Walking through the script. Adobe InCopy CS6

Getting Started Scripting terminology and the InCopy object model 14

Walking through the script

Here is a step-by-step analysis of what the Hello World script does.

1.

Establish communication with the InCopy application object:

Set myInCopy = CreateObject("InCopy.Application")

2.

Create a new document and a reference to the document:

Set myDocument = myInCopy.Documents.Add

3.

Get a reference to the first story in the document (a standalone document always contains a story):

Set myStory = myDocument.Stories.Item(1)

4.

Add text to the story by setting the contents property to a string.

myStory.Contents = "Hello World!"

Scripting terminology and the InCopy object model

Now that you created your first InCopy script, it is time to learn more about the terminology of scripting languages in general and InCopy scripting in particular.

Scripting terminology

First, let’s review a few common scripting terms and concepts.

Comments

Comments give you a way to add descriptive text to a script. The scripting system ignores comments as the script executes; this prevents comments from producing errors when you run your script. Comments are useful when you want to document the operation of a script (for yourself or someone else). In this document, we use comments in the tutorial scripts.

To include a comment in VBScript, type

Rem

(for “remark”) or

'

(one straight quote) to the left of the comment. To make an entire line a comment, type the comment marker at the beginning of a line. For example:

Rem this is a comment

' and so is this

Values

The point size of a text character, the contents of a note, and the filename of a document are examples of values used in InCopy scripting. Values are the data your scripts use to do their work.

The type of a value defines what sort of data the value contains. For example, the value type of the contents of a word is a text string; the value type of the leading of a paragraph is a number. Usually, the values used in scripts are numbers or text. The following table explains the value types most commonly used in InCopy scripting:

Getting Started Scripting terminology and the InCopy object model 15

Value Type

Boolean

Integer

Double

String

Array

What it is

Logical True or False.

Example

True

Whole numbers (no decimal points). Integers can be positive or negative.

A high-precision number that can contain a decimal point.

14

13.9972

A series of text characters. Strings appear inside (straight) quotation marks.

A list of values (the values can be any type).

"I am a string"

Array("0p0", "0p0", "16p4", "20p6")

Converting values from one type to another

VBScript provides ways to convert variable values from one type to another. The most common converstions involved converting numbers to strings (so you can enter them in text or display them in dialogs) or converting strings to numbers (so you can use them to set a point size or page location).

Rem To convert from a number to a string: myNumber = 2 myString = cstr(myNumber)

Rem To convert from a string to an integer: myString = "2" myNumber = cInt(myString)

Rem If your string contains a decimal value, use "cDbl" rather than "cInt": myNumber = cDbl(myString)

Variables

A variable is a container for a value. They are called “variables” because the values they contain might change. A variable might hold a number, a string of text, or a reference to an InCopy object. Variables have names, and you refer to a variable by its name. To put a value into a variable, you assign the data to the variable.

In all examples and tutorial scripts that come with InCopy, all variables start with my . This enables you to easily differentiate variables we created in a script from scripting-language terms.

Assigning a value to a variable

Assigning values or strings to variables is fairly simple, as shown in these examples: myNumber = 10 myString = "Hello, World!"

Set myTextFrame = myDocument.Pages.Item(1).TextFrames.Add

Try to use descriptive names for your variables, like firstPage or corporateLogo , rather than x or c . This makes your script easier to read. Longer names do not affect the execution speed of the script.

Getting Started Scripting terminology and the InCopy object model 16

Variable names must be one word, but you can use internal capitalization (like myFirstPage

) or underscore characters ( my_first_page

) to create more readable names. Variable names cannot begin with a number, and they cannot contain punctuation or quotation marks.

Array variables

An Array is a container for a series of values: myArray = Array(1, 2, 3, 4)

Rem In Visual Basic.NET: myArray = New Double (1, 2, 3, 4)

To refer to an item in an array, refer to its index in the array.In VBScript, the first item in an array is item 0: myFirstArrayItem = myArray(0)

N OTE : The Visual Basic

OptionBase

statement can be used to set the first item of an array to item 1. In the examples in this document, the first item in an array is item 0, not item 1, because that is the default. If you set OptionBase to 1, you must adjust all array references in the sample scripts accordingly.

Arrays can include other arrays, as shown in the following examples: myArray = Array(Array(0,0), Array(72, 72))

Rem In Visual Basic.NET: myArray = New Array(New Double(0,0), NewDouble (0,0))

Finding the value type of a variable

Sometimes, your scripts must make decisions based on the value type of an object. If you are working on a script that operates on a text selection, for example, you might want that script to stop if nothing is selected.

Rem Given a variable of unknown type, "myMysteryVariable"...

myType = TypeName(myMysteryVariable)

Rem myType will be a string corresponding to the variable type (e.g., "Rectangle")

Operators

Operators use variables or values to perform calculations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) and return a value. For example:

MyWidth/2 returns a value equal to half of the content of the variable myWidth

.

You also can use operators to perform comparisons (equal to ( = ), not equal to( <> ), greater than ( > ), or less than (

<

)). For example:

MyWidth > myHeight returns the value true

(or 1) if myWidth

is greater than myHeight

; otherwise, false

(0).

In VBScript, use the ampersand (

&

) to concatenate (or join) two strings. For example:

"Pride " & "and Prejudice" returns the string:

"Pride and Prejudice"