“Scripting is the most powerful feature in Adobe InDesign. No other feature can save you as much time, trouble, and money as scripting.”
– Adobe InDesign Scripting Tutorial
Scripting may seem daunting to the uninitiated. However, you don’t need a degree in engineering to install, use, create and modify scripts that will allow you automate complex layout and design tasks—all you need is a bit of guidance from a world-renowned scripting guru!
Join Peter Kahrel, Typefi Engineer and scripting expert, for a recorded webinar series on scripting for Typefi users. This series will teach you:
- How to use scripts in InDesign;
- How to write scripts that interact seamlessly with Typefi’s composition engine;
- Simple scripts that will enhance Typefi’s built-in functionality;
- Advanced techniques that will allow you to utilise features of Typefi’s composition engine in your own scripts;
- And more!
DO MORE with Scripting 1: InDesign script events
While scripts are usually deployed via InDesign’s scripting panel, they can also be incorporated directly into Typefi workflows to expand on the composition engine’s core functionality.
All custom InDesign scripts are designed to run at a specific event. This webinar explains the nature of these events, and provides a solid foundation for those who want to start writing scripts for Typefi workflows.
This introductory webinar is also useful for anyone who uses Typefi Server, and who would like to learn more about how to deploy scripts in a Typefi workflow.
DO MORE with Scripting 1A: Deploying scripts in a Typefi workflow
In this brief webinar, Peter demonstrates how to deploy scripts in Typefi workflows, and highlights the significant improvements that have been made to script deployment functionality in Typefi 8.4.
This recording is a supplement to DO MORE with Scripting 1: Script Events.
DO MORE with Scripting 2: Writing and using custom scripts
This webinar addresses some practicalities of writing and using custom scripts in Typefi workflows.
You’ll learn about the script development environment (Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit), differences between InDesign Desktop and InDesign Server, interacting with the Typefi Engine, protecting the Typefi Engine’s environment by ringfencing custom scripts, engine defaults, and testing and deploying scripts.
DO MORE with Scripting 3: Typefi Document Object Model (DOM)
The Typefi Document Object Model (DOM) provides scripting access to the Typefi Designer plug-ins, enabling scripts to interact with Typefi items such as Elements, Fields, and Sections.
This webinar offers step-by-step demos on accessing the DOM, as well as finding and modifying Elements.
Peter also offers some very useful insights on how the Typefi Engine manages floats, and some traps to avoid when deploying scripts in running Typefi jobs.
DO MORE with Scripting 4: Bringing it together in a script
The challenge featured in the case study is a common one—a publication is being automatically laid out with photographs that appear at the top of pages by default. However, it’s often desirable to override this placement rule to make sure that photographs are placed in their own text section.
In this episode, Peter shows how to achieve this using the techniques learned in the previous episodes, as well as a few new ones.
DO MORE with Scripting 5: Scripting Typefi AutoFit
Typefi’s AutoFit plug-in for InDesign has helped users design complex and responsive layouts more quickly and with less work since 2005.
While the free version of AutoFit is not scriptable, AutoFit can be scripted when included as part of a full Typefi installation.
In this webinar, Peter provides an introduction to Typefi AutoFit, and demonstrates how to use AutoFit scripting to:
- Return a page item’s dimensions (even if the item is an inline in overset text);
- Return correct dimensions on rotated frames; and
- Change or set a frame’s dimensions.
Peter also shows you how to solve a commonly encountered scenario—when an overset inline image causes a large gap at the bottom of a frame.
About Peter Kahrel
Peter was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He trained as a linguist at the University of Amsterdam and has an MA and a PhD, specialising in syntax, semantics, and typology. He has lived in the UK since 1994, working as a typesetter, editor, copy-editor, and indexer (and sometimes as a designer too) for publishers in the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany, preparing for the press both books and journals. He combined this with teaching at the Linguistics Department at Lancaster University.
Peter has been programming InDesign with JavaScript since 2003, mainly to cut out the tedium that faces every typesetter and indexer but in equal measure because it’s good fun. Peter has worked as a script developer at Typefi since 2010, and is highly regarded in the global InDesign scripting community.
Check out Peter’s website—which includes a bunch of free scripts—at CreativePro.