… Make sure each frame ends with a hard return, or preferably even a Break Frame character … Perhaps that's what's messing your frames up …

If it is, I might be able to insert Frame Breaks where needed with the script.

Good! — One thing left to do, here is a version that changes the last hard return into a Frame Break, or in case there is no return, adds the break.

Man I need to learn how to script.

Why not have a go thinking of something you'd like to script and see how far you get? The JS Guide over at Adobe's (InDesign section, “Scripting Stuff” button) has a lot of snippets for common tasks, so you can cut 'n' paste entire sections to make something new. And there always is the Adobe Scripting forum for the odd question left.

Anyway, here is the amended script. The changed section is around the “combine me with next” clause.

var combineMe = new Array;

for (a=0; a<app.selection.length; a++)
{
if (app.selection[a] instanceof TextFrame)
combineMe.push(app.selection[a]);
}
combineMe.sort (function (a,b) { return (a.geometricBounds[0] < b.geometricBounds[0]) || (a.geometricBounds[0] == b.geometricBounds[0] && a.geometricBounds[1] < b.geometricBounds[1]) ? -1 : 1; } );

for (a=0; a<combineMe.length-1; a++)
{
if (combineMe[a].nextTextFrame == null)
{
nextFree = a+1;
while (nextFree < combineMe.length && combineMe[nextFree].previousTextFrame != null)
nextFree++;
if (nextFree < combineMe.length)
{
// Add Frame Break when needed:
if (combineMe[a].characters[-1].contents != SpecialCharacters.FRAME_BREAK)
{
if (combineMe[a].characters[-1].contents == “\r”)
combineMe[a].characters[-1].contents = SpecialCharacters.FRAME_BREAK;
else
combineMe[a].insertionPoints[-1].contents = SpecialCharacters.FRAME_BREAK;
}
combineMe[a].nextTextFrame = combineMe[nextFree];
}
}
}

Hey, no prob. I enjoy solving little problems like this

Try this one for size. Select any amount of unlinked (!) text frames in any screen order, and they'll get linked, top to bottom, left to right. The script will not mess up any existing linked frames, even if some are already linked — it'll skip these and link to their first/last frames instead:

var combineMe = new Array;

for (a=0; a<app.selection.length; a++)
{
if (app.selection[a] instanceof TextFrame)
combineMe.push(app.selection[a]);
}
combineMe.sort (function (a,b) { return (a.geometricBounds[0] < b.geometricBounds[0]) || (a.geometricBounds[0] == b.geometricBounds[0] && a.geometricBounds[1] < b.geometricBounds[1]) ? -1 : 1; } );
for (a=0; a<combineMe.length-1; a++)
{
if (combineMe[a].nextTextFrame == null)
{
nextFree = a+1;
while (nextFree < combineMe.length && combineMe[nextFree].previousTextFrame != null)
nextFree++;
if (nextFree < combineMe.length)
combineMe[a].nextTextFrame = combineMe[nextFree];
}
}

(Ed.: Forum didn't like font changes :-P Restored to normality — I hope)

… Make sure each frame ends with a hard return, or preferably even a Break Frame character … Perhaps that's what's messing your frames up …

If it is, I might be able to insert Frame Breaks where needed with the script.

Hey, no prob. I enjoy solving little problems like this

Try this one for size. Select any amount of unlinked (!) text frames in any screen order, and they'll get linked, top to bottom, left to right. The script will not mess up any existing linked frames, even if some are already linked — it'll skip these and link to their first/last frames instead:

var combineMe = new Array;

for (a=0; a<app.selection.length; a++)
{
if (app.selection[a] instanceof TextFrame)
combineMe.push(app.selection[a]);
}
combineMe.sort (function (a,b) { return (a.geometricBounds[0] < b.geometricBounds[0]) || (a.geometricBounds[0] == b.geometricBounds[0] && a.geometricBounds[1] < b.geometricBounds[1]) ? -1 : 1; } );
for (a=0; a<combineMe.length-1; a++)
{
if (combineMe[a].nextTextFrame == null)
{
nextFree = a+1;
while (nextFree < combineMe.length && combineMe[nextFree].previousTextFrame != null)
nextFree++;
if (nextFree < combineMe.length)
combineMe[a].nextTextFrame = combineMe[nextFree];
}
}

(Ed.: Forum didn't like font changes :-P Restored to normality — I hope)

There is no such beast

Every time I thought I found “the definitive GREP” something else popped up — latest major addition was support for “?” queries, and that opened another can of snakes. Best you can hope for is “something that works 80% of the time”, I think.

As for Casey's problems,

(1) No problem if you only allow a period inside, that is, it always should be followed by a alphanumeric.

(2) Also no problem — all you need to do is end with “/?”

You can build something up from this, for starters:

(http|ftp)://[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]+.([a-zA-Z_0-9]+.)+[a-zA-Z_]+(/[a-zA-Z_0-9.]+)*/?

– it found all 7 URLs in the document I happened to have on my screen right now.

(Ed. Hah. Didn't address Casey's #1 — never allow a period end. Some shuffling around will solved that, tho'.)

Not possible … GREP styles only work on “real” text. Internally, a text variable is represented by one single (albeit wide) character.

It's the same as with Initial Caps and Nested Styles — these also “see” an entire variable as a single character. It's also the reason that automatic headers run amok when they're too wide for their own frame.

I wonder if this got solved in CS5.