Changing script from CS2 to CS4

Question

Hi everyone!
Having a bit of a problem (not to mention working against a deadline) with an old CS2 script created for a client. ESTK throws up an "Undefined is not an object" error.
Below is the code that seems to be the culprit. ESTK stops on the line after the .place(), assuming here that it's because the .place() doesn't return a proper object or something like that (I hate when they change scripting around too much).
Basically, what it does is placing an image into the first paragraph of a table cell. It then tries to set the dimensions to a "maximum" size and then fits the image proportionally to those dimensions.
> tmpBild = "B0000843.jpg"; //temporary for testing
newTable.rows[newTable.bodyRowCount-1].cells[4].contents = "\r";
tmpPara = newTable.rows[newTable.bodyRowCount-1].cells[4].paragraphs.item(0);
tmpPara.justification = Justification.centerAlign;
tmpImg = tmpPara.place( PICBASE + tmpBild );
tmpImg.parent.visibleBounds = ["0mm","0mm","38.236mm","38.236mm"];
tmpImg.parent.geometricBounds = ["0mm","0mm","38.236mm","38.236mm"];
tmpImg.fit( FitOptions.proportionally );
tmpImg.parent.fit( FitOptions.frameToContent );
tmpImg.parent.strokeColor = "Paper";
tmpImg.parent.strokeAlignment = StrokeAlignment.centerAlignment;
tmpImg.parent.strokeWeight = "5pt";
tmpImg.parent.strokeType = app.strokeStyles.item("Thick - Thin");
Can anybody help convert this so it works for InDesign CS4? In the meantime, I will try to take care of the rest of the script.
Btw, I have/had a scripting
b reference
in PDF format for InDesign CS2, is there anywhere that I can download that for CS4, I know it was very helpful back then.

Answer 1

What I ended up doing was create roughly enough pages in the document and create linked text frames on all pages, thus letting the table created in the first text frame flow as long as the document has enough pages. In the end processing, I then remove all the pages but the first one, effectively getting one page with one text frame containing all table contents.
This was the only way I could find to get around this problem. No matter what I did, placing content into a table cell that was overflowing a text frame just didn't work.
Here's the part where I create the pages (variable myMaxPages contains your estimated maximum number of pages). Please note in app.documents.add() that it is set to false to NOT open a window (speeds it up very slightly if you have a huge number of pages). You can remove the false and the myDocument.windows.add() statement if you don't want this or for debug purposes. The formatting mechanism on these forums seem broken, but the following code should be ok/readable once properly formatted.
>myDocument = app.documents.add( false );
with(myDocument) {
for( i = 0; i < myMaxPages; i++ ) {
myPage = pages.item(i);
with(myPage) {
if( i > 0 ) { myPrevFrame = myTextFrame; }
myTextFrame = textFrames.add();
with( myTextFrame ) {
if( i == 0 ) {
myTable = tables.add();
with( myTable ) {
bodyRowCount = 1;
columnCount = 5;
} else {
if( i > 0 ) { previousTextFrame = myPrevFrame; }
if( i < myMaxPages - 1 ) {
pages.add();
myDocument.windows.add();
While fiddling with it, I also updated my image placement code a bit:
> var myCell = myTable.rows[myTable.bodyRowCount-1].cells[4];
myCell.contents = "\r";
myCell.paragraphs.item(0).justification = Justification.centerAlign;
var myRect = myCell.insertionPoints[0].textFrames.add();
myRect.contentType = ContentType.unassigned;
myRect.visibleBounds = ["0mm","0mm","38.236mm","38.236mm"];
myRect.geometricBounds = ["0mm","0mm","38.236mm","38.236mm"];
var myFile = File(PICBASE + tmpBild);
if( myFile.exists ) {
var myImage = myRect.place( myFile );
myRect.fit( FitOptions.proportionally );
myRect.fit( FitOptions.frameToContent );
Maybe this helps someone, maybe it doesn't. Can't say that I'm happy with the behaviour of getting errors and being unable to place content in table cells that is overflowing out of a text frame, but I needed to solve it, and this is how I did it.
Of course, if anyone else has a better solution to placing images into table cells that may be in the overflowing part of a text frame, go ahead and share with the rest of us, please.