Transpose two characters
I was editing a large file yesterday, and repeatedly needed to move periods from outside closing quotes to the inside. I like to use drag and drop text editing for moving text around, but trying to select and then drag and drop a single character is infuriating.
InCopy has a cool “Transpose” command that will change the order of the characters on either side of the cursor. But alas, InDesign has no such command.
So I whipped up a quick script called TransposeTwoCharacters that does just that: It will swap the order of the characters to the right and left of the insertion point. Just put your cursor between two characters that need to be swapped, and double-click on the script in the Scripts panel. Even better, use the Keyboard Shortcut Editor to assign a keyboard shortcut to the script so that you can transpose characters with a simple keystroke.
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Great script!
Transpose is one of my favorite InCopy features that I miss in InDesign. The other favorite of mine is the position marker, but I think that would be much more difficult to script.
Peter Kahrel has a script called “set/find a bookmark” at https://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/qm.html that does essentially the same thing as the position marker in InCopy.
Would it be better using a Grep Find/Change if you “repeatedly” have to do this in a document?
Here what you can do:
Find
(?)(.)Replace
$2$1Sorry, wrong formating
Find
(~})(.)Replace
$2$1@Jean-Claude, Find/Change would definitely be a better solution for “repeatedly” doing this, as you point out. But on this particular project, I received a PDF back from the editors with so many red markups it looked like the measles! Many, many of the markups were simple transposition problems, but without much of a pattern or repeatability. There were lots of unique exceptions. So I couldn’t really use Find/Change in this case, and had to visit each edit manually.
@Keith – I knew there was a reason. Look like someone have some sort of a dyslexia problem when writing. ;-)
Thanks for the script, always useful.
For things like this I have long wished InDesign had a Range object analogous to the Range object in MS Word. It would make manipulating selected text a lot easier.
Pat: Translation please?
See, if InDesign just had an embedded version of vi, you could just type “xp” at the cursor.
It’s a natural progression from “GREP styles”…
What I think Pat is referring to in the comment above has to do with how I wrote the script. The “object model” for Word has a unique way to refer to a “range” of text, from a starting character position to an ending character position. The InDesign object model has no such device, so referencing a “range” of characters with a script in InDesign is a little trickier than in Word.
What Arron is referring to in his post is the “VI” text editor for Unix. https://www.onlineitdegree.net/vi-editor/
One feature Microsoft Word has is the built in “move up” and “move down” functions. You click the up or down arrow in the toolbar and the entire paragraph (or multiple paragraphs if selected) moves up or down. This also works in a table.
This is the one capability that requires me to do most of my editing workflow in Word rather than InDesign, which is quite a shame.
(The other major missing feature is script recording which would make InDesign scripting accessible to everyone.)
David: That was not too hard to script! I haven’t checked out the Transpose script yet, perhaps it works in a similar way. I’ve posted my two scripts here: in the Script forum.
One moves your current paragraph (the one with the cursor in it) or all of the selected paragraphs (in their entirety) one paragraph up, the other one paragraph down.
It’s not a perfect copy of the Word function; it doesn’t work inside tables, because that has a vastly different text model.
Gah! Jongware, in the time it took me to write myself a note to “someday” see about writing a script to move paragraphs up and down, you wrote the actual script! Cool.
This is Dave Sanders Script ToggleChars (from 2008, LassoSoft List)
// Check for a selection of the right type
if (app.selection.length > 0 && app.selection[0].constructor.name == «InsertionPoint») {
toggleChars(app.selection[0]);
}
/*First thing the toggleChars function must do is check is that the
insertion point is not first or last (get text flow reference along
the way */
function toggleChars (myIP) {
myTextFlow = myIP.parent; // gives story or cell, as appropriate
if (myIP != myTextFlow.insertionPoints[0] && myIP != myTextFlow.insertionPoints[-1]) {
reallyToggleChars (myTextFlow, myIP);
}
}
/*But even the reallyToggleChars function still has a check to do,
to see if the character to the right of the insertion point is a
paragraph marker; ask user if so */
function reallyToggleChars (myTextFlow, myIP) {
myIndex = myIP.index
myChar = myTextFlow.characters[myIndex]; // Char to right has same index as insertion point
if (myChar.contents == «\r») {
if (confirm(»Are you sure you want to move the paragraph marker?») == false) {
// User said No, so get out of here
return;
}
}
// Finally, we?re ready to rumble
myTextFlow.characters[myIndex].move(LocationOptions.before,
myTextFlow.insertionPoints[myIndex-1]);
app.select(myTextFlow.insertionPoints[myIndex]);
}
I didn’t take into account the need to transpose characters in a table or within an inline text frame. It looks like Dave’s script accommodates table cells, at least. I’ll try to update the script to handle these two cases when I have a chance.
This post is not related to transpose characters, but i had no idea where to post it. In Dotless_i script, where a dotless i is inserted at the insertion point according to the unicode number – Can the script be altered so that a glyph can be inserted based on its GID number & not unicode number (as certain glyphs share the same unicode numbers but have different GID numbers-like arrows in Minion Pro font)
Mayoor: To post an unrelated question or comment, use the forums here, you’ll get a better response: https://creativepro.com/forum
Keith: Very cool script and I hope you keep posting more! Our enthusiastic, helpful and brainiac members are always willing to bang on them and offer suggestions to make them better, if not digging in and doing the work themselves, as you can see. They’re wonderful!
Anne-Marie : Thanks a lot. Have posted the query on the forum. This site is just awesome & am pretty pleased with some of the “secrets” about Indesign that you all routinely dole out.
I’ve updated the script, adding the ability to transpose text characters in table cells as well as inline text frames, also adding some more error checking and alert dialogs if you try to run the script without an insertion point. I’ve posted the new script at https://gilbertconsulting.com/resources-scripts.html
As a side note, systems that use OS X’s standard text services (not Adobe) have a shortcut key for ‘transpose’: Control+T.
@Keith ? there is another case where your script does not work:
Text in footnotes.
“parentStory” is not available there?
Uwe
Thanks for letting me know, Uwe. I’ll try to update the script when I have a chance.
This script is not working in ID 17.0.1 Mac.
@Derek, the script should work now. I’ve been doing some housecleaning on my Web site and overlooked something. If you continue to have problems, let me know.
Works like a charm now, Keith — thanks!