David: you can swap the contents of two (consecutive) paragraphs, but not the paragraph objects. So you risk losing all formatting. And you need to reapply the paragraph styles.

Kathy: You can use this script to swap Red and Blue. Works only to swap Red/Blue, Red/Blue, etc. To change Blue/Red, Blue/Red, exchange ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ in the script:

(function () {
  var i;
  var red;
  var next;
  app.findGrepPreferences = null;
  app.findGrepPreferences.appliedParagraphStyle = 'Red';
  red = app.documents[0].findGrep();
  for (i = red.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
    next = red[i].insertionPoints[-1].paragraphs[0];
    if (next.characters[-1].contents !== '\r') {
      next.insertionPoints[-1].contents = '\r';
    }
    if (next.appliedParagraphStyle.name == 'Blue') {
      red[i].move (LocationOptions.AFTER, next.insertionPoints[-1]);
    }
  }
}());

Peter

You may not have properly emptied the Find what and Change to fields.
You don’t need Grep, you can do this in both the Text and the Grep panels:

1. Make sure that the Find what and Change to fields are empty.
2. In the Find format panel, enter -0.75 points
3. In the Change format panel, enter 0 points. This will be displayed as ‘+not shifted’ in the panel.
4. Do the replacement.

Works for me.

Peter

Emiel,

If your dummy footnotes are formatted [[Abc]] and a footnote should be created with content Abc to replace [[Abc]], then you’d need something like this script:

(function () {
  var i;
  var placeholders;
  var fnote;
  app.findGrepPreferences = null;
  app.findGrepPreferences.findWhat = '[[(.+?)]]';
  placeholders = app.documents[0].findGrep();
  for (i = placeholders.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
    fnote = placeholders[i].insertionPoints[0].footnotes.add();
    placeholders[i].move (LocationOptions.AFTER, fnote.insertionPoints[-1]);
  }
}());

You end up with [[ and ]] in your footnotes, which you can remove with some find/replace operation.

Peter

You need to replace ^lt; with the less-than symbol.

P.

Here’s a script that sorts book files by their (first) page number.

(function () {
  var list = [];
  var docs = app.books[0].bookContents;
  for (var i = 0; i < docs.length; i++) {
    list.push ({name: docs[i].name, firstPage: Number(docs[i].documentPageRange.replace(/-\d+/,''))});
  }

  list.sort (function (a,b) {return a.firstPage - b.firstPage})

  for (i = list.length-1; i >= 0; i--) {
    docs.item(list[i].name).move (LocationOptions.AT_BEGINNING);
  }
}

Peter

> can discretionary line breaks be imported in XML?

Probably. Their hex code is 200B, you can use that. Not sure how, though.

> you are hiding every comma, not just the comma at the end of a link where a wrap occurred. Am I correct?

Not really. The script first unhides all commas, then hides the commas at the end of each line. That’s really only needed if you change the width of a column table, because the styles aren’t updated automatically when you resize a column. If you never resize, then lines 5 and 6 can be deleted (the two lines starting with cells[i].texts[0]).

P.

You say you’re new to scripting, so before you get into file renaming you should read chapter 3 in the JavaScript Tools guide, see Help > JavaScript Tools Guide CC (or CS6, etc.) in the ESTK.

You can’t rename an open document, but what you can is save it under a different name and delete the original. Here’s some code to get you started (including a simple dialog to get a page number):

(function () {
  // Get a page number from the user
  var page = prompt ('Page number: ', '0');
  // If the user pressed Escape or just closed the window, 'page' is null
  if (page !== null) {
    // Store the document's name
    var docPath = app.documents[0].fullName;
    // Create the new name by replacing the initial number with the user input
    var outfile = File (app.documents[0].filePath+'/'+app.documents[0].name.replace (/^\d+/, page));
    // Save the document using the new name
    app.documents[0].save (outfile);
    app.documents[0].close();
    // Delete the original document
    docPath.remove();
  }
}

Peter

Find what: \.\.+(?=\d) // i.e. find two or more consecutive dots followed by a digit
Change to:

Peter