Release: InData 2.11 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020

November 2, 2020 by car

This release improves scriptability and adds a more direct way to use InDesign tagged text.

Changes

• Adds an optional 8th parameter, format, to InData’s import data scripting methods/events. This parameter specifies the delimited format of the imported data and is a value from the InData delimited format enumeration: tab, comma, MSWord Merge, MSWorks. For example, with ExtendScript, use InDataDelimitedFormat.COMMA to specify a comma-delimited source file. If not specified (use undefined in ExtendScript), the delimited format is drawn from the InDesign document’s InData Data preferences.
• Adds an optional 9th parameter, character set, to InData’s import data scripting methods/events. This parameter specifies the encoding of the imported data and is a value from the InData character set enumeration: windows, macintosh, unicode. For example, with ExtendScript, use InDataCharacterSet.MACINTOSH to indicate a file that uses Apple’s 8-bit MacRoman character set. If not provided (use undefined in ExtendScript), the character set defaults to the setting given in the InDesign document’s InData Data preferences.

• Invokes InDesign’s native import filter directly for any field that’s put as InDesign tags if the tags begin with an InDesign signature tag (start-file tag) such as <ASCII-MAC>.

  Fields marked as InDesign tagged are normally imported with InData’s built-in, text-only InDesign Tagged Text parser. In the past, fields that needed to put non-text constructs like hyperlinks and tables had to resort to the &it"""...""" tag workaround, which was grafted from our Xtags plug-in a few years back. This workaround has always been cumbersome and maybe even a little bit confusing.

  Starting with version 2.11, InData’s built-in parser now recognizes InDesign’s start-file tag, and, if present, hands the tags over to InDesign’s full InDesign Tagged Text import filter. This means that fields containing special InDesign tags can be put directly with a simple statement like «put indesigntagged "<ASCII-MAC>" & theField» (or «put styled "<ASCII-MAC>" & theField», if Adobe InDesign tags is selected in the document’s InData Data preferences).

  Like before, puts that don’t start with a start-file tag are processed with InData’s text-only parser. Likewise, the &it tag workaround is still available, just in case you’re feeling adventurous.