[CS3 JS] Exchange Character Style Problem!

Hello experienced JS people,
The situation is as follows -
I have a document that MAY have the Character Style 'A'.
If this were to be true - then I'd like to exchange it for Character Style 'B'.
Sounds simple doesn't it.... It's KILLING ME!
This must be possible? The problem is - I don't know how!
My scripting lookes like this so far:
> app.findTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = "File name";
app.changeTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = "Document No";
oneDoc.changeText();
Help would be greatly welcomed....
Thanks in advance,
Lee

I think the problem is in the word "MAY".
You need to have a test for existence:
var styletofind = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item("File name");
if (styletofind != null) {
var styletochange = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item("Document No");
app.findTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = styletofind;
app.changeTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = styletochange;
oneDoc.changeText();
But even this might not be enough if the character styles in question are in groups.
Dave

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So, I would like a script that finds all occurrences of two specific character styles (Hyperlink and bibref) and then corrects the font size of the found text to that of the underlying paragraph style. These styles can appear anywhere within a document, including in tables. I have trawled through this forum and found enough to be able to search for the character styles, but I cannot fathom how to apply the font size of the underlying paragraph style. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
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Hi Peter
Thank you very much for your quick response. I tried your script and it did as you intended by clearing the Font, Font Style and Point Size in the character style, but unfortunately it did not correct the problem of the style becoming some default style and size (Times New Roman 10 pt) when placed into ID.
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Hi All-
I have a CS3 file where I imported character styles (using the character styles palette -> load character styles) from another file. I apply that style to a type layer, it looks fine (i.e. is applied correctly), then I save the file, and close. Upon opening the file that char. style's color is changed from white to a spot color. Any idea why?
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Hi,
I had a similar problem, which was caused by type having "overrides"
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This has something to do with applying a new style to type which already
has some appearance attributes.
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Bye...
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Perhaps your character styles apply more than you actually want? I.e., rather than just "+Italic" it also applies custom tracking. You should use character styles only to override the stuff you really want to change.
You can check by calling up the definition for those character styles; the huge "Style Settings" text box lists all the attributes it changes.

[JS][CS3]Applying Character Style to First Word

I am a noob as far as Javascript is concerned, and I was hoping for a little guidance.
Here's my scenario: I have a book that has been typeset all in one file; the main content is all in one story. I want to select the first word of every text frame on each page and apply a character style. My goal is to utilize this character style to indicate page breaks in the XML--I'll map the style to a specific tag.
So far I have this poor specimen:
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Well, you were on the right track, but testing 'myText' fails if there is no text frame on a page because it fails one line earlier
>var myTextFrame = myPage.textFrames.item(0);
just before this, you should test the number of text frames:
if (myPage.textFrames.length > 0)
... your stuff ..
Only use this if you are absolutely positive there is just a single text frame on each page! A slightly better way would be to always loop over each textframe:
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var myTextFrame = myPage.textFrames.item(frames);
..etc.
in which case you also don't have to test its length first (the loop will not be executed if there are zero text frames).
[Techy] Since you have only one continuous story, an even better way would be to loop over the textframes of that story alone. You have to identify the story somehow, and I usually click the text cursor in the one I need:
myStory = app.selection[0].parentStory;
or you can rely on the fact that the story starts in the only text frame on page 1:
myStory = app.activeDocument.pages[0].stories[0];
(I think that oughta work.) Then, each frame of this story up till the end can be found in the array
myStory.textContainers
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[AS][CS3] Finding text with character style

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Sorry for this question (and my terrible English, by the way), I'm a javascript noob and I know when I've reached my limits.
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var doc=app.activeDocument;
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Thanks in advance to whoever decides to spend more than a minute thinking about my humble worries, and my apologies for shamelessly ripping some of your lines of code for my purposes.

Okay, tried a few things and got really weird results!
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3. You can duplicate the style, but then you get a copy in the same group. Still no luck.
4. Finally! What is the parent of a paragraph style?
Document | Application | ParagraphStyleGroup
"Application" is easy -- that's when you make a style global. So what's the difference between 'Document' and 'paragraphStyleGroup'? Simple -- well, when you finally get it...
pStylesInGroup[j].move (LocationOptions.AT_END, doc);
moves the style out of the group and to the end of the list in the document. I don't think it's possible to move it directly to a specific position into the main style list -- you first have to move it out of a group, then move it around in its own list.
Fortunately, it returns its new position as a ParagraphStyle again, so if needed, you can use
newStyle = pStylesInGroup[j].move (LocationOptions.AT_END, doc);
newStyle.move (LocationOptions.AFTER, pStyles[1]);
-- I didn't really try that out, but it should work.

JS:CS3 Newbie needs help! find/change character styles

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You've not found yourself the easiest of tasks! You need GREP find/replace, not text. Do you have any experience with GREP? It's worth investigating, it's a powerful feature. The script below handles bold. For clarity, it doesn't do any error checking: it assumes that there's a document with text in it and that the document contains a character style called 'bold'.
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I then nearly fell off my chair, because it worked. Thanks, Dave!

// You need to have a textFrame selected
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if (myChar.contents == "l" && myChar.appliedCharacterStyle.name == "CharStyleWin"){
myFrame.paragraphs.item(h).appliedParagraphStyle = myApplyStyle;
/* Edited at 11.21 */

[CS5 JS] Problem in Applying character styles xml tag names

Hi,
e.g. 1
<italic>This is a italic text with superscript value</italic>
e.g.2
This is a superscript text with <bold>Bold superscript</bold>
<italic> mapped to character style "italic" and
 mapped to character style "sup"
In my java script I already mapped the xml tags to specific character styles. In some of the cases (see e.g.1 and e.g.2) I need to map it to other character styles.
In e.g.1 I need to apply a new character styles "italicSup" for the text "superscript value" same way
In e.g.2 I need to apply a new character styles "BoldSup" for the text "Bold superscript".
Can any know how to do this?
Green4ever

FYI, I am using
Win Xp-SP2, CS5 7.0.3

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Recently I have noticed that when I alter a paragraph or character style that the text won't change to the changes I performed.
It doesn't matter whether it's just the preview mode or when I clicked "OK"- no changes will be performed whether it be typeface or size.
Does anyone know what can be wrong?

My bet is that you haven't got a clear understanding of the difference between character styles and paragraph styles, and that you are using the former incorrectly.
Paragraph styles include basic font formatting information that is applied to all text in a paragraph UNLESS that text also has either a character style or a local format override (select the text and change something) applied. The formatting heirarchy works with paragraph style at the bottom, character styles trump formatting applied in the paragraph style, and local formatting trums everything else.
Select the text in question. Look in the the Paragraph Style field in the Control panel, or open the Paragraph Styles panel to see what is applied. If there is a plus sign next to the name local formatting overrides have been applied (hold the Alt or Opt key and click the style name to remove them), but character styles are not considered overrides, so if there is no plus sign, check the Character Style field in the control panel or ope the Character Styles panel to check if any character styles are also applied.

CS3 5.0.3.662 - Unable to create shortcut to character style

Hello, I'm trying to assignate a shortcut to different character styles through the edit style menu, however when I place the cursor over the shortcut square nothing happens while I try to input a shortcut for it.
Any idea why this isn't working? I tried to search for this at the define shortcuts, but couldn't find one that said something about applying a character style.
I know i can apply each and every one of them separately, but since I'm doing a kind of dictionary, I want to change the style while writing from "word" style to "definition" style and "example" style without having to use the mouse.
Thanks
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thanks! I didn't know it had to be with the numeric pad. About the nested styles, I'll check it out to see if I understand it (a bit new to this).
edit
Nice, I checked out the nested styles, it works almost perfectly for my needs. I might use a bit of the nested style and also the shortcut keys since I haven't figured out a rule because my examples sometimes appear after the definition, but then another definition comes in with yet another example (specific for that other variant). I guess i could use an em space or something like that to mark the difference while Im typing.
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InDesign erroneously applies character style to imported text

For a year, I had been importing text into InDesign with little trouble until this problem starting happening and I can't figure out why.
Let's say I have a CS3 file with defined character and paragraph styles.
If I draw an empty text box, InDesign shows the character style "superscript" and paragraph style "ext_all" are applied. I can select "Break Link to Style," but if I import text into that box, the "superscript" character style is applied.
The following happens whether I create a text box first or not:
If I import a styled Word file, all the text comes in styled "superscript" until it reaches a Word character style.
If I import an InDesign Tagged Text file, all the text comes in styled "superscript" until it reaches a character tag.
If I import a very simple one sentence rtf file, all the text is styled "superscript."
Anyone run into this? I've tried googling, but can't find a discussion about it. Thanks in advance!

Perhaps you've inadvertently set those styles as the defaults? That would happen if you click on them with nothing selected. For the current document switch to the text tool and make sure there is no cursor active or text frame selected, then check to see that the character style is set to [None] and the paragraph style to what you would like to be your default. Also check the settings in the character and paragraph panels.
To make sure this doesn't carry forward into any more new documents, if indeed that was the problem, close all documents and repeat the above steps. With no documents open your selections will become the defaults for all new work until changed.
Peter

URGENT: Paragraph/Character style help (doing massive amounts manually)

I'm using CS3 at work but if it's magically easier, i may have access to cs4 (less likely but possible). It's a long post but I wanted to be in depth with my problem which at its core is simple. I have included a 2-page spread example in pdf.
What I greatly need help with is your opinion of how I can set this up to speed up the process, unify the document, and make future edits simple instead of crazy difficult. Can I configure a paragraph style to NOT replace font style? Can that style include my preset tabs (for bullets) which list as follows?:
number, small letter, roman numeral, bullet
Let me start by saying I SCOUR the net and all available options before posting. I'm cleaning up/editing a production manual for a portrait company I work for and am new to indesign but have figured many things out. I'm quite proficient with the Adobe Suite and computers. I'm using last year's indesign file and it was done very poorly. The words are right, the lines are right, the tabs are terrible and i've needed to move many pages out of order and add plenty. I also chose to disable 1 text box that flows from page to page (i see now it's helpful but they had made it impossible for me to use the existing one and I didn't have time to redo). The pictures I can add and manipulate freely but an embedded text-wrapped version would be nice as well (less important by far).
The manual is spiral bound with text on the right page and a notes page on the left for the layout. (flipped open the left side is lines for notes and the right side is operations). It's set up with a Header at the top (in some cases a sub header almost identical right below it), a space or two, then an outline format IE:
1)     Open job
          a) Go into G:\Location
          b) Select job code
               i) *Note: Be sure to select the right one (etc)..
2)      Continue
                                   |                                                    |
                                   |                                                    |
                                   |                    Picture                      |
                                   |                                                    |
                                   |______________________________|
Page size is 8.5x11 with a .5 safe print border all around (document is 11x17). The Document is about 100 pages of written directions (so double that for indesign pages). It will be printed on a Xerox IGen3. The whole book give or take is set up like that. Thus, a few paragraph and character styles are in order. I've been editing/cleaning up each page re-tabbing, re-laying out. It's hell and must be done in 2 days.
I'm using Myriad Pro universally as the font. The sizes are as follows:
Header: 16 bold center
Sub (if applicable): 15 bold center
Body: 12 point
I've gotten paragraph styles to work sort of. I tried setting up numbering and bulleting but it's been giving me so much grief that I typed those all by hand or have just adjusted existing ones (I don't have much time currently, BUT need to learn for future updates and to convert it to styles). I know styles are the way to go with a couple master pages involving bulleting and character styles... however I could not become an expert overnight unfortunately; i tried =)
The real killer for paragraph styles have been:
- The portions of the directions that pertain to specific menu options or clicks are in bold, occasional important info is red. Normal text including numbers/bullets are normal. There are many words repeated that need bold so perhaps some kind of search/replace script could help however im not positive.
- When I go to apply a paragraph style it must make all type bold or not bold. It doesn't replace the color of the text which is good.
- Having major trouble with bullets/numbers working the way i'd like.

It is unfortunate you only have two days, but you could play around with these suggestions below and see if they help more than they hender... (NOTE: SAVE A COPY OF THE DOCUMENT BEFORE YOU START MONKEYING AROUND IN CASE YOU HATE THE RESULTS!)
For starters, you could certainly do the lists via stylesheet. It would require 3 lists based on your sample. Base list 2 and 3 on list 1 or all 3 on a default List paragraph style, so that you can globally control your list formatting without having to change all 3 each time you want to apply a tweak.
List 1 would be leve 1, 1,2,3 style with indents like 3p, -1.5, 3p. Align right and don't restart numbers. If you want bold numbers, make a bold character style called List# and apply it.
List 2 would be level 2, a,b,c style with indents like 4p, -1p, 4p. Restart on level change.
List 3 would be level 3, i,ii,iii style with indents like 6.5p, -1.5p, 6.5p. Restart on level change.
Tweak as necessary to match your actual text.
Then just do a global GREP search and replace, replacing out the manual list numbers with real styles.
List 1 replace ^\t[0-9]+\t with ~- (discretionary hyphen is a nice invisible character that won't break anything) and paragraph style of list1.
List 2 replace ^\t\t[a-z].\t with ~- and paragraph style list2.
List 3 replace ^\t\t\t[ivx].\t with ~- and paragraph style list3.
The last step of list replacement would be to manually restart numbering for each new list.
As for the keywords, unless you have a complete list of what will be bold and it will always be bold, just manually style them with character styles.
Make a character style called "Keyword" and apply bold to the formatting.
Make a character style called "Keyword Important" and apply bold and red formatting.
If you know certain words are always, always the same and you have CS4, you could create a GREP style that applied Keyword character style to any words that matched.
For example, if the keywords Left, Right, Top, Bottom always were bolded at the beginning of the paragraph, you could add the GREP style that applied Keyword to ^(Top|Bottom|Left|Right).
In all likelihood you will be applying a lot of manual keywords too though, so make sure you put a keyboard shortcut on (like cmd-opt-1, 2, etc) on the Keyword and Keyword Important character styles. That way you can just fire through selecting text and whacking cmd-opt-1 where appropriate.

[CS3 JS] Exchange Character Style Problem!

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