Script - Paste a TextFrame into a TextFrame

Im not an ID server user but I thought it had NO C&P capabilities…

I have not tried myself… but a similar recent post had using library assets as a suggestion… Can you put the page item in a temporary library then use place asset?

As I don't have id server I can't really say for sure. I did take a check over at…

http://www.jongware.com/idjshelp.html

and sure enough he's got id server helper files too… you will find invaluable

Hah -- that was quite difficult to pull off. You are correct in your observation that IDCS Server cannot use 'select', 'copy', and all other UI based commands, so you have to do it purely by manipulating the objects.

Unfortunately, all objects do have a 'move' method but ... it only can accept some page position and not an insertion point, which is what you need here. So there is no way to physically move an existing text frame into text (or, for that matter, a button, or a rectangle, line, ellipse or anything else).

But you can create a new object in-line:

mynewTextFrame = app.activeDocument.stories[0].insertionPoints[3].textFrames.add();

will create a new text frame between characters numbered 3 and 4 -- between the two letters "l" if the first word in the first story is "hello there!". Then you can move your existing text out of "someTextFrame" into the newly created frame, and copy as much other parameters as you need to it. Finally, you can delete the original frame (or perhaps move it out of the way onto the pasteboard, since you never know what you might need it for).

.. even better than copying properties one by one:

tf = app.activeDocument.stories[0].insertionPoints[3].textFrames.add();

tf.properties = app.selection[0].properties;

(This one works with a selection, but you can do the same for any valid object you can get a handle on.)

place asset said document or text… I took the general vagueness of the latter to mean any valid position within… gulp

Uh, well, my test worked with the default settings of a new text frame, and it seemed the properties of the frame itself got copied.

If you are loosing your text settings, you can always use "move" to move the text out of the original into the new frame -- and you won't be needing the old badly formatted text anyway, so perhaps you should delete that first.

As for the graphics: are those inline objects? Maybe you have to move the elements one by one ...

If only one could use "move" with an insertion point as a target! File a feature request? CS6 is coming soon.

Yeah this works for me, duplicating the entire contents of the original frame takes inlines along:

tf = app.activeDocument.stories[0].insertionPoints[3].textFrames.add();

tf.properties = app.selection[0].properties;

tf.texts[0].remove();

app.selection[0].texts[0].duplicate (LocationOptions.AT_BEGINNING, tf.texts[0]);

I think snap shot structure almost look like a table.  You have use the table instread of TextFrames, So it makes easy to your works.

Nat, it worked for me when testing because my test graphics were pasted in-line in the source text frame, and so they move along with the rest of the text. It doesn't work if they are pasted "on top" of the text frame, they have to be inside.