🚀 go-pugleaf

Rufus, 

I also began learning scripting quite recently, pretty much from scratch,
and there are a few things that really has helped me in understanding what's
going on. The first thing I would suggest is to read Ole's excellent
introduction to scripting in InDesign's scripting guide. The second is
Dave's tip to always have the result window open.


And here are some other things I personally find helpful:

1) Do one thing at a time. If you script is supposed to to many things in a
row try to make sure that each part works by itself, then later you can
combine the parts.

1) make sure you are referring to the right object. For example, the first
time I wanted to call a "spread" I simply couldn't do it, because I tried
something like "tell active spread of active document..." which doesn't
work, because spread belongs to a window, and therefore it should have been
"tell active spread of active WINDOW". To find out whether I'm actually
calling an object I mostly try "get" first of all - In this case "get active
spread of active window" would actually return something meaningful in the
result window (the one you should keep open - remember :-)

2) make sure you are using legitimate commands. The "close" command is ok
for a document, but not for a layer. The scripting guide will help you find
what commands there are.

3) make sure you can get and set properties. For example, if you like to
create a guide it helps to first do create a guide in the active document
and then tell InDesign to "get properties of guide 1 of active document".
That way you can understand what kind of properties there are. Many times
you simply just exchange "get" to "set" to change the properties. Note
however that properties may be read-only and then can't be set this way.

4) Be patient, it does take some time to learn but I must say I feel it is
incredibly rewarding when you succeed.
 


On 02-12-19 16.18, in article 1de70da9.6@WebX.la2eafNXanI, "Rufus Deuchler"
<info@rdcomm.net> wrote:

> Thanks CouponBoy,
> nice example, in the meantime I got to that by myself... I love what this
> scripting stuff can do. Yes, the ID scripting guide is an essential resource.
> Will look at your post in XChange,
> Thanks again and have good holidays,
> Ruf