New CS4 features

Question

At Dave's suggestion, I'm starting a thread for discussing new scripting
features is CS4. I'd divide new features into three categories: 1)
improvements/additions to the InDesign DOM, 2) improvements to the ESTK,
and 3) improvements/additions to ScriptUI.
I'll start off this thread with one improvement on each of these fronts.
(There are lots...)
Category 1:
There's a new isValid property for all InDesign objects. This is
something that's been in the SDK for ever, but only made its way into
the scripting DOM of CS4. This means that instead of try/catch every
time you're trying to figure out if an object is valid, you can just write:
if(myObject.isValid){DoMyStuff()}
or,
if(! myObject.isValid){return}
This is a small thing but in my book it's huge!
Category 2:
There's a new function panel in the ESTK which shows all the functions
in the current script and makes navigating to the functions very easy.
Category 3:
There are now keyboard and mouse events, so you can now create widgets
which do everything the built in dialog scripting widgets do (and a
whole lot more!!!)
Harbs
http://www.in-tools.com

Answer 1

Noel, nothing wrong with Roy's posts for me (using the default web interface). It may just be you :-)
Talking about interfaces, please don't comment on this one. It does the job, innit? (I'm sure someone else could do better with ScriptUI. Go ahead.)
var myStyleList = new Array;
for(c = 1; c < app.activeDocument.paragraphStyles.length; c++)
if (app.activeDocument.paragraphStyles.item(c).otfStylisticAlternate == true)
  name = "[+] ";
else
  name = "[-] ";
name += app.activeDocument.paragraphStyles.item(c).name;
myStyleList.push(name);
var myCharsList = new Array;
for(c = 1; c < app.activeDocument.characterStyles.length; c++)
if (app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item(c).otfStylisticAlternate == true)
  name = "[+] ";
else
  name = "[-] ";
name += app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item(c).name;
myCharsList.push (name);
var parDialog = app.dialogs.add({name:"Salt your Styles",canCancel:true});
with(parDialog)
with(dialogColumns.add())
  with(dialogRows.add())
   parCheck = checkboxControls.add({staticLabel:"Paragraph style"});
   parDropdown = dropdowns.add({stringList:myStyleList, selectedIndex:0});
  with(dialogRows.add())
   charCheck = checkboxControls.add({staticLabel:"Character style"});
   charDropdown = dropdowns.add({stringList:myCharsList, selectedIndex:0});
var result = parDialog.show();
if (result)
  if (parCheck.checkedState)
   app.activeDocument.paragraphStyles.item(parDropdown.selectedIndex+1).otfStylisticAlternate =
    !app.activeDocument.paragraphStyles.item(parDropdown.selectedIndex+1).otfStylisticAlternate;
  if (charCheck.checkedState)
   app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item(charDropdown.selectedIndex+1).otfStylisticAlternate =
    !app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item(charDropdown.selectedIndex+1).otfStylisticAlternate;
parDialog.destroy();