🚀 go-pugleaf

This should get you started. It does no syntax error checking of the paragraphs that puport to be heads, so if they're not in the format you descrbe, well, either look out, or add some syntax checking to the script.

By the way, it works on the whole story and assumes that the starting top number is 1.

Before using it, change the names of the heads in the three properties at the top. You can have as many different head styles at each level as you need, as I've tried to indicate with this example. It all the heads at a particular level are of the same style (as in secondheads here) then just have one style name in the list.



property topheads : {"H1", "H1alt"} 
property secondheads : {"H2"} 
property thirdheads : {"H3", "H3alt"}

-- this script auto-numbers headings to a depth of three 
-- first, concatenate all head styles so other paras are 
-- easily ignored

copy topheads to allheads 
repeat with n from 1 to count of secondheads 
 copy item n of secondheads to end of allheads 
end repeat 
repeat with n from 1 to count of thirdheads 
 copy item n of thirdheads to end of allheads 
end repeat

tell application "InDesign 2.0.1" 
 set myStory to parent story of selection 
 set theLim to count of paragraphs of myStory 
 set topCount to 1 
 set secondCount to 1 
 set thirdCount to 1 
 repeat with n from 1 to theLim 
  set myStyle to name of applied paragraph style of paragraph n of myStory 
  if myStyle is in allheads then 
   if myStyle is in topheads then 
    set word 1 of paragraph n of myStory to topCount as string 
    set topCount to topCount + 1 
    set secondCount to 1 
    set thirdCount to 1 
   else if myStyle is in secondheads then 
    set word 1 of paragraph n of myStory to (topCount - 1) as string 
    set word 2 of paragraph n of myStory to secondCount as string 
    set secondCount to secondCount + 1 
    set thirdCount to 1 
   else if myStyle is in thirdheads then 
    set word 1 of paragraph n of myStory to (topCount - 1) as string 
    set word 2 of paragraph n of myStory to (secondCount - 1) as string 
    set word 3 of paragraph n of myStory to thirdCount as string 
    set thirdCount to thirdCount + 1 
   end if 
  end if 
 end repeat 
end tell



Note that if you label something as a level three head but it doesn't start with n.m.p. you'll get a bad result. Indeed, if you have a third level head that doesn't have three words in it (each number counts as a word), the script will give an error.

Dave