Comments on: More INX Tricks: Changing PDF pages and Layer Visibility

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:46:42 +0000

Robert-

I don’t know of an easy way to answer that.

TextFrame objects have attributes to define the ParentStory they belong to, and in the case of linked frames, a PreviousTextFrame and a NextTextFrame. There’s also an attribute called ItemTransform that lists an array of values to tell InDesign where on the spread the TextFrame sits.

You might want to look at the specification and cookbook documents on the Adobe Devnet.

Jose-

Sorry I missed your comment till now. You would have to manipulate the ItemTransform values on each of the TextFrame elements. It wouldn’t be a trivial task, but with some experimentation, I bet you could find the pattern of values to change.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:49:59 +0000

Hi,

I have a special question on idml.

How can I get the order of stories (display order textframe in indesign) ?

By: Jose Ramos

Jose Ramos — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:34:26 +0000

I apologize for being late to the party again, but, what if I had a document with 1000 text frames all of the same size, and wanted to change to a specific size. Say from 100pts wide to 50pts wide. What would I look for in the code?

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:44:59 +0000

Thanks, Shmuel! I did wonder about that, but since I didn’t have to deal with it, I didn’t wonder too much.

By: Shmuel

Shmuel — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:43:14 +0000

>> At the end of the Pgnb attribute is a character which corresponds to the absolute page number in the PDF. If there are fewer than ten pages in the PDF, that character is the page number. If there are more than ten pages, things get more complicated. Letters replace numbers, so the 10th page is “a” the 11th page is “b” and so on. <<

I suspect that the page number is actually stored in hexadecimal text format, so that after “f” (fifteen) comes “10″ (sixteen). Otherwise, when you run out of alphabet, you run out of page numbers.

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:23:31 +0000

Jason-

There is no schema for INX, but the next best thing is a document called “ScriptingDefs.h”. Download the CS3 SDK, and look in source > public > includes. The document has a huge list of script classes, events, properties, etc which which translate those opaque little 4-letter codes.

As for IDML, you can get the schema here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/indesign/docs/idml-schema.zip

Have fun!

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:09:55 +0000

Is there a DTD or schema that you’ve seen to help you find these elements? Or did you just dig through it looking for elements and attributes that sounded like they’d work?

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:19:24 +0000

This is awesome. Thanks for glopping around and digging up these tricks. Note that you can also bypass the Show Import Options script trick by using the Show Import Options checkbox in the Relink dialog box, as mentioned here. But the INX or IDML route lets you batch process many images quickly! Very interesting.

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:52:20 +0000

I edited spread.xml files. If you open the IDML package and look in the Spreads folder, you’ll see all the document spreads listed in order as separate XML files.

But, if the PDF or graphic is on a master page, then edit the files in the MasterSpreads folder.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:41:49 +0000

Very cool. Mike, in the IDML example, which of the files contained in the .idml did you edit?