🚀 go-pugleaf

Len,

Your current approach is the only feasible one. You can't create new properties for Indesign's objects. In some cases it's easy: text frames, for instance, can have their label set to a certain value, as can several other objects (cells, the application, etc.).

But characters don't have the label property, so you have to use an existing property, as you did with overstrike. If you don't like using that particular one, have a look through the OMV under "Character" and see if there's a property that suits your needs better than overstrike.

What you can use use this: in a script you can assign a character (text, word, etc.) an underline colour without setting underline. In the interface you'd have to enable underline, then set a colour, then disable underline. In a script enabling and disabling underline isn't necessary: just set myCharacter.underlineColor to some value ('Black' for "yes", 'White' for "no" or something like that).

So though you can't add new properties to characters, they have so many already that you're sure to find one you can exploit.

Peter