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Last week’s blog was a quick overview for automating InCopy for a story-first InDesign workflow. We will now look at a few details that can be added to that script to manage how the text is imported from a file.
If you want to allow the user to determine the properties to be in effect when the text is imported, set the showing options property of the place method to true.
For our example script, this would be part of the placeStory handler:
on placeStory(textFileRef, docRef)
tell application "Adobe InCopy CC 2014"
set storyRef to story 1 of docRef
tell insertion point 1 of storyRef
place textFileRef showing options true
end tell
end tell
end placeStory
On the other hand, you can have the script set the values as needed for the appropriate import options. Depending on the type of file being imported, these preferences can be part of one of the following:
These preferences are for the application, so once set will be applied to all documents thereafter. If your settings are only for the specific import, you may want to save the original settings, have the script set the properties as desired, and restore the original settings after the settings are used. However, if you will want the settings to be permanent, you may want a separate script to set the properties for the application and only override these settings as needed for specific needs.
For the most part, these settings are self-explanatory. There are only a few settings exposed for plain text files. On the other hand, the list of properties for Microsoft Word and RTF files is considerably longer. The following sample demonstrates:
activate
set textFileRef to choose file with prompt "Select file for editing"
set fileInfo to info for textFileRef
if kind of fileInfo is "Plain Text Document" then
setPlainTextPrefs()
else if kind of fileInfo contains "Rich Text Document" or kind of fileInfo contains "Word" then
setRTFPrefs()
end if
--included for testing; assumes document is open
tell application "Adobe InCopy CC 2014"
tell insertion point 1 of story 1 of document 1
place textFileRef
end tell
end tell
--========
--HANDLERS
--========
on setPlainTextPrefs()
tell application "Adobe InCopy CC 2014"
tell text import preferences
--see dictionary for list of settings for this property
set character set to UTF8
set convert spaces into tabs to false
set spaces into tabs count to 5
set strip returns between lines to true
set strip returns between paragraphs to true
set use typographers quotes to true
end tell
end tell
end setPlainTextPrefs on setRTFPrefs()
tell application "Adobe InCopy CC 2014"
tell word RTF import preferences
set convert bullets and numbers to text to true
--can be none, page break or column break
set convert page breaks to none
set import endnotes to true
set import footnotes to true
set import index to false
set import TOC to false
set import unused styles to false
set preserve graphics to false
set preserve local overrides to true
set preserve track changes to true
set remove formatting to false
--can be resolve clash use existing, resolve clashauto rename, and resolve clash use new
set resolve character style clash to resolve clash use existing
set resolve paragraph style clash to resolve clash use existing
set use typographers quotes to true
end tell
end tell
end setRTFPrefs
Notice how the type of file is detected prior to setting the preferences. The script is provided only as an example.
Refer to our script overview in last week’s blog. Add text import preferences as needed and see what a script can do for automating your text editing workflow. Next week we will take an in-depth look at scripts to clean the text of double spaces and other common problems.