If I ever get around to it, I’ll add a check for whether all features are on or off, and force them to one state or the other before toggling. Otherwise it becomes a swap states function instead of an overall on/off toggle.

Allen

if (app.documents.length > 0) { //make sure there is at least one document open

with (app.activeDocument.textPreferences) {

//Make into a comment any of these that shouldn’t be toggled when the script is executed:

highlightCustomSpacing = ! highlightCustomSpacing // Custom Tracking/Kerning

highlightHjViolations = ! highlightHjViolations // H & J Violations

highlightKeeps = ! highlightKeeps // Keep Violations

highlightSubstitutedFonts = ! highlightSubstitutedFonts // Substituted Fonts

highlightSubstitutedGlyphs = ! highlightSubstitutedGlyphs //Substituted Glyphs

}

}

The “automatic text box” feature is a great example. When you place a frame on a master page, you cannot click on it to select it from the document page. You have to command-shift-click to Override it. However, you can place text into that frame (using File > Place without overriding it first.

I agree with Anne-Marie: I was a hardcore QX user for 15 years, so many of these features seemed weird to me. But now it’s clear that Adobe does it the more intuitive and efficient way in most (but not all) instances.

For instance, I was working on a QuarkXPress (v6) job all this week, and I couldn’t tell you how often I double-clicked a text box with the Item tool waiting for it to turn it into the Type tool (as ID would do). Instead I kept getting the Modify dialog box.

By the way, the specific issue you brought up about frames … you’re creating text frames with the Type tool, right? When you do that, as soon as you’re done drawing the frame, you can start typing in it. No need to switch tools.

The frame tools are just for a) placeholders for images (not really necessary except in templates or something); and b) graphic boxes/shapes. I like that the rectangle tool stays a rectangle, because I often need to draw out a few of them at the the same time.

I’m not saying that InDesign has no frustrations or that it’s perfect, by any means … I mean, look, in every podcast we mention something strange about it and how to work around it. But I can assure that once you stop trying to make InDesign work like QuarkXPress, and just play to its strengths — in every way from how you create masters to how you build styles — then things get much easier and feel much more natural. So hang in there!

I am met with furled brows and looks of bewildered disgust. I love INDYCS2 for its unbridled potential for creativity, but to get there is arduous!

Share with me, if anyone has stumbled on the Master Text Frame quirk where one workstation behaves as “automatic text boxes” are intended to, while the other has to undergo the Com-Click (MAC) to active the text box? Weird. I have compared prefs between the “good” and the “bad” – no luck! It ticks me off, as some folks really love that annoying auto text box.

Gerald, I’ve made a Javascript file out of your text (to make it easier for script newbies) and turned it into a downloadable file called highlight-on-off.jsx.zip.

It’s a .zip file, just unzip (uncompress it) and drop the highlight-on-off.jsx script file into your InDesign CS2’s scripts folder, Mac or Windows. Double-clicking the script via the Scripts palette toggles all highlighting on and off. Since you can assign a keyboard shortcut to a script, that solves the problem for now, I think!

If you’ve never installed an InDesign script before, it’s easy.

I filled in the other highlight preferences, so you’d need to delete unwanted lines.

if(app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightCustomSpacing == true){
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightCustomSpacing = false;
} else {
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightCustomSpacing = true;
}

if(app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightHjViolations == true){
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightHjViolations = false;
} else {
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightHjViolations = true;
}

if(app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightKeeps == true){
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightKeeps = false;
} else {
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightKeeps = true;
}

if(app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightSubstitutedFonts == true){
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightSubstitutedFonts = false;
} else {
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightSubstitutedFonts = true;
}
if(app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightSubstitutedGlyphs == true){
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightSubstitutedGlyphs = false;
} else {
app.documents[0].textPreferences.highlightSubstitutedGlyphs = true;
}

For those that don’t know there is a script menu in the presets folder. If the script is placed there then it will show up in the script pallet, you can launch it from there or assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

NOTE: this is not a cross platform solution, it will only work on Macs. It could easily be done with JavaScript for cross platform, or Visual Basic on the PC, but I dont have a PC and I’m not a big Java programer, so it would take me time to locate and look through the scripting guides.