It looks to me like it should error; I would wonder why it works in any version. I think this line:

set page orientation of document preferences of active document to landscape

should be:

set page orientation of document preferences to landscape

Since that line is in a tell block, the of active document is redundant—you're telling the document object already.

Jeff

Ton, your error code would still sugest you are double referencing the document… I just tried Jeff's suggestion and it works just fine on 10.6.8

You have now lost reference to both document objects… What works is…

tell application "Adobe InDesign CS5" -- issue commands to indesign

             set vTemplate to make new document

             tell vTemplate -- issue commands to the newly created document

                            set page orientation of document preferences to landscape

             end tell -- end commands to document

end tell -- commands to indesign

I just got a chance to test it on CS5.5. I got:

Adobe InDesign CS5.5 got an error: Invalid value for set property 'page orientation'. Expected landscape/portrait, but received landscape.

I don't understand this at all.

Tony, Jeff has a different error message to what you posted… I don't have 5.5 but I wouldn't make sence of that either…?

Expected landscape/portrait, but received landscape hum…

AppleScript is typically fairly forgiving in its parameters, so you could try both the value 2003395685 and the string 'wide' it represents (see http://jongware.mit.edu/idcsjs5.5/pe_PageOrientation.html).

I agree this would indicate some sort of bug in the scripting interface.

Would it be a viable workaround ad hoc solution to switch "page width" and "page height"?

yes, it's  either that (which gives you all freedom), or create a document preset first and use that instead.

Clarity!

Would you care to explain, Shane, how you go about discovering those underlying <<class>> identifiers?

Thank you Shane. I've seen the chevrons pop up in compiled Applescripts before but have never invested the time to learn how to track them back to the “regular” identifiers.

Poking around a bit, it looks like Apple also provides a command-line tool, sdef, to dump them:

sdef /Applications/Adobe\ InDesign\ CS5.5/Adobe\ InDesign\ CS5.5.app | xmllint --format - | grep landscape

as a quick-and-dirty way to get those of us without Script Debugger at least sort of into the general vicinity.

@ absqua - Thanks for this!

app.activeDocument.documentPreferences.pageOrientation = PageOrientation.LANDSCAPE;

When the totally green newbie JS student (like me) tries to follow a tutorial, say for example like the DocumentTemplate tutorial script beginning on the bottom of page 29 in Adobe InDesign CS6 Scripting Tutorial, and who unknowingly, but mistakenly thought something as benign as following sundry script examples, etc. (because they're working with many windows open) would best be facilitated with a default document in LANDSCAPE orientation, this little line of code will overtly address the problem created by the tutorial script writer who similarly and unknowingly, but mistakenly thought something as benign as orientation would not coyly gum up the works.

You helped fix that problem and I thank you very much!

Kind regards,

Kelly