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• • June 25, 2010 at 12:26 am #56167
    Roland

    Member

    Is there any way to change the default settings in the Place dialog in CS5? It seems to prefer cropping to “Bounding Box (Visible Layers Only)” when placing a PDF that's not made inside Adobe software (a.k.a. printed from Word or PPT) which is a huge PITA as that never gives me the results I need, and I usually need to place PDFs from various documents into one INDD file.

    Please, someone tell me there's a way to get the Place dialog to default to “Media”, even if I have to make a Windows registry edit… This is the only thing they “upgraded” from CS4 to CS5 that's actually made the software worse!

  • June 25, 2010 at 10:36 am #56172
    Uwe Laubender

    Member

    @Roland: there is a way changing the default Place parameters through scripting. Try the following JavaScript, just a single line long:

    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pdfCrop = PDFCrop.CROP_MEDIA;

    It'll work until you choose to change the settings through the UI. After a restart of InDesign you have to fire the script again…
    Hope that helps.

    Uwe

  • June 25, 2010 at 3:40 pm #56173
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    (OT:)

    Hey, how d'you get that “Select Code” button?

    I also noticed in another post the backslash-eater has been removed from the premises (although I didn't dare edit my post to remove the now-obsolete ones :-D).

    Thanks! Any more improvements, forum-wise?

  • June 25, 2010 at 11:39 pm #56174
    Roland

    Member

    Thanks Uwe, I'll definitely give this a go when I'm done re-installing everything (hopefully later today).

    Jongware, there doesn't seem to be a new button for inserting codes, but it appears you could use the HTML view and create a div around the code… Here's my test :)

    <div class="sfcode">CODE HERE</div>
  • June 26, 2010 at 1:14 am #56175
    Uwe Laubender

    Member

    [OT]
    @Jongware:
    I tried the the HTML button “Edit HTML Source” and simply inserted < code >< / code > surrounded by <p></p> tags. Surprisingly the Select Code button was a side effect. Just gave it a try. I recalled reading about it at selfhtml.org the source for (X)HTML and related topics in German and French.

    Edit: if you simply write the correct syntax for the code tag (without the intentionally set blanks) you will get immediately Select Code button plus the code field…

    @Roland:
    Where did you get the class name “sfcode”? Is there a documentation somewhere? Or were you looking that up in a browser add-on like Firebug?

  • June 27, 2010 at 11:48 pm #56191
    Roland

    Member

    @Roland:
    Where did you get the class name “sfcode”? Is there a documentation somewhere? Or were you looking that up in a browser add-on like Firebug?

    ---

    I prefer your idea of inserting < code>< /code> in the HTML but I just clicked the icon to quote your post with the code thing in it and checked the HTML view of what would become my reply

  • June 30, 2010 at 3:58 pm #56222
    Stix Hart

    Member

    This is annoying me too so I was glad to see this post, bit of a pity the fix isn't a bit more permanent. I want to crop to the the crop box though, and if I change MEDIA to CROP the script doesn't work… Any tips?

  • July 1, 2010 at 5:23 am #56226
    Uwe Laubender

    Member

    Stix Hart said:This is annoying me too so I was glad to see this post, bit of a pity the fix isn't a bit more permanent. I want to crop to the the crop box though, and if I change MEDIA to CROP the script doesn't work… Any tips?

    ---

    Try PDFCrop.CROP_PDF. There are of course several other options. Here at a glance:

    PDFCrop.CROP_MEDIA //PDF MediaBox
    PDFCrop.CROP_BLEED //PDF BleedBox
    PDFCrop.CROP_TRIM //PDF TrimBox
    PDFCrop.CROP_PDF //PDF CropBox
    PDFCrop.CROP_ART //PDF ArtBox

    PDFCrop.CROP_CONTENT_ALL_LAYERS
    PDFCrop.CROP_CONTENT_VISIBLE_LAYERS

    @Roland: did the one liner remedy your pdf import problem with the office pdfs?

    Uwe

  • July 1, 2010 at 1:56 pm #56236
    Stix Hart

    Member

    Thanks heaps! Works great.

    Using this script actually has another brilliant advantage; when you are placing a large PDF ticking the show import options involves bringing up the dialog box which can take a while to display the preview, then you've got to choose the right setting, all more clicks and more time. I've made scripts for all the different settings I use and just click one first and leave the options box turned off. Awesome!

    Now… Would it be possible to do the same for the page of the PDF you want? E.g. Place page 3. Would be really handy for replacing one page with another one too.

  • July 1, 2010 at 11:28 pm #56240
    Roland

    Member

    Yep Uwe, it seems to work perfectly.

    I'll now make a couple more scripts (is a .JS extention enough, or should I use JSX?) with the codes you posted so I'll have all basis covered :)

  • July 8, 2010 at 12:08 am #56296
    Uwe Laubender

    Member

    @Roland: if you use .jsx rather than only .js you can open the script in ExtendScript Toolkit with a double click. Both extension will work with InDesign.
    Another hint: to get a tool tip when hovering above a script name shown in the script panel of InDesign, just insert a discrptive line like this:

    //DESCRIPTION:Here comes my tool tip

    Extremely useful when the script name is not self-explanatory enough or when you want to add some other useful information.

    Uwe

  • July 10, 2010 at 10:31 am #56318
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Wow this thread has enough tips for three or four blog posts. Thank you!

    That is very cool about the “Select Code” button. I'm going to try it using the code tag method.

    <Bender>Neat!</Bender>
  • July 10, 2010 at 9:05 pm #56323
    Stix Hart

    Member

    @ Anne-Marie, another tip you might want to relay for first timers installing and working with scripts (that is so basic everyone else will know it already) is to get to the scripts folder in Windows just right click a script from Indesign and go to 'Reveal in Explorer'. I only found out the other day after years of navigating through about 10 folders everytime I wanted to install one…

  • July 12, 2010 at 1:21 pm #56337
    Uwe Laubender

    Member

    @Anne-Marie: thank you!

    @Stix: Placing page “3” is also possible. See the following code:

    //The PDF to place will be placed cropped to it's TrimBox value;
    //true until a different setting in UI is set or true until another script forces a different behaviour:
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pdfCrop = PDFCrop.CROP_TRIM;

    //The background of the placed PDF will be set to “transparent”, set to “false” if you want the opposite.
    //true until a different setting in UI is set or true until another script forces a different behaviour:
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.transparentBackground = true;

    //The following is working only once in one placing operation and might be true for all PDFs loaded in the “place gun”:
    app.pdfPlacePreferences.pageNumber = 3;
    //After emptying the “place gun” and without starting this script again, in the next place operation pageNumber will default to “1”

    Attention:

    if there is no page 3 in your PDF, the page that will be placed is the first page of your PDF. (To my surprise) the script will give no warning or error message.
    Further: if you load several PDFs in your “place gun” and one of them does not contain a page 3, it depends on the loading order if any of the PDFs will be placed with page 3. Say, PDF 1 of 5 contains only 2 pages, then PDF 1 will trigger the default for itself and all consecutive loaded PDFs. Result: all PDFs are placed with their page 1.

    Uwe

  • July 12, 2010 at 10:04 pm #56340
    Stix Hart

    Member

    Thank you, that is a very handy addition to my particular workflow! It gets better and better…

    The main problem now is that I've downloaded the Indesign Scripting tutorials and guides and am finding out how to do it myself and not getting any work done.

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