextPreferences.fontStyle = "Italic";
     }
     if (superscript)
          app.findTextPreferences.position = Position.SUPERSCRIPT;

     if (subscript)
          app.findTextPreferences.position = Position.SUBSCRIPT;

     if (underline)
          app.findTextPreferences.underline = true;
     if (strikeout)
          app.findTextPreferences.strikeThru = true;

     if (small_all_caps == 1)
          app.findTextPreferences.capitalization = Capitalization.SMALL_CAPS;
     if (small_all_caps == 2)
          app.findTextPreferences.capitalization = Capitalization.ALL_CAPS;

     foundItems = app.activeDocument.findText();

     if (foundItems.length > 0)
     {
          if (StyleName == "")
          {
          //     Make up a name
               if (bold)
                    StyleName = "Bold";
               if (italic)
               {
                    if (bold)
                         StyleName = "Bold Italic";
                    else
                         StyleName = "Italic";
               }
               if (superscript)
               {
                    if (StyleName) StyleName += " + ";
                    StyleName += "Super";
               }
               if (subscript)
               {
                    if (StyleName) StyleName += " + ";
                    StyleName += "Sub";
               }
               if (underline)
               {
                    if (StyleName) StyleName += " + ";
                    StyleName += "Underline";
               }
               if (strikeout)
               {
                    if (StyleName) StyleName += " + ";
                    StyleName += "Stkout";
               }
               if (small_all_caps == 1)
               {
                    if (StyleName) StyleName += " + ";
                    StyleName += "Scaps";
               }
               if (small_all_caps == 2)
               {
                    if (StyleName) StyleName += " + ";
                    StyleName += "Caps";
               }
               try
               {
                    cstyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.add({name:StyleName}); // , fontStyle:app.findTextPreferences.fontStyle, underline:app.findTextPreferences.underline, strikeThru:app.findTextPreferences.strikeThru, position:app.findTextPreferences.position, capitalization:app.findTextPreferences.capitalization});
                    if (bold || italic) cstyle.fontStyle = app.findTextPreferences.fontStyle;
                    if (superscript || subscript) cstyle.position = app.findTextPreferences.position;
                    if (underline) cstyle.underline = app.findTextPreferences.underline;
                    if (strikeout) cstyle.strikeThru = app.findTextPreferences.strikeThru;
                    if (small_all_caps) cstyle.capitalization = app.findTextPreferences.capitalization;
               } catch (e)
               {
               }
          }
          app.changeTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = StyleName;
          app.activeDocument.changeText (false);
     }
}