CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • February 7, 2019 at 7:36 am #114208
    Jay Fredrickson

    Member

    Greetings all,

    I have been looking everywhere and have found every other character except the one I need: The Footnote Number Special Character.

    Situation: I have an autofitted text with footnotes dynamically inserted from a script. This document is hundreds of pages long with hundreds of footnotes. The insertion of the footnotes is super easy, but I wanted to reset the numbering of the footnotes on each page which means I need to dynamically generate the number in the footnote itself through variables.

    It’s easy to insert it: Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Footnote Number // BUT I can’t seem to find this special character reference in any of the docs, online, or even on the google 0 . o

    Do you know how to insert this special character via script?

  • February 7, 2019 at 1:33 pm #114219
    Dieter Stockert

    Member

    Maybe I’m misunderstanding your question, but in the footnote options you can set the footnote number to start again on every new page.

  • February 7, 2019 at 11:51 pm #114232
    Jay Fredrickson

    Member

    Thanks, but I am looking for the actual character that gets inserted when you do “Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Footnote Number”. I need to use that character in a script…

  • February 8, 2019 at 8:01 am #114235
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    You find that the way you find the script code for any InDesign marker: insert it in the Find/Change dialog and you’re there. In this case, open the Find/Change dialog, click the @ next to the ‘Find what’ field, click ‘Markers’ then ‘Footnote reference marker’. You’ll now see ~F in the ‘Find what’ field and that’s what you use in your script:

    app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = ‘~F’;

    (or ^F if you use text rather than grep).

    Peter

  • February 8, 2019 at 10:50 am #114239
    Jay Fredrickson

    Member

    Thanks Peter, thats actually a very helpful trick. I didn’t realize you could insert them into the find/change dialog.

    So, I tried using these in the script with:

    var footnote = tf.footnotes.add(LocationOptions.AFTER, location)
    footnote.contents = “^F” + text.toString()

    Tried ^F, \^F \~F and ~F and none of them will insert the special character. Do you have any insight into how to insert the actual character into the footnote with script?

  • February 8, 2019 at 11:19 am #114241
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    So you want to insert the footnote number. But InDesign adds that when you create the footnote.

  • February 8, 2019 at 11:28 am #114242
    Jay Fredrickson

    Member

    When I only do the footnote the number doesn’t show up. For instance, with this code below:

    var footnote = tf.footnotes.add(LocationOptions.AFTER, location)
    footnote.contents = text.toString()

    It only shows like this:

    ” text from the footnote”

    The number in the text shows up properly, but the actual footnote at the bottom of the page doesn’t show. Someone would need to manually count the footnotes to know which one they’re reading.

    I am expecting it to show up like:

    “1 text from the footnote”

    Does this make sense? That’s why I am looking to insert the footnote special character with the script. I understand that the footnote special character is already added when you create it in the UI though.

  • February 9, 2019 at 3:01 am #114270
    Jay Fredrickson

    Member

    I just found this statement in an IDML documentation https://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/indesign/sdk/cs6/idml/idml-cookbook.pdf:

    “There is no reference for these characters so you’ll have to experiment…”

    That’s awesome.

  • February 9, 2019 at 3:29 am #114272
    Jay Fredrickson

    Member

    So, apparently I wasn’t very far off. I found this awesome Unicode chart:

    https://www.indiscripts.com/blog/public/data/idcs4-special-characters/en_InDesignCS4-CS5-SpecialChars.pdf

    And using an insertion script like:

    footnote.contents = “\u0019” + text.toString()

    Works just fine but for some reason the 0x0004 doesn’t work (footnote reference number).

    So does anyone have any thoughts on how to insert this?

  • February 9, 2019 at 3:55 am #114273
    Peter Kahrel

    Participant

    > When I only do the footnote the number doesn’t show up. For instance, with this code below:

    > var footnote = tf.footnotes.add(LocationOptions.AFTER, location)
    > footnote.contents = text.toString()

    The number doesn’t show up because you delete it by replacing all the footnote content. You should add the text after the footnote number and the separator:

    footnote.insertionPoints[-1].contents = ‘whatever’;

  • February 9, 2019 at 6:48 am #114275
    Jay Fredrickson

    Member

    Thats. Amazing. Thank you so much! Works perfectly.

  • February 11, 2019 at 3:48 am #114351
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Quite surprising: the official code SpecialCharacters.FOOTNOTE_SYMBOL does not insert anything at all! “Undo” also says “Undo Insert Text” as if something was inserted. But there is nothing there.

    Other codes such as SpecialCharacters.AUTO_PAGE_NUMBER and SpecialCharacters.TRADEMARK_SYMBOL *do* work as expected.

  • August 24, 2019 at 2:25 pm #14324233
    Ariel W

    Participant

    Just been bitten by this myself. It is strange that there does not seem to be a way to insert a footnote reference marker in a footnote via scripting.
    Peter’s workaround is to create a new footnote and not delete the auto-created footnote number. But as Jongware points out, it should work using the SpecialCharacter enumerator as well.

  • August 29, 2019 at 3:47 pm #14324217
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Ariel, this is still so in the Very Latest™ version? If so, about time to post a Bug Report.

• Author
  Posts