[JS] (CS2) How do you insert pseudo tags around italic text

Question

I need to find all the italic text strings wherever they occur (tables, headers, footers etc) in an InDesign CS2 document and insert a pseudo-xml tag before and after each string (something like
before and <\I> after.)
I'm positive this must be possible but my limited experience has failed me so far.
Can anyone point me in the right direction please.
TIA
Doug Neale

Answer 1

With many thanks to the experts, I managed to sort out the table slant problem. For the benefit of all our many readers, here is the complete solution tested with a multi page document hosting all sorts of text and tables. It's quite long because I believe in plenty of comments.
// make sure we have at least one document open
if (app.documents.length == 0) {
// warn operator and exit immediately
alert("There are no open documents.");
exit();
// OK if we get here, we have an open doc
myDoc = app.activeDocument;
// set up start and end tags
startTag = "#.";// should really be "
endTag = "#:";// should really be "<\i>"
slantTagCount = 0;// initialise our two counters
italicTagCount = 0;
// If we are going to search/change something, we use preferences
// So, the first thing we have to do is clear them out;
// they're application level properties; see pages 567 and 568:
app.findPreferences = null;
app.changePreferences = null;
// use the search() method to search entire document for italic fonts
myFinds = myDoc.search('', false, false, undefined, {fontStyle : 'Italic'});
if (myFinds.length != 0) {
// myFinds will consist of an array of references into the text of the doc
// each reference pointing to a run offset
// run the loop backwards so that if we make any changes to the text runs
// it won't affect the array of references.
// now add the italic tags
for (var j = myFinds.length-1;j>=0;j--){
// at each italic text run we want to insert
// a pseudo xml tag at beginning and end
// Adding the tags is this simple (end tag first):
myFinds[j].insertionPoints.item(-1).contents = endTag;
myFinds[j].insertionPoints.item(0).contents = startTag;
italicTagCount++;
// as the italic effect can also be achieved by applying a slant to each character
// we need to check the whole document again, but this time we do it story by story
// Finding slanted text--when text.skew is not zero, text has been slanted.
// Unfortunately, what you want to look for is cases where this value is NOT zero,
// and even InDesign's grep search can't find that (it can apply NOT to character classes,
// but not to formatting attributes)--or, at least, I can't figure out how to do it.
// So you have to "roll your own." Something like this:
myStories = myDoc.stories;
for (var jj = myStories.length-1; jj >= 0; jj--) {
// loop through all the stories in the document
myStory = myStories[jj];
//Given a story "myStory"...
for(var myCounter = myStory.textStyleRanges.length -1; myCounter >= 0; myCounter --){
if(myStory.textStyleRanges.item(myCounter).skew != 0){
//Found some slanted text.
myStory.textStyleRanges.item(myCounter).insertionPoints.item(-1).contents = endTag;
myStory.textStyleRanges.item(myCounter).insertionPoints.item(0).contents = startTag;
slantTagCount++;
// the above procedure does all the italic content in tables as well as ordinary text boxes
// but only does skewed (slanted) text in ordinary text boxes.
// We need to tackle skewed text in tables separately.
for (var i = myStories.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
// go through every story
for (var j = myStories[i].tables.length - 1;j >= 0; j--) {
// go through every table in this story
for (var k = myStories[i].tables[j].columns.length - 1; k >= 0; k--) {
// go through every column in this table
for (var m = myStories[i].tables[j].rows.length - 1; m >= 0; m--) {
// go through every row in this column to look at each cell
myCell = myStories[i].tables[j].columns[k].cells[m];
// introduce another variable to make next bit more readable
myCellStyle = myCell.textStyleRanges;
if (myCellStyle.length !=0) {
// go through all the text ranges in this cell
for (var myCounter = myCellStyle.length - 1; myCounter >= 0; myCounter --) {
// check each range item for skew
if (myCellStyle.item(myCounter).skew != 0) {
// found some slanted text so tag it
myCellStyle.item(myCounter).insertionPoints.item(-1).contents = endTag;
myCellStyle.item(myCounter).insertionPoints.item(0).contents = startTag;
slantTagCount++;
// tell operator what we did, note that document appearance not updated until
// alert has been acknowledged by operator.
alert ("Italic Tag Count = "+italicTagCount+"\nSlant Tag Count = "+slantTagCount);
Regards,
Doug Neale