CODEWITHSUNDEEP
adobe-indesignextendscript
Shawn
Shawn

Reputation: 11401

How can I programmatically detect if some text is visible or has overflowed in an InDesign document using ExtendScript?

I am building an InDesign panel with ExtendScript which finds text and shows it to the user. To do this, I use the showText() method of the Character object. The problem is that sometimes the text I'm looking for doesn't appear because, even though the method does show the right page at the right place, the text has overflown and is not visible.

Is there a way to check if the text is visible or not? Ideally, I would like to be able to fall back on the story editor if the text cannot be seen as-is...

Upvotes: 1

Views: 764

Answers (2)

Dirk
Dirk

Reputation: 666

To check the situation for an individual character, see the parentTextFrames property, it returns an array with 0 or 1 frames. In rare cases of insertion points whose left side is in one frame while the right side is in the following, you get two frames.

app.selection[0].characters.item(0).parentTextFrames.length

You can also compare the index of your character against the last index in the last text container of the story, e.g.

app.selection[0].parentStory.textContainers.pop().characters.lastItem().index

Of course you should first see whether there is overflow at all ...

app.selection[0].parentStory.overflows

Upvotes: 4

Loic Aigon
Loic Aigon

Reputation: 506

You may call the baseline property for the text in a try/catch statement. If text is visible, baseline will return a value, otherwise it will raise an error.

Loic

Upvotes: 1

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