Getting text from footnotes

[K.Daube]

Dear all,

Having managed to extract citations from ordinary paragraphs and table cells I now want to get it also from footnotes. See the complete script and test-doc (FN-11) doc here.

I get the first footnote paragraph with its citation correctly.

But my construct to get the next paragraph of the footnote obviously is wrong - there is no NextPgfInFn (or NextPgf) mentioned in the Scripting Guide, only FirstPgf and LastPgf. But it is possible to have multiple paragraphs in footnotes (see test-doc). And hence the function GetText fails for the 'second paragraph' in the footnote.

function processFootnote (fn, doc) {
// find citations in footnotes
    var fnText = "";
    var fnPara = fn.FirstPgf;
    while (fn.ObjectValid()) {
      fnText = (GetText(fnPara));
        alert (fnText);                    // the text of the cell
        var citations = GetTempCitations (fnText);
        var nCitations = citations.length;
        alert (nCitations + " Citations = " + citations); 
    fnPara = fnPara.NextPgfInFn;                                               // <-------------- this is not valid
    }
} //--------------------------------------------------------------------------
function GetText (textObj, doc) {
  // Gets the text from the text object.
  var text = "";
  // Get a list of the strings in the text object or text range.
  if (textObj.constructor.name !== "TextRange") {                        // <--------------- Undefined is not an object
    var textItems = textObj.GetText(Constants.FTI_String);
  } else {
    var textItems = doc.GetTextForRange(textObj, Constants.FTI_String);
  }
  // Concatenate the strings.
  for (var i = 0; i < textItems.len; i += 1) {
    text += (textItems.sdata);
  }
  return text; // Return the text
} //--------------------------------------------------------------------------

What would be a valid construct to get into all paragraphs of the footnote?

And there the next question lures: does function processFootnote also handle table footnotes ?

Thanks for Your help.

Klaus Daube

[frameexpert · Accepted solution]

Hi Klaus,

Use NextPgfInFlow

Rick

[K.Daube]

Thank You, Ric, that worked.

However, i had to add a 'stop', because an endless number of empty footnotes were found.

function processFootnote (fn, doc) {
// find citations in footnotes
     var fnText = "";
     var fnPara = fn.FirstPgf;
     
     while (fn.ObjectValid()) {
       fnText = (GetText(fnPara));
       if (fnText == ""){ return; }       // <----------------- prevent runaway
          alert (fnText);                    // the text of the footnote
          var citations = GetTempCitations (fnText);
          var nCitations = citations.length;
          alert (nCitations + " Citations = " + citations); 
    fnPara = fnPara.NextPgfInFlow;
     }
} //--------------------------------------------------------------------------

[frameexpert]

Hi Klaus, The code in your function is not quite right. The way I understand it, you are using the processFootnote function to process a single footnote. If that is the case, then this line:

while (fn.ObjectValid()) {

is not correct. The fn object will always be valid and that is why you have a runaway loop. You need this instead:

while (fnPara.ObjectValid()) {

This code will be unnecessary:

if (fnText == ""){ return; }

Rick

[K.Daube]

Thanks Rick - this solved the problem.

Now I'm able to collect the citations in

- ordinary paragraphs,

- table cells

- foot notes

- table foot notes.

For the purpose of my project I postpone looking into textframes in anchored frames and other constructs (something must be left for later enhancements...)