Gosh I have no idea what prompted me to visit this thread again

... Here is a one-liner to set the color of a text selection to any RGB, Lab, or CMYK color without adding it to the Swatches list:

app.selection[0].fillColor.properties = {space:ColorSpace.RGB,colorValue:[255,255,0]};

Impressed? Well, if you try it you'll notice it won't work straight away. There Is A Catch! (Two of 'em, actually.)

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Catch #1: You can only change the color of text if it already has an 'undefined' color!

Now usually, you'll find your text already comes with a swatch applied to it, even though it's simply "Black", and so you cannot use this trick. If you do want to use it, you have to change it first to the fillColor of a text that already has an undefined color applied to it; then you can change it to anything you want. But you cannot create a piece of text to act as model to begin with, using a script (well, other than Harbs' workaround with a temporary snippet file) -- a real Catch-22.

To get it to work, draw a new text frame somewhere on the pasteboard in your document and enter this text into it: "A Jongware Solution". (Use exactly this text.) Change the color to something random, using the Color panel. Use the Script Label panel to add a label to the text frame -- use "color placeholder". Then, just before the line that sets other text to any color, insert this:

app.selection[0].fillColor = app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("color placeholder").characters[0].fillColor;

At first glance, this appears to work, but I noticed The Weirdest Thing. If you apply this color to your newly selected text, you'll find it initially is set to the placeholder color. That's to be expected. The second line (the one at the top of this post) also works, as you will see the color change to the new settings.

However. Catch #2

Check what happens to the placeholder text ... It also changes its color! Curioser & curioser, if you used this trick a couple of times in the same document, you'll find that every item with the same color also changes! It's kinda like ... you have a swatch ... but not really ...

I'm afraid it's not that straightforward. "Delete Swatch" is a menu option but "Replace with Unnamed Color" is not, so there is nothing to invoke.

Hi all, I am trying to accomplish the same goal (except color a textFrame not text) and I am using Harbs method but am only getting black boxes.

var r=0;

var g=102;

var b=255;

var elemBox = currentPage.textFrames.add(); //Add box

var addedColor = GetUnnamedColor([r,g,b]);

elemBox.fillColor = addedColor;

The filestring that gets written to the temp. file is:

<ASCII-MAC>

<pstyle:><cc:COLOR:RGB:Process:0.00,0.40,1>Just Some Text<cc:>

the addedColor.colorValue is 0,0,0,100

Is anyone else experiencing the same results?

You input RGB and you get *four* values in return...?

You saw this same problem before, without using Harbs's function, right? (Your other thread?) So I don't think it has anything to do with the tagged text. I know it seems like grasping at straws, but, in the absence of any other ideas, can you try clearing your defaults and starting with a new document?

Ah the solution! After researching tagged text, I found that on a windows platform you must have <ASCII-WIN>. The colors come through as expected. I will post on my other thread if this solution works to solve that as well.  Except I wont be able to test that until tomorrow.

Just on more question. Harbs says above that "You can check if the color exists already in the doc before doing that..." and by that he means executing that method. But how do you check for the unnamed color?

Message was edited by: bduffy323