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• • July 9, 2010 at 11:45 am #56309
    yoshimura

    Member

    Is it possible to create a plug-in which would automatically apply paragraph styles while typing? Like the way GREP Styles applies Character Styles to text; I need to do this for Paragraphs within a text frame.

    I know there is the FindChangeByList.jsx script, but that's not the right approach for the environment needing this implementation.

  • July 9, 2010 at 4:16 pm #56312
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    I'm pretty sure something can be cooked up like that. Not by me, though, I gave up trying to write ID plugins when Javascript got better, faster, and stronger, and mostly version-independent and totally (almost) platform-independent.

    Writing ID plugins is difficult. You need extensive knowledge of your InDesign version, your OS, and not to forget C++ (on Windows; Objective-C on the Mac). ID uses a set of public libraries, but even that is no relief, because these are so exotic that their programmers don't feel like explaining even the basic concepts (at least, that's how it seems to me ).

    You could suggest this in the Adobe InDesign SDK Forum, but since writing plugins is so difficult and time-consuming — and, not to mention, you have to start over for each new version of ID — the general vibe I get from that forum is no-one is interested in writing stuff just for the heck of it.

    Do you have any ideas on how it ought to work? Just like GREP styles do? (GREP styles can concatenate, and apply different styles on top of each other. I can't imagine how that would work for paragraph styles …)

  • July 10, 2010 at 7:05 am #56315
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    How would the plug-in know what kind of paragraph style you want applied to each paragraph? If it's repeatable each time, like “heading first, then subhead, then byline, then first paragraph, then other paragraphs” and so on, then you can use the Next Style feature inside the paragraph style dialog box.

  • July 12, 2010 at 7:58 am #56327
    yoshimura

    Member

    Thanks for the response,

    @Jongware: wow, seems pretty complex, but I'll do something about it. It should work just like GREP does for character styles for paragraphs, but applied to text frames so it could affect paragraph styles.

    @David Blatner: I'm working with a few newspapers and I'm trying to implement as many automated features as possible because the clients are horrible at Indesign and aren't tech savvy.

    For example: the plug-in would create automatic paragraph styling in this example:

    

    The subheads need spacing in between the body text. They can't be used with the Next style feature because they aren't repeating exactly after one or two paragraphs of body text. If only GREP could apply paragraph styling! It could find sentences with no periods contained within body text, then apply a paragraph style.

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