While fine-tuning a layout you usually need to put some dummy text in your template. The common way to fill a frame with lorem-ipsum-like data is to call Type > Fill with Placeholder Text. But sometimes you already have an actual text in place, and then your missing feature is the ability to scramble existing characters. Thanks to IdExtenso we can write a nice and fast scrambler, based on Markov chains…
How to Shuffle Characters the Right Way
January 15, 2018 | Snippets | en | fr
SelToPng | Quick InDesign-to-PNG Serializer
November 06, 2017 | Tips | en
As an InDesign maniac I often use it for achieving tasks that would normally involve Illustrator or Photoshop. The best example of this deviance is PNG conversion. You read it well! And here is a tool that translates any InDesign shape, group, or whatever, into a PNG stream. Not a big deal, but let me explain…
InDesign Scripting Forum Roundup #11
September 16, 2017 | Snippets | en
What's on the menu for this 11th episode? My personal selection of the most interesting, verbose, and technical discoveries that took place in the InDesign Scripting Forum within the last eight months. Each topic (and code snippet!) will teach you something you probably didn't even suspect…
BookBarcode 2.036 Patch for InDesign CS6 & CC
June 19, 2017 | BookBarcode | en | fr
Finally available is a patched release of BookBarcode 2 (v2.036) purposed to improve the support of recent InDesign versions. While the code still perfectly works in CS4 and CS5 (CS3 support is abandoned) we have fixed various issues reported in either CS6 or the CC series…
Customize InDesign Hyphens with IndyFont
May 18, 2017 | IndyFont | en | fr
While both IndyFont and Unicode support hyphen variants such as U+2010 HYPHEN, U+2011 NON-BREAKING HYPHEN, and of course U+00AD SOFT HYPHEN, it looks like InDesign does not clearly distinguish character from glyph paradigm in this particular topic. In short, InDesign tends to render all hyphen characters using the same prototypical glyph, which is not necessarily in line with your desire…
IdExtenso: ExtendScript Framework for InDesign Ninjas
April 20, 2017 | Extras | en
Driven by a mix of vanity and liberalness I decided to make public the building blocks of my InDesign scripting framework, which I called IdExtenso. The alpha release is now available on my GitHub account and will be regularly extended in the coming weeks and months…
On the Precision of HurryCover Measurements
March 04, 2017 | HurryCover | en | fr
User's question: “I have to enter in measurements to HurryCover that have more than four decimal point, such as .859375 inches. HC lets you enter this but then rounds it up to four spaces instead of the six that were entered. Is it actually making it the correct size and rounding up the number?”…
« Grep et InDesign » en PDF
February 02, 2017 | Extras | fr
Mon confrère Laurent Tournier, animateur du site indigrep.com, rend disponible au format PDF son fameux guide GREP et InDesign CS3/CS4 pour la modique somme de 10 €. À ne pas manquer !
JsxBlind's New Version for ExtendScript Developers [OBSOLETE]
January 22, 2017 | JsxBlind | en
JsxBlind 1.007 is available today—still for free—and now delivered in two formats: a standalone script (JsxBlindRun.jsx) that offers a quick and easy way to scramble a JSXBIN file straight from InDesign (as previously), and a “includable library” (JsxBlindLib.jsxinc) that provides advanced options to developers who need to plug JsxBlind features in an automated workflow (ESTK extension, panel development process, or any custom framework.)
InDesign Scripting Forum Roundup #10
December 14, 2016 | Snippets | en
InDesign scripts may involve unexpectedly complicate solutions for addressing tasks that seemed initially quite easy, as well as unexpectedly simple codes for solving crooked problems! The mood of the 10th episode of our ISFR series reflects this ambivalence quite well. As usual I try to focus on scripts, snippets, and methods, that open up powerful tracks to informed developers…
Equalizer PRO 3.0 released!
October 11, 2016 | Equalizer | en | fr
How much do you spend on manually repositioning objects, resizing or adjusting all frames when your layout is changing? How many times did you need to move all main blocks by a given offset on every page? Or to reset the scale of every inner image? Think about the time you lost in repeating those daily boring tasks again and again, then take a giant step in loading Equalizer 3 in your InDesign toolbox. Batch positioning and resizing in InDesign is now as easy as clicking the Run button…
Tutoriel Wordalizer : répéter des mots N fois
September 30, 2016 | Wordalizer | fr
Un utilisateur (heureux !) de Wordalizer me demande comment répéter les mêmes termes, par exemple cent fois, dans un nuage de mots. Bien que la boîte de dialogue principale ne permette pas de dupliquer automatiquement les éléments de la liste, il est très facile de résoudre le problème en amont, dans InDesign, puis de fournir à Wordalizer la liste intégrale prête à mouliner. L'occasion d'un petit tutoriel rigolo…
“HTML Panels Development,” the Path to CC Extensions
July 08, 2016 | Extras | en
Extending the capabilities of Creative Cloud apps is a Grail Quest for many users. Although it has been made possible (almost blindly) with Adobe Configurator, the new HTML panel architecture requires a huge cognitive leap. Alas and alack, no adequate documentation is available that would both synthesize knowledge and accompany learning. I mean, was available! Thanks to Davide Barranca and its “PhotoShop panels development” book and course, every developer can now access a solid, unfragmented information about Adobe HTML panels and extensions. And convert theory into practice…
Coordinate Spaces & Transformations in InDesign — Chap.4 (Draft)
June 14, 2016 | Tips | en
Chapter 4 of our “Spaces & Transform” eBook is probably both the trickiest and the most important. It tries to reveal the intricacies behind the Scripting DOM resolve() method, the unique tool for setting and processing InDesign locations with respect to the underlying coordinate systems. I spent months figuring out its obscure syntax and improving my knowledge on that particular topic. Understanding the location resolver is a crucial step for developing scripts that can deal in depth with geometry and transformations in InDesign.
Why I Do Not Use Meaningful Variable Names (Anymore)
May 03, 2016 | Tips | en
Without doubt this is a “very bad practice.” When it comes to naming arguments and variables, every programmer should prefer descriptive and intention-revealing names over short forms. We all read this rule in Clean Coding bibles. Tokens like userName, swatchArray, or currentWordCount sound of course much better than s, a, and i…
New Features in Equalizer 3
April 19, 2016 | Equalizer | en | fr
While achieving Equalizer 3 I have implemented new—and old!—functionalities such as the Page Side Selector (so that you can manipulate right-sided pages only, for example) and (the much awaited return of) the Swap items feature. Here are a few snapshots of the next version…
RichPaste | Copy and Paste with Minimal Formatting [UPDATE]
April 06, 2016 | Snippets | en | fr
When it comes to pasting text from another document or application, InDesign provides two options, either keeping the original text attributes, fonts, styles (the full 'Paste' feature), or removing all attributes ('Paste without formatting'.) We also have tools and preferences in the field of style mapping, but on many occasions these features do not fit the need of dealing quickly with basic formatting problems. Here RichPaste comes to the rescue…
On Dichotomic Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms
March 12, 2016 | Tips | en
From what I observed, InDesign scripters do not naturally resort to the dichotomic (or binary) search algorithm when it comes to find a numeric solution to problems as wide as adjusting frame bounds to some constraint, determining an optimal text size, or simply accessing a needle in the haystack. Yet the binary search approach is nearly always the best. So let's make it more popular…
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