I have a love-hate relationship with multi state objects (MSOs). When all is said and done you can create some terrific effects for Digital Publishing Suite apps with them, but it’s getting to that done point that can carry quite a bit of drudgery with it.
My biggest complaints is the inability to add an object or group of objects to all states in an MSO. While this might not be a big deal with a three or four state MSO, I’ve had to create MSOs with upward of 30 states. That make for a quite a bit of repetitive work. Any time that’s the case, the answer to speeding things up usually comes in the form of a script.
While I can’t write a script to save my life, I’m happy to say our friend Keith Gilbert can. Keith’s written a set of six scripts aimed specifically at easing the burden of working with MSOs.
Among the capabilities:
- Adding objects to all states
- Navigating to next and previous states with a keyboard shortcut
- Creating various types of two-state MSOs
I’ve been testing them for a few weeks now and I can highly recommend them to anyone involved in a DPS workflow. They pay for themselves in saved time very quickly.
You can get a full description as well as purchasing information, on Keith’s website.
This article was last modified on December 30, 2021
This article was first published on January 28, 2013
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