Adobe Indesign Scripts

[kdubbie]

Hello, I was just wondering if someone can tell me simply, what all can Scripts do, for Adobe Indesign. Or perhaps give me some examples of how you use them and how they have helped you save time?

I work everyday in Adobe Indesign, I have only just started about 4 months ago for my job, but I have gotten pretty good at quickly formatting everything I need to. I never really investigated Scripts, but I always here how fast it can make repetitive tasks.

Please, if anyone can explain "the power of scripts" and perhaps compare the benefits of using them versus formatting their documents without them, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you very much, Kevin

 

[eugenetyson]

I got a free script off a scripter in the States, I'm in Ireland.

The script is called "preservelocalformatting".

What it does is when I import a Word file and apply the style for my body text, the Word file has no styles associated to the Bold, Italic, Bold Italic, Superscript, Subscript etc.

So if I apply the body style, the character style isn't there. I have to hit the override button. Which loses the bold, italic etc.

With this script mentioned above, it finds all the character styles and creates and applies the appropriate character style.

I can then just hit the override button for my body text and be assured that I don't have to go looking for Bold and Italic and Superscript.


Another good script that I use is for placing PDF and Indd files.

On occasion I have to place a whole PDF file into the book layout, the most PDF placing of pages I did was over 100 pages. Very tedious to click and place and click.

The script simply asked me where it wanted it and placed every page in the exact same position on each page.



For a magazine that I do I got the events manager to name the photos as the caption that he/she wanted. There is a script called Label Graphics, which applies the name of the image to a text frame just below the image in indesign.

With this, I can place all the images I want and lay it out and then hit the Label Graphics script which applies all the names of the images to the layout, which is the caption that I got the events manager to do.


Oh and the last cool script that I have is:

Say For Example This Is Your Heading And You Have 100 Of These!!!

It's very annoying to have to go and change the "For" to "for" and "This" to "this" ideally you want a heading written like:

Say for Example this is Your Heading and you have 100 of These!!!


Well I got a script that is called "Smart Cases". You can add to the list of words that you don't want to be capitalised.

Unlike Title Case that ships with InDesign, it ignores the list of words to capitalise. You can edit the script so you can insert all the conjunctions that you don't want capitalised like the following: "are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so"

Now I just select a heading, run the script and hey presto, all the conjunctions are lower case and not Title Case.



There are many other scripts, like a script to round only two corners or three, whatever corners you like. It can make nice design.

There's scripts out there to make nice random patterns, if you like that sort of thing.

There's scripts than can take a folder of images and lay them out neatly on a page for you, so You don't have to. You just select the folder and it makes the images fit to your specs.



Scripts are very very powerful and they can certainly speed up the production if you have the right script.

Scripts can be written for anything that InDesign can do.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[kdubbie]

thanks a lot for the information. So maybe you can point me in the right direction. IN a couple of months, I am going to have to create a directory for a bunch of companies. In each listing there will be:

Company Name (HelvNeue bold Condensed,12 pt.
Address (HelvNeue Condensed, 10 pt)
Phone (HelvNeue Condensed, 10 pt)
Fax (HelvNeue Condensed, 10 pt)
URL (HelvNeue Condensed, 10 pt)
(company description, ranging from one sentence to a lengthy paragraph)

And there will be about 900 companies.

I have practiced this before, as the information I get from my co-worker is a long list produced in WORD. I have been able to simplify the process with style sheets and a lot of find and replace, but it still took some time. I would sure love to simplify this process even more.

Can a style sheet automate this process?

Thanks a lot, Kevin

 

[apepp]

...you'll likely want to look into "nested style sheets/next style" for something like that...

...set up correctly you can do it in very few clicks...

http://indesignsecrets.com/nested-versus-next.php

Andrew

 

[apepp]

..also worth looking at adobe tv stream here, flash player required:

http://tv.adobe.com/#v=http://adobe...nacci/10_cfb_003.flv?rss_feedid=929&xmlvers=2

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...of course, some forethought on how to format the basics of the source text is required...

...the long run, it is advantageous to discuss this with whoever sets up the word file with regards to line breaks/line returns etc...

Andrew

 

[eugenetyson]

Even better,

get the person who is using the word file to use the same paragraph styles that you use.

Then on import, show options and map the styles.

Thanks Andrew for finding that post, I couldn't find it earlier.

I was in the middle of a write up, but I can stop now, phew!

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[jtoshkov]

Hey Kevin,
Here is a site that I have found very helpful. It has a bunch of applescripts for InDesign SC2, but most of them work with SC3.It will give you an idea what you can do with scripts. Just tweak those and you can automate a lot in your workflow.

http://olivier.berquin.free.fr/indesign/indesign_2.html

 

[kdubbie]

thank you all very much for the advice, I actually did it all with Xcel, word and then copy paste to Indesign master Frames,Autolinking them together. Set up the styles for each line in the listing, highlight all, apply style and next style, and voila....each listing was perfect.

 

[MarcusStringer]

I my line of work I some of my clients request a word count from InDesign.
If you have never tried to do this, than I assure you it's not pleasant. I have a script for counting words now and does it in 3 seconds. compared with selecting each story seperatly bringing up the infor window then writing the number down.
clicking on the next story.....

Could take 1/2 hour (I do Long books)

I also have a script for converting fractions to proper fractions, for example.
When I do cooking books and I need to convert 1/2 into a fraction I simply high light the 1/2 and double click on the script, instead of making the 1 superscript, then making the 2 superscript, then baselin shifting the 2 down and the one up.
Then kerning the two together.


I also do a book full of article where the first page is always the same, the second page bring in a picture, etc.

I automated it. I now creates 200 formatted pages in around 10 minutes...





Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au