Show invisibles/hidden characters?

GL CS1 - is it possible to see the invisibles/hidden characters on the Golive page?

Maybe you're in the wrong screen mode. Try View -> Screen Mode; invisibles like gridlines and hidden characters will appear in Normal, but IIRC not in Preview.

Similar Messages

[Mac 4.0.2] Show/Hide Hidden Characters

Hello,
Is it possible for my plugin to get notified when the end-user is switching Show/Hide Hidden Characters from InDesign's Type menu? And if the answer was YES then how could we do that would be the next question . . .
Any pointer or direction to have this event watcher implemented smoothly would be very much appreciated indeed.
Best regards
Patrick Perroud

Hi John,
I modified my script and now I am getting error when I run it first time and when I run it again then it run fine.
set the date_stamp to ((the current date) as string)
tell application "Finder" to quit
set OnOff to do shell script "defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles"
if OnOff = "NO" or OnOff = "OFF" then
set OnOff to "ON"
tell application "Finder"
display dialog "Show all hidden files in this Mac ?" & return & return & date_stamp buttons {"Show Hidden Files", "Cancel"} default button 2 with title "/MSN/" with icon 1
end tell
else
set OnOff to "OFF"
tell application "Finder"
display dialog "Hide all hidden files in this Mac ?" & return & return & date_stamp buttons {"Hide Hidden Files", "Cancel"} default button 2 with title "/MSN/" with icon 1
end tell
end if
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles " & OnOff
delay 1
tell application "Finder" to launch

"show hidden characters" is not working

InDesign CC. Neither the show/hide grid nor the show/hide hidden characters works.

Maybe you're in the wrong screen mode. Try View -> Screen Mode; invisibles like gridlines and hidden characters will appear in Normal, but IIRC not in Preview.

Hidden Characters Displaying Wrong

So ever since I started using CS4 my InDesign will sometimes show my hidden characters improperly. There doesn't seem to be any consistency in when it happen. The only common thing I can think of is that it sometime happens after I open an Illustrator file, but not always. I have re-installed InDesign and I just reset my preference last week, but It still is happening. Anyone have any Ideas on what is going on and how to fix it?

This is another example

Force show (not toggle) hidden characters and threads in script

I have been working on a script to show all the extras (for the most part). I can turn on rulers and frame edges from the DOM, but can not Show Hidden Characters or Show Text Threads from the DOM. I've been working on using menuActions, but there two is a hitch. It seems that the menuActions are only available if the menu has been accessed during the current session? Not 100% on that. There is a good comment (#10) that touches on this a bit at Indiscripts :: How to Create your Own InDesign Menus.
This method works, but again only if the menu has been previously accessed... so it's not reliable:
// locale-independent (should work on non-english versions of InDesign)
// Show Hidden Characters
// FIX/TODO - Only seems to work if the Show/Hide Characters has been toggled within this session?!
var showHiddenChars = app.menuActions.item("$ID/HideHiddenCharactersCmdStr"); //The 'hide' ID String only valid when characters are hidden
var areCharsHidden = (showHiddenChars.isValid);
if (areCharsHidden == true) {
    try {showHiddenChars.invoke()} catch (givenError){alert(givenError.toString())};
else {
        //alert("Hidden characters are already shown!")
I also have a less desirable version of Showing Hidden Characters, which relies on English name property of the Menu Action. It suffers from the same issue.
//~     var acID = acID||
//~             ((t=app.menuActions.item("$ID/ShowHiddenCharactersCmdStr")).isValid&&t.id)||
//~             ((t=app.menuActions.item("$ID/HideHiddenCharactersCmdStr")).isValid&&t.id);
//~     var showHiddenChars = app.menuActions.itemByID(acID);
//~
//~     //if the name property for the menuAction is currently "Hide Hidden Characters", the characters are hidden.
//~     var areCharsHidden = (showHiddenChars.name == "Hide Hidden Characters");
//~     if (areCharsHidden == true) {
//~         try {showHiddenChars.invoke()} catch (givenError){};
//~         }
//~     else {
//~         //alert("Hidden characters are already shown!")
//~         }
Any suggestion on how to force show characters (show threads works the same way) with out having to have had accessed a menu before hand?
Thanks,
Kevin

When you have found a menu action you can remember its ID and use menuActions.itemByID() later on to retrieve it. Most action IDs are hard wired, bound to their implementing plugin. Of course there is an exception for dynamically allocated actions, e.g. script actions.
My first attempt following you is to retrieve the action name - that should trigger the internal method to update the whole action state including checked, enabled (not applicable in this case). Of course it failed, would someone please file a bug? The translated versions of strings that you'd use for the comparison are available via app.translateKeyString().
Btw you are using the wrong string - cmd strings are used for command history as seen in the undo menu. Menu strings usually have an ampersand character to indicate the underline / Alt+Key combo in Windows.
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name==app.translateKeyString("$ID/Show Hidden Characters"));
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name==app.translateKeyString("$ID/Hide Hidden Characters"));
app.translateKeyString("$ID/Show Hidden Characters")
Ergebnis: Verborgene Zeic&hen einblenden
app.translateKeyString("$ID/Hide Hidden Characters")
Ergebnis: &Verborgene Zeichen ausblenden
// failed test
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name);
app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).invoke();
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name);
// output should change after invoke
Verborgene Zeichen ausblenden
Verborgene Zeichen ausblenden
As you found command strings, I also had a look at the undo history - it remained empty.
$.writeln(app.activeDocument.undoHistory.length);
Probably the setting is not persisted in the document any more, someone should have removed the command strings.
Then I realized that the output of the previous lines around the invoke had changed as it was expected originally. And I had not touched the menu since restart … but I had activated the application.
One can do that with scripting too - app.activate();
A couple of restarts later this is definitely leading somewhere.
Regarding the command, I also had a second look with a debug build of InDesign: the command is still executed, but there is a flag that binds its undo to the previous command - left as an exercise to verify.
Hmm. It is stored in the persistent document preferences in a structure internally called kDocWorkspaceBoss / ITextOptions, thus should also be exposed for scripting. Back to scripting: set a breakpoint, browse thru tons of document sub-objects, and here we are:
app.activeDocument.textPreferences.showInvisibles
Happy programming,
Dirk
Edit: when comparing the strings, you also have to strip the extra ampersand.

Type Show Hidden Characters doesn't display hidden chars, what to do?

When I select Type > Show Hidden characters, the display does not change and the hidden characters stay hidden. Is there something additional that I need to do to see the hidden characters?

Under View, change your Screen Mode to Normal. In any other mode, guides and hidden characters won't show.

Show hidden characters shortcut causes crash

I'm running CS4 on Mac OS 10.5.8 (Indesign 6.0.4 which I believe is the latest).
Lately, InDesign has started crashing when I use command+opt+I (the shortcut for show hidden characters), which I do A LOT for text design purposes. It doesn't crash every single time I use the key combo, but it's gotten to about 50% of the time, so that I'm afraid to use it. I'm very shortcut oriented rather than menu oriented, so please don't suggest I just stop using the shortcut (that's what my IT guy would suggest). It took me forever to even remember what the command was called that I was doing -- I ended up finding it by accident.
Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone have any advice/suggestions?
Thanks!

I would start by Quitting Indesing, removing (putting on Desktop in case you have custom settings saved there) the Indesign Prefs;
/Users/YOUR HOME FOLDER/Library/Preferences (Indesign Folder & .plist) and also removing the Indesign Cache folder;
/Users/YOUR HOME FOLDER/Library/Caches.

How to show invisibles (non-printing characters) in Keynote?

Great thanks to anyone who can help find what in Keynote '09 is clicked or keyed to show invisibles (non-printing characters).

I have this same problem. It used to be under View in Keynote '08 but can't find it anywhere in '09 and it won't even show up in the help. AAAAhhhhh, come on Apple...where'd you put it?

Show invisible characters?

There is no option to show invisibles as far as I can see. Why is this?
I am re-designing a website. The client has no text to supply so I'm having to copy and paste the text from his old website. To be able to show invisibles would be good.

we call them non printing characters
this cant be displayed in Keynote, Keynote is a video based presentation application and does not have many typographic tools.
The sister application to Keynote is Pages which can show non printing characters so you should use that;
View > show > invisibles

InDesign - Hidden Characters Corrupting Documents

I post this message in the spirit of sharing information, hopefully to be of help others.
I recently encountered a problem after distilling a document from InDesign which, as an Acrobat PDF, would not print - giving three successive error messages:
1. The Document could not be printed.
2. There were no pages selected to print.
3. A drawing error occurred.
Well, that covers about everything !
After about an hour of patient diagnosis I discovered some erroneous characters had appeared in some bullet points and removal of these cured the problem.
I found them only after copying and pasting the text into Word (using the paste as "text only" option) and copying and pasting it back into InDesign. The spurious characters then appeared as a red-highlighted squares and could be easily deleted.
(Note: I had previously used the 'Show hidden characters' option in InDesign which did not reveal these little devils, neither did they 'appear' in the Word document)
I believe the erroneous character is probably a result of formatting which was in the original Word document imported into InDesign and which could be a 'flag' for bullet formatting (in Word).
The lessons I learned from this are:
patiently isolating the section of the document led to the discovery of the problem
be aware, in the future, of possible odd characters appearing (invisibly) from Word and corrupting InDesign documents.
Hope this may be of assistance.
I haven't given version numbers of my software since this is almost certainly not relevant - but the general principle is.
I hope this may be of assistance.

Thankyou for putting that on the record...

How to show non-printable characters on the new pages

I know some Pages features had been removed, some of them add again, and some hidden. So, I would like to know if it is possible to show the non-printable character on this new version.

Same as old:
Menu > View > Show Invisibles
or
command shift i
Peter

Terminal not showing invisible files/system files

My terminal application has stopped showing system files files
eg:
Macbook:~ julianmerrow-smith$ ls -l
total 32
drwx------+ 21 julianmerrow-smith staff 714 Oct 20 11:46 Desktop
drwx------+ 5 julianmerrow-smith staff 170 Oct 20 11:46 Documents
drwx------+ 61 julianmerrow-smith staff 2074 Oct 20 08:06 Downloads
drwx------+ 39 julianmerrow-smith staff 1326 Oct 19 20:45 Library
drwx------+ 3 julianmerrow-smith staff 102 Sep 27 11:37 Movies
drwx------+ 3 julianmerrow-smith staff 102 Sep 27 11:37 Music
drwx------+ 5 julianmerrow-smith staff 170 Sep 27 21:09 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x+ 5 julianmerrow-smith staff 170 Sep 27 11:37 Public
drwxr-xr-x+ 5 julianmerrow-smith staff 170 Sep 27 11:37 Sites
-rw-r--r-- 1 julianmerrow-smith staff 800 Oct 7 12:15 artforsale.pwm
-rw-r--r-- 1 julianmerrow-smith staff 800 Oct 7 12:15 artforsale.pwm_bak1
drwxr-xr-x@ 33 julianmerrow-smith staff 1122 Sep 27 14:35 be2bqu21.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 julianmerrow-smith staff 744 Sep 28 09:02 mt-config.cgi
drwxr-xr-x 3 julianmerrow-smith staff 102 Oct 20 10:30 server back-ups
-rw-r--r--@ 1 julianmerrow-smith staff 2668 Oct 20 09:07 untitled.html
I created a new admin, same result. sudo bash has given me back use of the terminal but how do I get it back to normal, any ideas?

There are two kinds of "invisible" files and folders - those items whose names begin with a period, and those items which carry a "hidden" flag. Both are normally invisible to Finder, though Finder can be enabled to see them both. Terminal's ls command requires the -a option in order to see items with names that begin with a period, but does not need the -a option to see items that carry the "hidden" flag.
Are you looking for something specific? You listed the contents of your home folder, which doesn't normally contain any executable system files, and doesn't normally contain any items which are invisible because of the "hidden" flag. The home folder does contain a few items with names beginning with a period, which you would be able to see if you use *ls -la*. Of these, the .Trash folder is probably the only item that is of practical interest.
There are invisible system files and folders at the root level of your startup volume. If you want to see all of these, you can use
ls -la /
Even without the -a option, the command
ls -l /
will show those hidden system items that are of most practical interest (/Volumes, /bin, /etc, /private, /sbin, /tmp, /usr, /var )

AreaText find hidden characters

Is it possible to find out if a AreaText contains text that is out of bounds?
I want to make sure that NO text is invisible after creating a new AreaText and I dont want to make it bigger then absolutly needed
Trying to find it in the Scripting Reference: Javascript, but without result.
any tips?

Hi Fubar,
I didn't check for a long time in javascript references, but i working on another project, and may be this can help you:
explanation:
first, i take the length of content text
second, i duplicate text and create outline, this make items of all visible text, so if this length is different than content text, there are thus some hidden characters
1) create a document with an area text with contents
2) run this below
#target illustrator
try {
var doc=app.activeDocument;
var text=doc.textFrames[0];
var tLen=text.contents.length; // total length
var tSpaceB=text.contents.split(" ").length; // number of spaces in tBefore
doc.layers.add();
doc.layers[0].name='TEMP';
text.duplicate (doc.layers.getByName('TEMP'),ElementPlacement.INSIDE ); // duplicate for vectorizing
var tTemp=doc.layers.getByName('TEMP'); // name it
var ctTempVec=tTemp.textFrames[0].createOutline(); //vectoriz
var ctTLen=ctTempVec.pageItems.length-1; // actual length ( = tLen without spaces )
tTemp.remove(); // remove TEMP
if (ctTLen+tSpaceB==tLen){alert ("There are no hidden characters")} else {
alert ("there are "+(tLen-(ctTLen+tSpaceB))+" hidden characters")}
} catch (e){alert (e)}
ciao, art.chrome

Color code hidden characters

I would like to show hidden characters (paragraph, space,
tab), but I would like to color code them so that they are not so
prominent. Is this possible? I can color code specific HTML tags,
but I don't see that I can color code the hidden characters. Anyone
done this before?

Why do you ask?
I've learned to 'read' my color coding in Cubase -- just like I read ordinary notation (red, yellow, green = C Major, for example). This way I don't need to open a score editor or Sibelius when I work.
Anyway, can't be done in Logic as far as I can see; too bad.

Find Hidden Characters-in downloaded file

All,
I have a file interface that downloading file to SANS server using open dataset. But recently we are getting some hidden characters in the file. These are getting from a long text.
Now my requirement is to find these hidden characters and display in the screen and user can correct then go for download.
Currently i am using Notepad++ or using this link for finding the hidden characters
http://string.online-toolz.com/tools/string-functions.php
Now user wanted to use the same functionality with in SAP using ABAP.
Any input on this appreciated.
a®

Similar functionality can be achieved by JavaScript. You can pass the entire Text and create your function in JS to find out the Hidden Characters. If you are successful finding the JS which can do this job for you, you can use [JS Engine|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/49/a8e3c8d59811d4b2e90050dadfb92b/frameset.htm] available in ABAP.
Refer to [ABAP & JavaScript|http://help-abap.zevolving.com/2011/10/javascript-in-abap/] to see the simple JS usage.
Regards,
Naimesh Patel

Show invisibles/hidden characters?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for