Scripting inline styles to text

Question

Hello,
I am having trouble getting my head around the indesign DOM in regards to programmatically (javascript) applying text styles inline and on the fly. By that I mean the text items I want formatted don't exist in the current document at the moment the script is executed. To give an example
In the current document there is only one textframe called "frame1"
In the script...
var str1 = "$";
var str2 = "19";
var st3 = "95";
The result I wish to see in the text "frame1" (if written in html) is ^$19⁹⁵ All on the one line
I found this post http://forums.adobe.com/message/4547401 Solution 2 maybe how to do it,
myTextFrame = app.selection[0]; // is this necessary? can i use textFrames.itemByName(name)?
firstInsertionPoint = myTextFrame.insertionPoints[-1].index;
myTextFrame.contents += "New Text";
myAddedText = myTextFrame.characters.itemByRange(myTextFrame.insertionPoints[firstInsertionPoint],
myTextFrame.insertionPoints[-1]);
// i assume i would apply position.superscript here
myAddedText.appliedFont = app.fonts.itemByName("Trajan Pro"); // etc.
but I do not understand exactly what it's doing especially with the insertion points.  I have coded Visual Studio Projects for Office Word and the syntax looks kind of familiar but I find indesign documentation too spartan to help me. Grant Gamble's book was very helpful until I wanted to go down this weird path.
I am using indesign 5.5 and ESTK
Thank you in advance
Anthony
Hi again,
I tried playing with the above source post solution 1, the move method of the paragraph collection has it's parameter list around the wrong way at least according to indesign 5.5. Has there been a change between versions? Is this the right way of going about this?
thanks again

Answer 1

Hi Peter,
Thanks for the head up on
   found[i].characters[-2].position = Position.superscript;
   found[i].characters[-1].position = Position.superscript;
i didn't know you could do such things
As I said, the price is coming in  (web service) as two variables. There is a reason for this. There is some type setting done on the two variables before they are added to the service. For example, size of font. I can calculate the length of the dollar component IF there is one. It maybe zero eg 99 cents. Knowing the length of dollars it can loop appending "\d" 's at the end of each iteration and use this regex in the grep. Works perfectly. Though with above code frag you provided i can do it another way. It's good to have choices!
In a all I have written a web app that acts as a front end for indesign "documents/objects/templates/empty square holes i can poke round pegs into" This app acts to constrain data input to fit particular document characteristics such as length of text centered at a particular size to fit nicely in a bounding box within an A4 portrait document. Or A3 or A5 or A6 or landscape. The up shot of this is that the graphics designer stops being a data entry clerk and editor when he recieves a CSV of items to be printed off. He would need to wander thru thousands of these items making sure text didnt spill over background objects or flow outside of document. He would need to manually adjust and call owner of data to re-edit text so it would fit. We calculated he was spending 22-32(time of year) hours a month on this labour that was costing my employer and detracting from what he was employed to do by his company. He hates it. The onus of compisition and constraint was put on the consumer of the printed output. If constraints are violated they cant be submitted.
The data for each template consists of one html fragment representing the text areas (divs and clever usage of "data-" attribute prefix), one style sheet for preview as you type, one background image, and one xslt sheet to transform the web service into something indesign script can parse easily and i dont need to shoot myself. I wrote the indesign client using "extendables" http() which gets a list of published batches and he can punch the XML straight into indesin(he can now thanks to you)
The app itself is an engine which runs these sheets and creates data input fields, data verification, store to mssql 10 and retrieve for editing and a searchable (searching XML types in tuples BTW )library keyed in on the document type context. There 8 of these contexts so far representing portrait and landscape for A4 A5 A6 and a big A3 6x3 items per page. There is a security layer in asp.net membership and roles which i have tweaked a little
It's all done! I need to sit with the GD so we can put the existing document templates into library objects so the script can retrieve them and perform the type of work we have been discussing. The two parties are gobsmacked by the look and consistancy of data styling. The user interface needs some work since  c# puts it together, but i'm not really a designer. Sorry for rabbiting on, I wanted to tell someone who might be the slightest bit interested in what or how i did.
Thanks again