Fellow Scripters,

It's a long story. First, referring to page items by pageItems.item("label_string")--where "label_string" was the contents of the object label--was never "intuitive." In all other cases in the DOM, item(string) is used for named objects. But, in the early days, page items didn't have names. By creating a special case for page items, we could use the contents of the label property to refer to page items. It wasn't ideal, but it worked, and everyone got used to it.

I would think that users starting scripting today would expect to be able to set the object name, then use itemByName to get a reference to the object. The Layers panel is usually more visible than the Script Label panel. The only problem is that itemByName doesn't return multiple objects--and it should.

Later, we realized that the simple label property was not enough--scripters needed a way to store other data on objects (and not just page items), so we added insertLabel and extractLabel. They're incredibly useful! Before we had insertLabel/extractLabel, trying to store multiple data values in the single label property was a chore--you had to use some kind of delimiter to separate the values. (My hat is off, as always, to the great engineers behind InDesign scripting, Peter Boctor and Jonathan Brown. It's sad that neither of them are still working in that area.)

Note, in addition, that insertLabel/extractLabel work as expected with the label property--to write to the label, you could use:

insertLabel("Label", "Some value here");

...and you can use extractLabel to get the value. Not that anyone needs to do this, it's just nice that it works.

I think that the changes in this area--since the original implementation--have made things more consistent (and, one hopes, "intuitive"). Unfortunately, the changes, a.) broke something that many scripts depended on, and b.) the new approach, itemByName, does not match the capabilities of the old approach.

Thanks,

Ole

Hi Mike,

.Paragraphs(2).Changecase (idSentencecase)

Try to use numbers:

Const idSentencecase = 1667461987 (&H63637363)

    Member of InDesign.idChangecaseMode

    Makes the first letter of each sentence uppercase.

   .Paragraphs(2).Changecase (1667461987)

Are you sure there is 2nd Paragraph ?

What error do you have ?

Or what is the type of the Text object you try to modify ?

robin

www.adobescripts.co.uk

Can anyone point me to a CS5 VB script reference? Having trouble locating one.

Thank you,

Mike

I have noticed that in the situation of a two page spread, the left and right pages in CS2 will have different parent IDs, while in CS5 they will have the same parent IDs. I am trying to add pages to a document after a page of my choosing, and have the new page come in next.

This is my CS2 code:

X = .Parent.ID

With idDoc.Pages.Add(at:=idAfter, reference:=idDoc.Pages.ItemByID(X))

I am wondering if there is a way to set the "reference:" to place a new page by page .ParentPage, since the .Parent.ID is ambiguous?

Mike

Mike wrote: "With idDoc.Pages.Add(at:=idAfter, reference:=idDoc.Pages.ItemByID(X))"

As far ask I know, using labeled parameters (e.g., "at:" or "reference:" in the above) in VBScript/VB method calls has never worked (or has never worked reliably) in InDesign scripting. I think I even wrote a note about it in the documentation somewhere, though I have no idea if it's still there. Just provide the parameters in order, omitting optional parameters that you don't need. In this case, something like this should work (untested, off the top of my head):

Rem Given a page item "X" in a document "idDoc"...

idDoc.pages.add(idLocationOptions.idAfter, idDoc.pages.itemByID(X.parentPage.id))

Thanks,

Ole