InDesign User Interface mods with Startup Scripts

February 26, 2017 5 Comments

In Episode 16 of my Youtube videos, I briefly showed a startup script that added several options to the contextual menu that allowed a frame to fit a given size. But it’s not the only way I’ve modified my user interface, so this episode of “Must-Haves” is dedicated to scripts that make minor modifications to the user interface.

The modifications mentioned in this article use javascripts that are installed into the startup scripts folder. Scripts put into this folder don’t have to be double-clicked from the scripts palette, instead they are run when InDesign starts up. So let’s have a look at what features these scripts add to the user interface.

goawaystartupscreen.jsx

Origin unknown

This is a one-line script that instead of adding functionality, actually takes it away… If you don’t like the startup screen showing up whenever no documents are open, add this script to the startup scripts and you’ll never see it again.

PalettenmenusinsHauptmenu.jsx

By Gerald Singelmann (Cuppascript)

This script adds a new main menu item that shows all panel menu items within the one menu.

TomaxxiLAYERS

by Marijan Tompa (Tomaxxi)

This script adds three options at the bottom of the layers panel that allow a layer set to be applied upon the creation of new documents. The layer sets are also customisable.

BookOpenAll.jsx

By Theunis de Jong (Jongware)

This script adds two options to an InDesign book palette – open all documents and close all documents.

FileCloseAll.js

By Marc Autret, Indiscripts

This script adds an item to the file menu, particularly close all.

AddPathOperationsToLayoutMenu.jsx

By Olav Martin Kvern, Silicon Publishing

This script adds the functionality of the pathfinder palette to the contextual menu. This is a great timesaver when working with shapes, so rather than having to click off of the object or objects being worked on to perform a command, simply right click to call up the desired command.

ConvertSwatchToGrayscale.jsx

By Gabe Harbs, In-Tools

This adds an option to the color palette that allows a color to be converted to greyscale based on formulas in the script.

ControlBackgroundExport.jsx

By Marijan Tompa (Tomaxxi)

This script adds a menu item to Adobe InDesign that allows the export PDF option in the background to be enabled or disabled. For whatever reason, I prefer to watch the progress bar of the PDF being created rather than let the task run in the background, so having this option is useful to me.

Unfortunately, this script is no longer available from Tomaxxi’s website, and it’s also not my script to give away. However, this link is an InDesignSecrets.com article where the script was conceived, and similar scripts are available in the comments section of the article.

SortFilesBeforePlace_startup.jsx

by Roland Dreger, Roland Dreger GrafikDesign

Adds the “Sort and Place…” item under the place item in the file menu. Once items are selected, a UI appears prompting for the method to be sorted for the place.

PlaceByContextv4.jsx

by Gerald Singelmann, Cuppascript

Adds a place… option to the contextual menu… but with a major difference. Selected frames will have the resulting images imported into the frames either in the order they were selected; or if marqueed at once, then from a left-to-right, top to bottom order. It effectively does away with the placegun and allows images to be placed directly into awaiting frames.

SwapImages.jsx

by Gerald Singelmann, Cuppascript

Adds three options towards the bottom of the contextual menu – swap images, swap places, and load image in placecursor. Certainly a go-to script and very handy for swapping images on the same page or spread; or swapping images between frames.

TomaxxiPLACE2

by Marijan Tompa (Tomaxxi)

Adds two options at the bottom of the object styles panel that applies a given object style to placed objects. Typically, object styles can only be applied once images have been placed.

выровнять фрейм.jsx

by Eugenyus Budantsev

Translated as align the frame, this script adds four options to the bottom of the contextual menu that allows a text frame or graphic frame to resize to the margin size, page size, bleed size or baseline. Images within a graphic frame will resize to fit the frame, but this can be adjusted by editing the script and replacing the words:

FitOptions.CONTENT_TO_FRAME

with

FitOptions.CENTER_CONTENT

Or another preferred option. See this link for the other options that can be chosen.

Lastly:

In a future Must-Haves video, I will demonstrate other user interface modifications that can be made that are installed in other ways.

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Map GREP styles from one Paragraph Style to another… or many!

December 5, 2013 Leave a comment

There’s no doubt that GREP styles are useful, but hiding the GREP style function within the Paragraph Style dialog box makes applying GREP styles difficult:

  • Previously saved searches made in the find/change dialog box cannot be selected;
  • GREP styles applied to one paragraph style cannot be easily applied to another existing paragraph style

Perhaps a GREP styles panel would be easier. The panel would be like any other panel available in InDesign, and would list the GREP searches by GREP style names (similar to Paragraph and Character styles). Upon double-clicking a GREP style, a dialog box would open and allow the style to be applied to one or many Paragraph styles at once, what Character style the GREP style should apply, and the ability to load previously saved GREP searches from the find/change dialog box (where appropriate).

Great huh? Well, there isn’t one. Perhaps enough people requesting such a panel on Adobe’s wishlist page might persuade the developers at Adobe make one… perhaps fix the footnotes feature at the same time – hint, hint!

Well, until the software developers at Adobe create such a panel, the next best thing is to use workarounds or third party solutions provided in the form of javascripts.

Map GREP styles from one Paragraph Style to one or many Paragraph styles:

A combination of two scripts by separate contributors on the Adobe Forums allowed what I had not thought possible to become possible – select a paragraph style with the desired GREP styles, and then select multiple destination paragraph styles for the GREP styles to be applied. The script can be found here.

Similarly useful GREP style utilities

Peter Kahrel has a page dedicated to his various GREP utilities. Apart from having many GREP tools, his utilities accomplish other GREP style tasks, such as:

  • Ability to map a newly created (or saved search) to one or many paragraph styles with a specific character style.
  • Ability to highlight the results of a GREP search in real time.

Marijan Tompa (aka Tomaxxi) has two GREP scripts, but of interest is TomaxxiGREP. This script presents a panel that shows what GREP styles are applied to highlighted text, and gives real-time ability to change the search code and character style of the GREP style without opening the Paragraph Styles panel.

General GREP assistance

Roland Dreger has a script that highlights the results of a GREP search in real-time in a similar fashion to Peter Kahrel’s GREP editor.

Jongware has a dedicated GREP help page and a script titled “whatthegrep” that takes a GREP search and shows in layman’s terms what is being searched for.

InDesignSecrets website has a dedicated page to providing information about GREP.

Virtuosi Media‘s website provided this gem that contains long GREP chains to find specific items such as date formats or, country postcodes.

 

Filed under GREP, Page Layout, Scripts Tagged with , , , , ,

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