AUTOMATING XML IN INDESIGN
WORKING WITH XML I recently saw a demonstration of using XML import into InDesign. For me, the manual process looked laborious. This turned my attention to using scripts to import XML. Using a script to import XML is easy enough once you have an XML file. Most databases have an XML option. But that’s another […]
IMPORT MICROSOFT WORD FILES
MICROSOFT WORD OR GOOGLE DOCS Your client often gets copy from a number of people who don’t have access to Adobe InCopy. The best option then may be to have the document created in Microsoft Word or, for a collaborative workflow, have the document created in Google Docs. From within Google Docs you or your […]
AUTOMATING YOUR AUTOMATION III
APPLESCRIPT LIBRARY OPTIONS In previous blog posts we explored some of the ways that AppleScript users can automate the process of writing and repurposing scripts. Some of the processes we looked at were: Saving and reusing scripts as templates Activating and taking advantage of resources in the Scripts menu Creating and saving handlers as reusable […]
AUTOMATING YOUR AUTOMATION
NEW APPLESCRIPT CAPABILITY As of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the AppleScript Editor gave Macintosh users a new capability: script templates. This allows a user to access script templates using AppleScript Editor’s File > New From Template menu item. Script templates are saved in a protected folder where you can have any number of sub-folders to organize your […]
IMPORTING AND STYLING XML
XML for Adobe InDesign In our previous post we introduced a sample of an XML file. The text of the file served its purpose in illustrating a CALS table. But there remains the need to give a tip-of-the-iceburg explanation of what XML markup is all about. XML MARKUP XML (Extended Markup Language) is one of […]
IMPORTING TABLES
IMPORTING TABLES in previous posts we discuss ways in which Adobe InDesign supports importing tables: importing tables from an Excel file importing tab/return delimited text and creating tables using convert to table You can also import a table formatted as HTML and tables written in CALS table format. Both of these two formas are actually […]
STYLING TABLES
STYLING TABLES In our previous post we styled the text in the table cells using a paragraph style with emphasis on using the document’s default paragraph style for the majority of the text. We could have created a cell style instead and styled the text based on the cell style. Like an object style, a […]
IMAGES IN TABLES
IMAGES IN TABLES With the latest release of InDesign Adobe added the ability to place images in table cells. Now, if you manually place an image into a table, InDesign will consider the cell as an image frame. All frame and fitting options apply, making it much easier to create tables that include both text […]
SEASONS GREETINGS
In the spirit of the season we will look at a script that takes advantage of a repeat loop and text concatenation to create the Twelve Days of Christmas. The AppleScript version is especially effective if played on a Macintosh with sound turned on. Just for fun, change the value for the variable theVoice at the top of […]
AUTOMATING FIND CHANGE OBJECTS IN INDESIGN
FIND AND CHANGE OBJECTS In our previous post, the discussion centered around using find/change for text. Here we will use scripts to find and change objects such as graphic lines, graphic frames, and text frames. For example, a script can find all graphic lines that have a stroke weight of .5 and change the width […]