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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 93 total)
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  • Justin Sligh
    Member

    Tim,

    No improvements yet.

    in reply to: Apply style to specific words with exception? #101588
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Give us some example bullets with text and then describe how you would like them styled. Im sure a styling solution exists.

    in reply to: Callouts #96819
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Clark,

    Create a Paragraph Style for your callout. In Paragraph Rules, check the Rule On box for both Rule Above and Rule Below. Use the Offset attribute to move the line to the desired location.

    in reply to: Guidelines for Stylesheet Creation #96774
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Dwayne,

    These are excellent suggestions. I thank you.

    Justin Sligh
    Member

    I have a functioning solution in PHP. This one will query a database and replace placeholders within IDML templates. It also combines multiple IDML files. I may publish when I have added error handling.

    Placeholders are wrapped in percent signs. %PlaceholderName%

    1. For each result in the database query, PHP class unzips the selected template to a work folder with a unique name.
    2. The Story_XXX.xml files that include placeholder names are selected.
    3. Find/Replace is performed on the array of placeholders and the database results.
    4. Once all of the placeholders have been handled, the story and spread Ids are made unique. This includes the filename and references within spreads. An array keeps track of these changes.
    5. The first template folder is designated the combined workspace. All of the other template stories and spreads are dumped into the appropriate holders.
    6. The combined workspace’s designmap.xml is opened as a DOMDocument and the new spreads and stories are added.
    7. The combined document is zipped (The mimetype from the template is incorporated.)

    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Here is the Droplet i came up with. To add error correction and flexibility, I may add the following:
    1. Check to see if output filename provided is already used in the output folder.
    2. Get the CombinedDocument’s preferences from the first file. (it is hard coded into mine but it might not matter as mine deletes the first (blank) page.
    3. Provide support for filtering filetypes
    4. Provide support for dropping folders (getting the first tier results of the contents)
    5. Provide a dialog that indicates broken links or overset text in the combined document on completion

    on run {input, parameters}
    --Choose Output Folder
    tell application "Finder"
    set OutputFolder to choose folder with prompt "Select a folder for output"
    set myFilelist to input
    set myFileCount to count of myFilelist
    end tell
    log myFileCount
    if myFileCount > 0 then
    --Get output filename
    display dialog "Please provide the name for the combined file" default answer ""
    set SaveNameInput to text returned of result
    set SaveName to SaveNameInput & ".indd"
    --Need to add check if filename already exists
    tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2017"
    activate
    set user interaction level of script preferences to never interact
    tell view preferences
    set horizontal measurement units to inches
    set vertical measurement units to inches
    end tell
    --setup combined document
    set myCombinedDoc to make document
    tell document preferences of myCombinedDoc
    set page height to "8.5"
    set page width to "11"
    set page orientation to landscape
    set pages per document to 1
    set facing pages to false
    set allow page shuffle to false
    end tell
    repeat with i from 1 to myFileCount
    open (item i of myFilelist)
    delay 10
    set myCurrentFile to the active document
    tell myCurrentFile
    set DocName to name
    log DocName
    duplicate every spread of myCurrentFile to after last spread of myCombinedDoc
    close saving no
    end tell
    end repeat
    tell myCombinedDoc
    set SavePath to (OutputFolder as string) & SaveName
    log SavePath
    delete page 1
    save to SavePath
    close saving no
    end tell
    set user interaction level of script preferences to interact with all
    beep 3
    display alert "Complete" giving up after 3
    end tell
    else
    display dialog "No IDML files to process" giving up after 3
    end if
    return input
    end run

    Justin Sligh
    Member

    I have a working Applescript but was unable to post to the forum.

    Justin Sligh
    Member

    I explored an Applescript solution with some minor success. PHP is about the only language I speak. Ill keep exploring.

    in reply to: Figure number updates #87600
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Far better than cut and paste. I know addressing this issue is a common feature request.

    Thanks for your help!

    in reply to: Best way to "dumb down" InDesign? #84177
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    I would definitely give InCopy a look. Check out Anne-Marie Concepcion’s Collaborative Workflows with InDesign and InCopy (https://www.lynda.com/InDesign-tutorials/Collaborative-Workflows-with-InCopy/62220-2.html)

    in reply to: Arrow and text styled together/Multileader in InDesign #78928
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Justine,

    I would agree. That and some sort of node system would be very useful for flow charts and organization charts.

    in reply to: paragraph ranges in table of contents #78713
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    You can do page ranges when dealing with chapters. I have not seen this done with subsections.

    A custom script sounds like the best option.

    in reply to: Grep- select "dot" between numbers #76112
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Ayman,

    I try to use the simplest solution for the text you are using it on.

    (?<=\d)\.(?=\d{3})

    This using a positive lookbehind for a digit, a period, a positive lookahead for at least 3 digits. This will find the periods in your numbers, with the exception periods before a decimal place.

    Keep in mind that if you apply this to an entire document, it could find other numbers. For example, phone numbers separated by periods, and decimals (e.g., 1234.5678)

    in reply to: GREP – find first space #75973
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Eugene’s GREP find/replace will do the trick.

    Go with the most simple solution based on the text. If you create a complex GREP, you are more likely to find undesired results.

    For the sample text you provided, \w+.?$ is perfect.

    If your text is is more complex with punctuation within a single word (e.g., hyphen, apostrophe), you might need something more complex. Here is an example of a more detailed GREP that takes care of words that have one punctuation mark.

    (?<=\x20)\w+[[:punct:]]?\w+?(?=[[:punct:]]+$)

    “Find one or more word characters followed by a possible punctuation, followed by possibly one or more word characters, which comes after a normal space and before one or more punctuations at the end of a sentence.”

    If your full text is as simple as the sample text that you provided, this excessive.

    in reply to: GREP – find first space #75970
    Justin Sligh
    Member

    Jahrod,

    (^.+?)(\x20)

    \x20 refers to unicode for normal space created by the keyboard’s spacebar (U+0020). includes breaking spaces, which we do not want.

    ^ Beginning of paragraph.
    . Any character
    +? One or Many times (Shortest Match)

    () Parenthese encapsulates found text for use on the replace function.

    We cant do a positive lookbehind with the GREP ^.+? but we can find both and only use the second found set in our replace function.

    GREP Find
    “Find, as found set one, one or many characters (shortest match), which is followed by, as found set two, a normal space.”

    GREP Replace
    “Replace with $1, which was the results of the GREP within the first set of parentheses, and a forced line break.”

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 93 total)