ATTENTION - END OF LIFE

This is the last REGULAR release of the priint:comet ID plug-ins for v4.2. Bug support for v4.2 will be discontinued at the end of April 2024.

There are new Python functions available:

• dialog.askStr
• CTable.broadenToFrame
• CTable.compressColumnWise
• CTable.decompressColumnWise
• CTable.woodoo
• CTable.oodoow
• CTable.getKeyStr

The Layout Rule Justify Frame now automatically recognizes whether the frame is a multi-frame of a repeating element. In this case, all associated elements are automatically moved as well. The same applies for the layout rule Position Frame.

With the new Layout Rule Fit Columns, the width of table columns can be adapted to the content of the table cells.

With the new cScript function document::force_redraw you can immediately redraw document windows.

With the new Template Behavior setting   Copy Content the content of frames from the main template can be copied to the continuations without reloading the placeholders.

The productlist::get function has not returned any results for some time.

Some time ago we noticed that the list of selected products was being calculated incorrectly (Case 2652024 v4.2 R33466 13.09.2023). Because products without a defined template cannot be created anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to automatically remove all products without a defined template from the results list. Unfortunately, I had not considered that the same function can also be called in other contexts, e.g. with productlist::get - and that the templates are not important there.

This oversight has been corrected and the function productlist::get will work as before again. The same applies to datapool::get_products.

Repeating elements with the following properties all have the same content after a reorganization:

• The frames have non-empty labels
• The frames are each grouped together in an InDesign group

This problem is solved now.

In the panel Product Pool there is a menu for executing Layout Rules. Wouldn't it be better to have this menu directly in the panel Layout Rules?

We have now added this menu to the panel Layout Rules too.

Although InDesign Server has nothing to do, the CPU utilization by the server is permanently at around 80%. Strangely enough, the utilization even decreases when the server has something to do.

This problem has been solved. The CPU utilization of the idle server should now be around 1-2%. Every 5-6 seconds, the load increases briefly to 5-6%.

With %XTT (X ∈ [0-9a-zA-Z#•]) I can initiate various corrections to the TaggedText. Among other things, the missing <ParaStyles:>'s can be inserted automatically in non-empty table cells. This is a very, very useful feature, thank you for that. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work if the <TableStart:>'s and/or <CellStart:>'s come without dimension specifications.

No, this does not work in the past because both specifications must have dimension specifications according to valid TaggedText syntax:

• <TableStart:rows,cols:headers:footers>
• <CellStart:row_range,col_range>

• <TableStart:>
  • rows = Number of <RowStart:'s
  • cols = Number of headers = 0
  • footers = 0
• <CellStart:>
  • row_range = 1
  • col_range = 1

When I open a document with Web Images in a newer InDesign version, I always get a warning that the document must be saved once to load web images.

This behavior was introduced with case TW 2683709 in R33466. It is intended to prevent web images from being loaded if no download path is defined. But of course it is not necessary to report this when opening the document already. It is perfectly sufficient to only display the warning when an image is actually to be loaded (and also not when checking the images - which of course goes wrong for all images in this case.)

The placeholders of continuation templates are always loaded twice during product build-ups.

Strange that nobody has noticed this until yet. The problem has been fixed now and could make the product build-up a lot faster.

I know that the product build cannot be done on parent pages - a regular page must be selected for building. Nevertheless, it can happen that you start the product build of a parent page. Then the build aborts and shows an error message. But unfortunately this message is empty.

The warning now shows a suitable error description now.

If the columns where a table is to be wrapped are too wide for the frame, the table break will fail:

table::break_ : 
  No column found to break table in a way, 
  that all cells getting at least their old width. 
  Cells may become cell oversets.

This is okay - what else? - if it doesn't work, it doesn't get. But the column widths are still changed somehow. Is it possible to prevent this?

The rule does not change the column widths in case of this error now.

On Windows, tables without alternating column color and column line colors crash InDesign^® when executing the Layout Rule 'Mirror Table'.

The bug is fixed now.

Exporting text with tables using the function textmodel::gettext and kExportPlainWithTables works for square tables only. In all other cases, cells are missing in the export.

The problem is solved now. We also took the opportunity to add the cell sizes to the output too.

Hoping to make your daily work easier, all priint:comet InDesign® panel icons are now colored in a bright orange-red.

We intentionally did not use the blue-green from priint: At least on the bright UI this color is a bit to bright and the InDesign-SDK allows us to define one icon only for all UI colors (except the Adobe hack for black/white icons).

And before we end up in a discussion that red stands for danger, error, etc.: Take a look at, for example, Apple's Music app. There, the basic color is also red - and nobody interprets this red as a warning or error or so. Here's a screenshot:

All priint:comet plug-ins are now available for the InDesign^® 2024.

Important note for InDesign 2024: On one of our test machines with M1 and Mac OS 13.5.2 (Ventura) InDesign^® crashed while loading our existing Python 3.10.11 installation. The system crash log strangely pointed to Python 3.9:

    1 libpython3.9.dylib 0x11be70250 _PyObject_GC_NewVar + 52

Only the reinstallation of Python 3.10.0 fixed the problem. Hier finden Sie ein Installationspaket.

We have added 'Frame is Empty' as a new standard condition for Layout Rules now. May it be helpful. See here for more information.

There are new Python functions available:

• prefs.setWebImageProxy
• prefs.getWebImageProxy
• CSwatch.remove

The following functions have been renamed (old names are still valid for backwards compatibility)

• prefs.getURLLinkTimeout -> prefs.getWebImageTimeout
• prefs.setURLLinkTimeout -> prefs.setWebImageTimeout
• prefs.setURLLinkFolder -> prefs.setWebImageFolder
• prefs.getURLLinkFolder -> prefs.getWebImageFolder

Documents that contain frames with priint:adjust rules can no longer be opened by InDesign^®. Attempting to open such a document will cause InDesign^® to crash immediately.

The problem is solved. The documents can be opened again with the new plugins without any further changes to the documents.

The height of repeating elements can be automatically adjusted to the contained elements using Template Behavior's black triangle. This is fine and works perfectly. But on reorganizations the height is reset to the original height in the template again. Is there any way to prevent this?

No, you can not prevent this. But we have solved the problem now in the plugins.

With the ALT key held down, the recent folders should show the XML folder in Windows Explorer. Unfortunately this does not work, only the C: folder is shown.

FXD

Apparently the damn recent XML folders still don't work on Windows. In the log I see dozens of error messages from the XML parser. I think the problem comes from the backslashes in the paths.

This is hopefully fixed now too.

I am creating a panel script to record and set some text properties using textmodel::get_attr for a customer. I am unable to get a value for "Last Line Right indent" using kTextAttrIndentLastRightBoss but it does not seem to work correctly; it only returns 0.000.

Fixed now.

I use i_size_width 100.0 in a w2inline. But unfortunately this image size is not set. Only when I also set the height (i_size_width 100.0, i_size_height 50.0) it works. But since I don't know the proportions of the image, this is of course difficult.

Yes, I understand that. The bug is fixed now. Height and width of the image can now be set individually. The corresponding other dimension is calculated automatically by the plugins then.

Im using the following definition for the Frame Fitting Options of an w2inline:

fitting 5 0 0.0 0.0 -5.669291 0.0 0 1

But unfortunately the values for the distances always end up in the wrong places.

That were two mistakes:

1. The order of the values given in the doc is wrong. The correct order is left top right bottom.
2. The internally used rectangle of pass these values to InDesign was automatically normalized, i.e. if left > right or bottom > top, these values were automatically swapped.

The function app.comet.documentGeneratePDF often fails on InDesign Server with the error 538640 (PDF preset on found). However, when I check the presets in the file system, everything looks right. What am I doing wrong there?

Unfortunately, we cannot determine this without further information. But maybe this will help: If app.comet.documentGeneratePDF ends with error 538640 (PDF preset not found), we write a list of the currently available presets into the logfile. Then you can see for yourself and try a solution.

app.comet.documentGeneratePDF will fail because the requested PDFPreset 'Adobe PDF-Vorgabe 15' is not available.

Here's a list of all currentlty available PDFPresets:
    [PDF/X-3:2002]
    [PDF/X-1a:2001]
    [Qualitativ hochwertiger Druck]
    [PDF/X-4:2008]
    [Kleinste Dateigröße]
    ...

Unfortunately, the normal log does not contain any information about failed Javascript calls to app.comet. For this you have to switch on the api.log in InDesign Server (and then try to assign the calls to the normal log). In the desktop it does not work at all.

The calls to app.comet are now also entered (including a timestamp) into the normal log:

10.10.2023 17:26:48 : >> app.comet....
...
10.10.2023 17:26:48 : << app.comet.... FAILED with ...
				

With the black triangle of Template Behavior you can make the frame for repeating elements fit to its elements. This works - as long as the product has only one repeating element. But if you have more than one repeating element, the frame becomes so high that it also contains the elements of the other frames.

The problem is solved now.

Placeholders that get an empty text by "%!TT" are always shown as changed in the To Dos panel. If the value is given as the empty string (""), everything is okay.

This bug is fixed now.

This a very special use case: Our PDF export should include bleed and page information in the PDFs. InDesign then inserts the document file name into the PDF at the bottom left. If we call the function document::set_display_name beforehand (which is actually only supposed to change the title in the document window), then this window title is specified in the PDF instead of the file name. Our customer likes this side effect so much that he would like to have that in InDesign Server as well. Is that possible?

document::set_display_name works for InDesign Server now too.

Attention: If the feature leads to further side effects, we may have to revert the server support of this feature!

Would it be possible to have the same functions for inches, analogous to mm2pt and pt2mm?

The conversion is very simple (*72 for inch to pt and /72.0 for pt to inch). We have implemented the functions anyway: inch2pt and pt2inch.

When I remove a frame in the Build Support situation kAfterBuild, a gap will occur in the build - the build process jumps one line down then.

This problem is solved.

With an active connection to a SQL database, InDesign always crashes on quit.

This problem is solved.

Unfortunately, when I use the Product Pool -> Repeating Elements~ menus to build the repeating elements for the second time, the elements from the first build are not deleted. The same applies to the function placeholder::build.

In the panel Repeating Elements, the built-up elements are also not shown.

The problem is solved now.

Workaround

Create a Comet Group containing the building frame before.

'Some' URL cannot be loaded. Other URLs with the same server and path will work.

The problem is probably because the image path for the download becomes longer than 260. Unfortunately, this is not possible. We therefore did two things:

1. We fixed the extraction of the filename from the URL. See next row.
2. With the new keywords kNoHash and kEllipsize~ you can shorten long filenames. See here for more information.

I have an image with the URL:

../?downloadUrl=https%3A%2F%2FyourDoamin....%2FfileName.jpg

From this URL, the following is determined as the name for the downloaded image file:

?downloadUrl=https%3A%2F%2FyourDoamin....%2FfileName.jpg.

I would have expected fileName.jpg only. :-)

The problem is solved now.

The function frame::create does not generate splines.

This is fixed now.

The tag <w2cross:> does not work in complex tables.

The problem is fixed now.

With an empty layer name, the script functions layer::add and layer::add_i are generating a new layer with an autogenerated name. Is there any way to get the name of this newly generated layer?

The functions now have an additional (optional) parameter in which the new name can be returned.

The description of the Layout Rule 'Move To Layer' says the following:

Move the frame to the specified layer. If the layer does not yet exist, it is created in front of the layer specified in the second parameter. If the first layer name is not specified, a new layer is added with an autogenerated name. If the second parameter is omitted, new layers are created as the uppermost layer.

Unfortunately, this is not quite correct. The new layer with the autogenerated name is created (and also in the right place), but the frame is then not moved to this layer.

This is fixed and will work now as described in the documentation.

When I update a text placeholder, the log file says something like this:

# Loading placeholder 100710 at textpos 24

Could you put some more information there, in which frame the text position is?

We've added some more information here:

# Loading placeholder 100710
  at textpos 24 
  of text chain starting at frame 276914 
  by action 100009

Whatever I set in the parameters of the Layout Rule 'Set Frame Geometry' - I always get the following error:

Error while executing script:
Action -27
Error 2 - unrecognized : $

The bug is fixed now.

You now can use the new Placeholder panel fly-outs menus Placeholders in Frames of Parent Pages -> ... for auto-linking frames of parent pages to the first/last product of the current page. See here for more information.

When opening a document in a newer version of InDesign, we keep getting magnetis that are not in the original document.

The problem arises when an error or crash happens while inserting templates. We have implemented the following solutions:

1. Automatically: Magnets between multiple spreads are no longer re-created.

   Attention : This solution will not work for wrong magnets between frames on the same spread of course!

2. Manually:
   • Menu Plug-Ins -> priint:adjust -> Upgrade Documents without Touching Magnets
   • Flyout menu Upgrade Documents without Touching Magnets of panel priint:adjust

For PubServer connections, the panel Publication Previews causes errors: Each time a publication is selected, error messages appear stating that the documentpreviews.xml file cannot be loaded.

Yes, the XML file documentpreviews.xml is not delivered by any PubServer. Unfortunately, the default for the corresponding panel statements 100-104 was set to query the documentpreviews.xml file.

The bug is fixed in that the panelstaments 100-104 are now initialized with "".

The Datafolder -> menu now contains the 10 last used XML folders. This is super helpful. Thanks for that. Unfortunately the entries still have a small bug: Not the last used folders are shown but the last 10 new used folders. For example:

• Say, my first used folder is Folder_ABC.
• Then I use 10 more folders not used until now. Folder_ABC is disappeared from the list now. That is clear.
• If I now want to use Folder_ABC again, I have to reselect the folder using the folder dialog. Also completely correct.
• But now I would expect to see Folder_ABC in the list of recent entries again. But this folder is no longer displayed.

This problem is fixed now.

In the first parameter of the wlog and wtlog functions you can specify the file to write to. Is it possible to specify a non-existing path there as well, which will then be created automatically?

This will be supported starting with this release.

In the Windows version of the plug-ins, the About  of Comet shows the name Comet [Legacy]. What does the Legacy mean?

The name suffix no longer has any meaning and has been removed now.

The short description of the plug-in in this dialog also says that this plug-in does not support Python. This restriction is also invalid. All current Comet plug-ins from v4.2 support Python as a scripting language.

If you hold down the Control key (CTRL on Windows) and drop a template onto the frame of a Comet Group, this group is rebuild with the corresponding template. At least that's how it should be. Unfortunately, however, this leads to an infinite loop.

This is fixed now.

When I create an interactive field using interactive::create, I am (according to the documentation) allowed to omit the name. But then the W2ML generates the PDFlib error 1100 when exporting to PDF by comet_pdf

# PDFlib Error 1100
# PDF_create_field
# Parameter 'name' is empty

The function interactive::get_pdf_option returns wrong values for all integer attributes like kPDFPrintVisible, kPDFRequired, ... .

This is fixed now.

If no global destination path is defined for downloading Web Images, the images will be placed in the folder DocumentFolder/DocumentName_Links. Of course, this does not work for new unsaved and for converted documents - these documents do not have a path yet.

In order to see this error, a corresponding error message is now shown at this situation.

To create new templates in XML-Offline an entry with id the 0 is expected in pageitems.xml The 0-element is needed to determine which template features (page-specific templates, continuations, magnets, ...) your data connection should support. If the 0-element is missing, no templates can be created.

This configuration error is difficult to detect. Therefore in this situation an error message is shown now.

The comet plug-ins store a history of XML folders recently used as connections. On Windows it can happen that pathes get messed up and characters are omitted, essentially corrupting the history and making it unusuable.

The problem is fixed. We now add additional checks on writing the xloginhistory.xml so the entries do not get corrupted. Existing corrupted entries may have to be deleted using the 'Delete entries' button in the XML folder history menu.

The recently introduct XML folder history is only updated once a new connection is established to an XML folder. This introduces two problems:

• When switching to a different InDesign^® version, the recent entries are not updated.
• The check mark indicating the current pool is not shown unless the connection has changed.

The problem is fixed. We now load the menu entries at the first idle time on start.

Under certain constellations on Windows it is possible that InDesign crashes when accessing the Plug-Ins -> Data Folder menu.

The problem is fixed. This was caused due to a bug when writing XML files to store the login history causing the menu to be out of sync. While this is a separate matter, we intercept the crash immediately now.

I have the following phenomenon that is hard to believe: I have a rule on a picture of a box and I test it and it does what I want. As soon as I close the document (and save it before) and open it again, the rule is still there but it doesn't work anymore!

The problem is fixed. Under certain circumstances priint:Adjust scripts are not restored correctly when the document is opened. If your script has a certain length, it can happen that it is saved correctly into the document, but not restored. This is due to a workaround we had to implement for a crash in InDesign^®.

We use the layout rule "Rahmen positionieren" a lot and it seems that since version 4.2.33093, the default behavior of this layout rule has been changed. In the old version (<= 4.2.33093), if we put nothing into param 4. The default offset 0 0 will be used. From version 4.2.33093, we have to put the value 0 0 in param 4 to have the same behavior as before.

The problem is fixed. This was a side effect of a new feature for this rule where you can use as asterik ("*") to leave either the x or y value unchanged.

At least since the update to 18.5 (InDesign^® 2023.5), the plug-ins menu contains the additional entries:

• Zusatzmodulebedienfeld
• Zusatzmodule durchsuchen
• Zusatzmodule verwalten

Yes, this is a bit annoying. We have given our menus new sequence numbers and could put those entries before of the new Adobe menus now.

But please note: Why Adobe adds its own plug-ins to the Plug-Ins menu, we cannot say and unfortunately we cannot prevent. And basically anyone can add entries there. So it is certain not forever that our sequence numbers will not be undercut (or even used by others).

I have a template with some numbered lists. For these lists I have defined so called numbering lists. These lists control the different numberings.

Unfortunately, these list definitions are not exported to the W2ml of the template. If I open the template file directly in InDesign^® and create a W2ML, then it works. Strange. This is how it looks in W2ML when it works:

<numberinglists>
	<numberinglist 
	    uid="62" 
	    name="[Standard]" 
	    acrossStories="0" 
	    acrossDocuments="0"/>
	<numberinglist 
	    uid="269" 
	    name="Liste2" 
	    acrossStories="1" 
	    acrossDocuments="1"/>
	<numberinglist 
	    uid="271"
	    name="Liste1"
	    acrossStories="1"
	    acrossDocuments="1"/>
</numberinglists>

But in the W2ML in templates I only see this:

<numberinglists />

The problem is fixed.

Using the following script will crash InDesign^® at if you call it two times:

int main()
{
	hyperlink::delete_all(gDocument);
	hyperlink::create_urldest(0, 
		"My Link", 
		gFrame, 
		0, 
		-1, 
		"https://www.***", 1);

	return 0;
}

InDesign^® will not crash, if you change the last parameter of hyperlink::create_urldest to 0 (not shared).

The documentation explicitly points out that it is better to use the value 0 (not shared). Anyway, I've fixed it.

I have a product selection like this:

If I now want to build all products of Beginner until level 1 with a defined template (the red marked lines), I would expect to get four products. But I only get the first one (the 'Beginner').

This bug is fixed now.

Die Einträge des Menüs Hilfe -> Zusätzliche Hilfe zeigen auch in einem deutschen InDesign^® immer auf die englische Doku. Könnte man dort automatisch die deutsche Doku zeigen?

Man kann :-) In einem deutschen InDesign^® zeigen diese Einträge jetzt (falls vorhanden) auf die deutsche Doku.

I happened to notice the menu Help -> More Help -> What’s New? takes you to https://kb.priint.com/comet/news_4.1.html. It’s low priority, but when the change log for 4.3 is up, could the Menu item direct the user there? That would be most helpful. Again, not a high priority.

This is fixed.

The 'Me' field for "Changed by" and "Assigned to" of panel Comet Notes should be adjusted after login and -outs to the currently used login name resp. the the user currently logged into the computer.

This is done now. See also the help texts of the 'me' checkboxes.

If I open a document checked out document from a PubServer without having the connection to that server right now, the 'me' of "Changed by" and "Assigned to" of panel Comet Notes should be changed to the user, who checked out the document.

In the Publications panel I've selected the popup entry "Checked Out Documents" and click the magnifier with holding the SHIFT key. This shows - as I expected - all documents that of all PubServer connections that I've currently checked out. Pretty nice. If I now SHIFT click the magnifier again, I get the same documents - but in reverse order. And each further SHIFT-click reverses the sorting again in each case.

This bug is fixed.

You probably all know the problem: The image paths in InDesign® documents depend on the operating system under which the images were inserted and there is no way to customize these paths using on-board tools. Countless attempts have tried to solve this problem. But the trick, as we have now discovered, is quite simple:

Use UNC Paths and Mac Synthetic Links.

A complete description of how to do that can be found here.

Please note: The procedure described in this document is a suggestion, not a recommendation. WERK II expressly excludes any liability for any costs and/or problems that may arise from the suggested solution.

In addition, all priint:comet functions like frame::image, frame::place_pdf, the <w2inline:> tag as well as the menu Edit -> Paste Comet Image are supporting UNC path since now.

Is there a way to translate 'free' text to a specified target language using cScript? I don't mean the script function translate, which can translate predefined keys to the current InDesign^® language.

We have, based on the AI-supported translation service from deepl, implemented the new script function text::translate for this purpose.

The cScript functions frame::place_pdf and frame::place_pdf_with_crop support PDFs given by URLs now.

The connection to XML data folder is now made by the menu Plug-Ins -> Data Folder -> Select XML Data Folder. Below this entry up to ten last XML folders connections are shown. See here for more information.

When I change the ID of a placeholder with placeholder::change_tags and slot "Placeholder", I can update the ActionsIDs at the same time. To do this, I kindly only have to set the updateActions parameter to 1. This is great. However, in some circumstances it can happen that e.g. a table placeholder becomes a text placeholder. Could the function also adjust the relatedTo-ID there automatically too?

This is done now.

Is there any way to suppress the Priint:comet error messages (dialogs) in InDesign^®?

The new function data pool::suppress_warnings will do the job.

Please note that the function is for internal use only. Please read the documentation before use

I am trying to change the scale of my inline images using i_scale_x and i_scale_y bugt it doesn't work. Using this same syntax with i_rotate and i_skew, I was able to change the rotation and skew of the image but i_scale_x and i_scale_y both seem to have no effect on my image.

This is a small mistake in the documentation. It must be i_scale_width and i_scale_height. Additionally a small bug in the plugin code had to be fixed. Now the scaling works.

We use the following construction to edit our placeholders:

frame::gettext(frame, w2DocText, 0, kEnd, kExportW2);
string::replace (w2DocText, "aaa", "bbb");
frame::replace(frame, w2DocText);

This works on the Mac. On Windows, unfortunately, all paragraph delimiters are provided with an additional soft return.

This bug is fixed. It occurred whenever W2 placeholders (or other text attributes) were explicitly part of the paragraph delimiter.

Using the download button (the folder at right bottom) of panel Placeholder Options or the function soap::download_config a user:in can download the full configuration data of a SOAP/PubServer project. This should be limited to users:innen with a Developer license only.

Button and function now only work with a valid priint:comet Developer license.

Unfortunately, after exporting and re-importing the notes of a document, the XY positions of the notes have changed.

The problem occurs in documents with changed page sizes, otherwise not. The problem is solved now

The page numbers of the Comet Notes shown in the panel are each 1 too high.

... but nobody noticed that for a long time. The bug is fixed.

Unfortunately, soap::download_config does not export the [soap] includes of the actions.

Yes, and exactly so it was also described in the documentation. This assumes that after the download ALL actions must be searched, etc. accordingly.

Anyway, we do that now. All [soap], [pubserver], ... includes are exported to the subfolder scripts now. And the including scripts are changed accordingly.

I'm using soap::download_config to download my PubServer configuration to an XML offline folder. Unfortunately some placeholders are using scripts (load, sync, store) whose IDs are not registered in actions.xml. But only actions which are registered in actions.xml are exported by soap::download_config. Is there anything that can be done here?

To do this, we need to search through all the placeholder definitions and export the corresponding actions as well. This is done now. This solves the problem.

Attention :Some installations use the styleID attribute of the placeholder definitions differently from the default. Actually, this attribute is used as follows:

• Text placeholder : String comparison script
• Multi Frames : Load the repeating elements

With the new function soap::download_config you now can export a SOAP/PubServer confiuration to an XML-Offline project. Please note, the configuration data will be exported, no project data!

SQL statements can start with a #TableName prefix. Unfortunately, these statements are interpreted as scripts and then (of course) executed incorrectly.

Ooh, I've never seen such SQL statements. Anyway, we take such statements into account now.

I try to read a products.xml using productlist::from_xml. But I always get wrong results for the type in my products by calls to product::get (p, kProductType).

Oh sorry, this was a small but effective copy/paste error. This is fixed now.

I want to use the function frame::note::change_dest. The new target can be, among others, a comet group (kNoteTypeGroup). But unfortunately the keyword kNoteTypeGroup seems not to be defined.

The keyword is properly defined now.

The functions document::path, ... always need an allocated output variable. Mostly this is an 'instant' information - couldn't the result be written to a global variable?

The following functions will work without an locally defined output string:

• document::name
• document::path
• document::path9
• document::pathX
• document::folder
• document::get_display_name

The panels Page Templates and Page Elements now have two new menues to create and update page templates with grid like elements:

• Page Template Fly Out -> Create New...
• Page Template Fly Out -> Replace Elements by Grid...

With the new function prefs::show_panel you can show or hide priint:comet panels by cScript now.

In addition to direct script text, the function app.comet.eval now also allows file paths. To do that, add your file path after the prefix file:// simply. The following path types are allowed:

• Complete paths (file:///Users/paul/Destop/aaa.cpp )
• Alias names are possible (file://$DESKTOP/aaa.cpp )
• Incomplete paths are resolved relative to the current document (if there are current and non-new document)
• ~ at the beginning is replaced by the current user directory (e.g. $HOME)

With the new function prefs::enable_preflights you can turn off/on the preflight triggers.

One of our customers is unable to update existing templates or create new templates. The error occurs only in PubServer connections and on Mac OS 13.4 (Ventura) with M1.

The problem is solved now.

When a user tries to check-in a document, the process appears to go smoothly. However, when the user tries to check-out that file later, they run into an error -61, that the file exists in the folder. The error occurs only in PubServer connections and on Mac OS 13.4 (Ventura) with M1.

We can't reproduce the problem on our end, but it seems to have the same cause as the (solved) case TW 2583577 (see above).

If the database used for an ODBC connection is not already specified in the ODBC configuration (e.g. with Database=%your_dbname%) but is only specified in the login dialog, then only the first opened query will work correctly. If you open further queries in parallel, they will generate the following error:

# [Devart](ODBC][MySQL]#3D000No database selected, SOLSTATE-HY000

The error occurs only Mac OS.

The problem is fixed now. For more information see here.

Some of the templates I edit appear afterwards in the Recent Files -> menu. That shouldn't be the case, should it? The same applies to the page templates.

This is fixed now.

In the about menus of the plug-ins there is an entry "Your license is only valid today!". What does that mean - my license is still valid for 18 months.

The InDesign SDK played a trick on us. The menu should actually say "Comet Test...". The error is fixed.

The list selection of the templates list does not react to changes of the front document.

In template editors, the associated list entry is now selected even if the frame selection is empty. In addition, the list selection is also adjusted when the panel is expanded again and when switching the document windows (but not if the current window is not a template editor).

When I open a template, the window gets the name of the template. That's great. But after a window change, the title is unfortunately lost and becomes "Untitled".

Not really a bug - but a nice to have. FXD

An error occurs when loading the subproducts with SQL.

Yes, we have built in the ability to load products with scripts as well in release R32862 (Case 2457826). To do this, of course, we need to check what kind of instruction it is. This failed in the present (somewhat exotic) case. The error is fixed now.

When calling comet.table.setStyle I get a typeerror that 'removeCellStyles' is not a valid parameter.

FXD

No matter which parameters I assign, comet.table.find always aborts with the same typeerror for the method.

FXD

The missing python function comet.table.create is now implemented.

If your InDesign^® default document settings are set to start page 2, then the templates will no longer work. I know this is a very exotic setting, but is there anything that can be done here?

Indeed, a very exotic setting, the first time after 20 years or so.Yes, we have fixed the problem.

In the Pubserver, the elements of a page template are referenced by their names. Therefore the elements have the respective sequence number as name. I know that I can do this in the Page Elements panel. But it is a tedious work. Is there any way to 'support' this?

T he elements 'Name' field in the panel Page Elements now knows the keyword $seq wich is replaced automatically by the according sequence number. So all you have to do is the following:

1. Select all elements in the list
2. Type in $seq or (e.g.) Nr. $seq
3. If you leave the edit field, all elements will be renamed to 1, 2, 3, .. (or Nr. 1, Nr. 2, ...)

Since there are the nice warnings that a license/grace period is about to expire, the indication that you no longer have a license at all is unfortunately no longer valid. A -1 is shown instead.

This problem is fixed now. It came because we are using the 0 for the last day. So the next smaller value is -1. We are using the 0 now for 'no licence found or expired'. For the last day we are using ¾,½ and ¼.

If a dialog listener function changes the value of the field that called the listener, InDesign^® will fall into an infinite loop:

// Install the listener function 
dialog::listen ("cols", handleSize); 

int handleSize (char * id)
{
	if (dialog::rintfield (id) <= 0) 
	{
		dialog::wintfield (id, 1);
   	}
       
   return 0;
}

Haha, what a surprise. But unfortunately you don't have any chance to turn off the listener temporarily. For this purpose we implemented the new function dialog::suppress_listeners (1). This function switches off (or on again) all listeners of the dialog.

Attention : Do not forget to switch the listeners back on at the end of the function!

// Install the listener function 
dialog::listen ("cols", handleSize); 

int handleSize (char * id)
{
	dialog::suppress_listeners (1);
	
	if (dialog::rintfield (id) <= 0)
	{
		dialog::wintfield (id, 1);
	}
	
	dialog::suppress_listeners (0);
       
   return 0;
}

The method with dialog::listen is very cool. But somehow it doesn't seem to work in number fields (int, float).

Also the number fields can now be provided with listeners.

Again some thing with the dialog::listen feature. Would it be possible to trigger the listener after every keystroke always (and not only when the field is left)?

The listeners are now triggered at every key stroke.

Internal Usage Only!

The strings defined internally in the plug-ins such as 0x83800kDataPanelPageTemplateRowwise are now also translated by the script translation mechanism.

Are the labels of the cscript dialogs actually translated automatically?

Not all, as you probably noticed. But we have implemented that now for all of following labels too:

• dialog::title
• dialog::label
• labels of dialog::confirmbutton with label.lower != "kok" && label != "kcancel"
• label of dialog::checkbox
• entries of dialog::dropdown

The cscript dialog framework is a very useful tool. As a 'bonus track', would it be possible to have controls for document measurements too?

You now can configure the dialog::floatfield as to be an X or Y measurement control. But please take care, in the script you still use point values!

The Layout Rule 'Position frame' is a nice thing that I use often. Nevertheless I noticed that both coordinates are always adjusted. Is it also possible to adjust only the x or y coordinate and leave the other one unchanged? This would be a very helpful enhancement.

This is possible now. Just specify a * instead of a value. E.g. 10 * or * 20.5. The corresponding side of the frame then remains unchanged.

With the new menu InDesign -> License -> Show in Finder (Help -> License -> Show in Windows Explorer on Windows) the priint:comet plug-ins now can show your license in the Finder resp. Windows Explorer.

Unfortunately, in the list 'Products of Document' I cannot set the property keep with next product. In the Product Pool I can do that by "SHIFT + Right click".

So first of all I would say: Be happy that this works with the products.

And yes, this does not work in the Products of Document. The property "keepWithNext" is, as described in the documentation, not reorganize-resistant. But we support the keepWithNext in the products XMLs now and you can change this property in Products XMLs manually. When dragging and dropping it into the Products of Document panel at it will be applied when reorganizing using this panel.

With the function prefs::install_image it was possible to install custom icons in the Front Row panel. This is no longer possible for some time now.

We'd better not talk about it: The function changes the binary installation of the plug-ins. That might have been a good idea in the past. In the age of malware scanning, notarization, and gatekeepers, that's not quite the case anymore.

We fixed the function anyway (and then marked it as to be deprecated).

When creating a w2ml file with 2 buttons (for example one for post and one for resetting) then the creation of the pdf fails.

This will be fixed in the next release of the InDesign plug-ins (ATTENTION: The error occurred in the W2ML export from InDesign, not in comet_pdf!).

The plug-ins now warn of the impending end of the Grace Period and expiring licenses:

We have now put Xcell under the normal priint:comet ID license (Basic/Pro/Developer). I.e. if you have a priint:comet ID license, you can also use Xcell.

Please note: Xcell is not included in the standard installers of the priint:comet ID plug-ins. You can find the plugin in the corresponding ZIP files. Please make sure to use the same release as the other plug-ins!

To install the plugin, please copy it to the Plug-Ins folder of your InDesign. For Windows, please alo copy the folder (XCell Resources).

Apparently, in XPATH calls, the order of the result columns does not always match the order in the statement. In the following call I get the value for content first, then the key:

//item[...]/@key | //item[...]/@content

The bug is fixed now.

Since an update from Mac OS 13.3 to 13.3.1 I cannot connect to my database anymore.

The problem occurs from Mac OS 13.3.1 only. Apparently Apple removed some libraries necessary for ODBC connections during this update. This is quite annoying, after all it is only a sub minor step.

Anyway, we have managed to work around the problem. The problem is solved. https://www.iodbc.org/dataspace/doc/iodbc/wiki/iodbcWiki/Downloads

If the login still does not work, please update your ODBC driver and the framework iODBC.framework first. The iODBC.framework you can find here. Please make sure to install the appropriate version of the framework for your operating system!

For some time now, the Templates panel is been able to warn about using templates with the wrong InDesign versions. These messages are using the internal version number of InDesign, e.g. v18 for InDesign 2023. Could the warnings also show this NAME?

We have expanded the messages accordingly.

Since the last release R32762, unfortunately, the build-up of tables with the help of the Table Module is no longer possible. In the last release R32585 it still worked.

The problem is a side effect of the "Directly Load Table Placeholder" extension (Case 2532853) of the last release and only occurs in connection with nested tables.

The problem is solved now.

Thanks a lot for implementing this feature. I tested it and it seems to work well. All Attributes were set in the w2ml-file of the Comet-PDF Renderer. Although it seems, like "Author Title" and "Copyright Notice" are not transported to the exported PDF. When exporting that file from InDesign, the correct fields are populated.

We have implemented a few more features.

• document::metadata::set_copyright_url
• document::metadata::get_copyright_url
• document::metadata::set_copyright_state
• document::metadata::get_copyright_state
• document::metadata::set_rating
• document::metadata::get_rating

Attention: To ensure a correct interaction between InDesign^® and comet_pdf, both installations must be renewed!

If your script returns one of the following error codes, it will cancel processing the selected frames immediately now:

• kBreakExecution (cancel processing only)
• kRollbackExecution (cancel processing and rollback all document changes)

Both return values are only supported by panel- and front row scripts! In other scripts these error codes have no extra handling.

The Front Row panel now supports Javascripts from local files. See here for more information.

We have implemented some functions for the following document metadata:

• Document Title (document::metadata::set/get_title)
• Author
• Title of Author
• Description by Author
• Description
• Keys
• Copyright Note

For the downloaded Web Images files you could assign your own file names already. This feature has been extended by the possibility to specify relative and absolute paths as well. See here for more information.

In the Placeholder Options panel I can choose Suppress and Build for table placeholders. 'Suppress' is quite clear, in this case the table is only inserted without any changes. If I choose 'Build' the table is built (as expected). BUT : The table must be well configured using the panel Table Module to get any changes according to the current product of the placeholder.

It would be very nice to have the possibility to only link and load the placeholders inside the table changes without adding some Table Module configurations.

This can be done by setting the value 2 to the field "Build Later" ('Kein Aufbau' in the German screenshot):

Size and position changes defined in Object Styles are now applied by the Product Build-Up process. This allows, within the limits of the object style capabilities, customized movements of product frames in 1:N page elements.

I can see the notes I added in Neowise only for the first time I check out a document with the newest plug-ins:

1. When I check out the document for the first time, I can see the notes in the Comet Notes Panel.
2. I can not see them in the TODO Panel (I thought they are supposed to show there now).
3. When I close the document only locally and reopen the document, the Comet Notes now also stays empty.
4. After I revert the document and check out the document again, the Comet Notes is filled again.

Is this a known issue? A customer testing the 4.2. is noticing the same behavior.

This is fixed now.

In a column-wise 1:N page element, the order of the products is strictly determined by their X-positions. In the screenshot the red frame gets the number 3 although the number 2 would be optically closer:

We have adjusted the sorting a bit and hopefully the result is a bit more in line with the expectations.

When downloading the actions from a SOAP (Pub Server) connection, the error -43 occurs from time to time. The error only happens on the Mac (tested with Mac OS X 10.14 - Mojave) and always affects diffferent files. Most of actions can be loaded, but in about 1 out of 100 cases this error occurs.

InDesign crashes immediately, if I try to add add a Javascript action (kExecJavascript) to an interactive.

This is fixed now, InDesign^® will no longer crash in this situation. But of course, you still can't create a javascript action. In this case use the function frame::set_script_tag with the key priint_kFormFieldActions please. See here for more information. An example you will find here.

If the server option -cometapilog points to a folder, no logfile is written on the Mac. This is okay (except of the startup information 'Writing Comet API Log to ...'). But on Windows this folder is deleted. And that is really not good.

This is solved now. The same applies to -cometlog. No logs are written in this cases.

By specifying a layer, itemlist::allframes can search frames only on one layer. But if this layer does not exist, the function will automatically search on all layers.

This problem is now solved. If itemlist::allframes should only search on one layer and this layer does not exist at all, the function returns an empty list now.

Front Row actions can be undone by the Undo menu. The name of the action is used as the name of the undo action. But if the action is a local script from cscripts and got its own name by @@LABEL definition, this name should be used as undo label.

If the script has its own label, this label is now used as the name of the undo action.

When I ALT-click the + button of the FrontRow palette to reload the local scripts from $DESKTOP/cscripts, all actions defined in the data pool are missing afterwards.

This bug is solved now.

Unfortunately, when I don't have a data connection, the FrontRow actions from $DESKTOP/cscripts are not loaded either.

The actions can now be loaded and executed without a data connection too.

To check whether a downloaded Web image is still up-to-date, the header information Last-Modified, Content-Length, Content-Type and ETag of the image URL are used.

• Last-Modified
• Content-Length
• Content-Type
• ETag

The function product::relink will fail under the following circumstances:

1. The frame itself has a placeholder. In this case, the outer placeholder covers the inner placeholders.
2. The frame is part of an InDesign^® group.

We have solved this problem now.

The setting for "Distance between same paragraphs" is missing in the long list of options for textmodel::set/get_attr.

This option is new since the first implementation of the function. We added this attribute now to the list of available attributes. And we also added the 90 new attributes for paragraph frames and shadows. See here for more information.

Attention: All of new options are available from ID 2023 only in our implementation!

It would be very helpful if there was an illustration (e.g. a flowchart) of how the product setup works.

Here it is: productlis::establish.

placeholder::change_tags (frame, 0, "STRINGID", stringid); does work on InDesign^® but not on InDesign^® Server.

This bug is fixed now.

The parameter allPages introduced in the last release works without errors. Unfortunately, we continue to have problems with frames like in the screenshot:

We get the following result:

For InDesign^®, frames belong to the page on which the larger part of the frame's BoundingBox is located. So the result is perfectly correct. But it is clear to us that it is difficult to move frames spread-wise. We have therefore added another parameter spreadWise to the itemlist::move_to function. If this parameter is set to 1, the following result is obtained:

When creating a custom dialog using the dialog framework (through cScript or Python), the tab order inside the dialog seems to be random. It would be nice to have the tab order in order of creation of the widgets.

The problem is solved now.

In InDesign, when running a cScript through the Front Row panel or through a product pool panel action, the global Variable gDocumentID is not available, but only when I have a text cursor set into a text frame.

The problem is solved now.

It seems that the colors of page elements are shifted by one between PubServer setting and plug-ins.

In the plug-ins an entry in the color list was missing. This is fixed.

For an error-free color assignment, the color definition may also have to be corrected on the server side. In case of problems please contact our support again.

If a template contains only one frame and this frame is moved by a Layout Rule during the build, the build always starts on a new page after the product.

After executing the Layout Rules, we are checking how the frame geometries have changed in the process. After that, the location in the build-grid is updated accordingly. For the check of the frame geometries the size was used so far - but with a merely shifted frame this remains unchanged. Hence the problem.

The problem is solved now.

I have a placeholders pre/post fixes defined like this:



If the placeholder contains text, the "red" is applies correctly. But if the placeholder is empty (e.g. = <0x200B> the "blue" style is not applied. Am I doing something wrong here?

No, the definitions are well done. The problem was inside the plug-ins and is fixed now.

The list of cScript functions contains the new 'c/o' column with the availability in the different environments. May it be helpful.

The distinct keyword can be used to remove multiple entries from xmlquery selects. The problem is that results are already removed if they are the same in only one column.

Using the new syntax distinct (colName [, colName]) the uniqueness can be restricted to a any number of specific columns now.

See here for more information.

Using the new keyword child_N you can easily refer to the n-th child an an XML element with xmlquery now.

See here for more information.

You now can copy/paste Layout Rules between frames and text placeholders. To do that use the new fly-out menues Copy, Paste and Paste All or the buttons and at the bottom of the panel Layout Rules.

The following improvements are now available for the Python integration:

• Product pool entries can now be loaded using Python.
• Selecting the page when placing a PDF is now possible
• Consistency updates

Our XPATH implementation now also successfully executes statements where elements with different paths are found:

foo//bar
foo/following-sibling::bar
foo/../bar

I lock a local change of a placeholder using the = of panel ToDo List. But unfortunately the state of the placeholder is set back to 'Changed' on every sync.

This bug is fixed.

Attention: Defective placeholders must be decoupled once and then locked again using the = button of the ToDo List.

I noticed a possible bug when using Python or an error in the documentation. When running the comet.link.collect function, I actually wanted to pass named parameters to avoid having to write empty parameters in the function call. In the online documentation, the parameter for the placeholder IDs is called "placeholders"; in the VSCode plugin it is explained with “placeHolders”. http://kb.priint.com/comet/PyDoc/Module_link.html#comet.link.collect When executing both variants ...

The correct keyword for the link.collect function is 'placeholderIDs'. The documentation is fixed now.

Mir ist bei den Python-Funktionen comet.placeholder.link und comet.placeholder.load aufgefallen, dass die die Parameter zum Ausführen der Layoutregeln unterschiedliche heißen (applyLayoutRules & applyRules):

• comet.placeholder.link(currentFrame, cId, applyLayoutRules=True)
• comet.placeholder.load(currentFrame, applyRules=True)

Ich habe den Parameter für comet.placeholder.load jetzt umbenannt nach "applyLayoutRules" - damit ist der Parameter bei beiden Funktionen gleich benannt. Konsistenz ist mir immer enorm wichtig!

Even if I want to edit only one column range of the table, all column widths will be changed anyway.

This happens whenever the table is to be brought to frame width at the same time. We have now changed the behavior of the rule so that only the specified columns are changed in the process as well.

Using the function table::broaden_to_frame I can adjust the width of a table to the frame width (res. column width). The adjustment of the width is done either over one or all columns. Is there also the possibility to specify a range of columns (e.g. 2-5)?

The function table::broaden_to_frame does not taken the left and right paragraph indentions into account. In case of paragraph indentions, the table becomes too wide.

This problem is solved.

I probably came across a bug in the InDesign plugin that affects various panels.

When a page element is selected in InDesign and one of a few specific panels is then opened, the element's Comet settings are not recognized and the panel appears blank. It's only after the InDesign is deselected and I reselect the element while the panel is open that the Comet settings appear.

As far as I know, this affects the following panels, among others: design rules placeholder The bug occurs to me most of the time. During a test, I was in an offline XML project and logged on to a pub server. After that, the bug no longer occurred, at least in the design rules panel. It still appeared in the placeholder panel afterwards.

I am currently using version 4.2 R32286 for InDesign 18.1 on Windows

Boah, ... . We have tried to cover all situations and have fixed the 2 or 3 that did not respond

I have a placeholders pre-fix defined by #pStyle "red". But if the placeholder is empty (e.g. = <0x200B> the "red" style is not applied.

The problem is fixed now.

Functions like substr (child_2.value, 3, 3) are not computed correctly for result columns with dots (.) like child_2.value by xmlquery.

The bug is an unexpected side effect of fix of Fogbugz Case 27192 (How nice the case numbers were back then) and exists since v4.1.7 R26955 (May 09 2020)

The bug is fixed now.

Fractions with 3 digits produce a wrong output in excel::read. E.g. 5.123 is written as 5.12 instead of 5 100/813.

This problem is solved.

Contrary to older requirements, the InDesign^® Server shall now export Comet Notes in the metadata too. To ensure backward compatibility, this capability should be able to be set via a script command in the AfterLogin script. So we need a new script command for this.

prefs::add_notes_to_metadata will do this job.

Using the (fantastic) excel::read function, I can pretty much fetch the contents of an Excel cell as it is displayed in Excel. Is there also a way to get the direct and unformatted value?

You can do that with the following parameter settings now:

• type : kString
• format : kUndef

See here for more information.

Excel cells with fractions like 'As quarter', 'As half', ... are unfortunately still output incorrectly.

This 'problem' is solved now.

The cscript function excel::get_format always returns an error.

The problem is fixed now.

Templates can now be tagged with an InDesign version to protect against overwriting. This can prevent newer InDesigns from overwriting older templates and making them unusable for older InDesigns. See here for more information.

• Mac : InDesign -> About Plug-Ins -> Apply License...
• Windows : Help -> About Plug-Ins -> Apply License...

The plug-ins now support Single Sign On (SSO) as a login method for the PubServer. To do this, use the menu Plug-Ins -> Connect with Publishing Server (SSO)... .

For SSO Logins the installation of PubServer 4.2.3136 is mandatory!

See here for more information.

You now can place images of the Previews panel directly into your documents.

To do that, simply drag and drop image entries to empty places in the document. If at least one document frame is selected, the new frame is created as an exact copy of the first selected frame. Otherwise, a new frame of size 100x100 is created. The image is placed in the new frame with the settings of the Previews panel.

Until now, only the top level products of the Product Pool could be loaded via script. Now you can load the subentries by script too.

Please take care : The subentries must still be implemented in the panelstatements (and not in the findstatements like the top level script based statements).

If the page template of a page is changed by page::set_info, the parent page defined in the page template can now be applied at the same time.

See here for more information.

InDesign^® Server 2022 always crashes during normal shutdown. I have tested with Mac OS Ventura. Here is the crash log:

Thread 0 Crashed::  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   AppFramework	0x1190b0a58 0x1190a0000 + 68184
1   AppFramework	0x1190b0a50 0x1190a0000 + 68176
2   SoapServer		0x10f5e0bf4 0x10f5a8000 + 232436
3   SoapServer		0x10f5e10cc 0x10f5a8000 + 233676
4   AppKit		0x19e7be360 -[NSApplication _handleEvent:] + 60

As you can see from the log, our plug-ins are not involved in the crash at all. And this is also confirmed if InDesign^® Server is started completely without our plug-ins. Also then the crash is exactly the same.

So unfortunately there is nothing we can do here.

Using the Python function Page.setSize will reproducible crash InDesign. The error occurs on the Mac only.

The bug is fixed now.

In case of invalid page numbers the function frame::place_pdf_with_crop behaves differently in InDesign^® and comet_pdf:

• InDesign^® uses the first page of the given PDF
• comet_pdf returns an error

The behavior is now consistent: In both cases the first page is automatically placed. The same applies to the function frame::place_pdf.

Additionally, the functions now have an additional parameter to control the behavior in case of wrong page numbers. See here for more information.

PDFs with binary data generate an error when calling the function file::pdf_count_pages.

The problem is fixed.

The key-value-mapping dialog is not adjusted to the UI scaling. That's why you can't click the Okay button anymore.

This is fixed.

For some time now, the Translations panel seems to have stopped working.

The Translations panel is a YLYSYK (You Look, You See, You Know) panel and has no documentation therefore. Unfortunately, there was nothing more with "You See". This is fixed now and the panel works as expected again.

If I use productlist::append with not allowDoubles, the list stays empty always.

The problem is solved now.

Is it possible to automatically embed an inline image created with <w2inline>?

With the specification ... embed_image 1 ... in the <in> resp. <w2inline> tag this works now.

I have an excelquery like this:

#pragma var "ROW"
#pragma var "COLUMN"

"$EXCELFILE"
select "%s" with
     plain <Unquoted_ROW>, <Unquoted_COLUMN>

EXCELFILE is defined in the Settings panels. But the statement failed because $EXCELFILE is not replaced in the path but appended to the path of my current xml folder.

The problem is solved now.

Globally opened Excel files are closed only on logout. This could be a bit late if you have several (many) tables open. Is there any way to close the files sooner as well?

Reading in the Excel files is quite fast. We therefore close globally opened Excels at the next Idle time now always.

I have an excelquery like this:

"$DESKTOP/Formats.xlsx"
select "%s" with
  tt "Table 1"!C17 script 905

This call crashes InDesign reproducibly. If I omit the script 905, it works. The script 905 does nothing:

int main ()
{
    return 0;
}

Yes, this is a side effect of the Illustrator^® integration for Excel. The bug is fixed.

When I use excel::read or excelquery with type kInt or kFloat as out value type, the result is usually wrong or empty. For example, if I have a cell with the value 5.12 in the representation 5 1/8, I get the result 5 for float (but not 5.12).

This bug is fixed now.

If the last/first column/row of an Excel sheet does contain images only (and no text in any cell), this column/row is not taken into account by the functions excel::last_col, ... .

This is done now (but since you can not import images from the Excel file now, this fix will not have any effect).

The tags <ID>, <ID2>, ... are not replaced in the panelstatements 100 (and others) for loading the panel Publication Information.

This is fixed now.

I use the function document::begin_sequence in a Front Row action. Unfortunately, the call has no effect.

Yes, the Front Row actions cover the action by its own (and additional) commend sequence. Unfortunately, this is necessary for a working One Step Undo. So you should avoid using document::begin_sequence in front row actions.

At this point we also cleaned up a bit and marked the functions document::open_sequence, document::purge_sequence and document::close_sequence as deprecated. These functions are likely to destroy the undo stack of InDesign^® if they are used incorrectly (which can happen very easily).

With a collection of new script commands it is now possible to select Comet Notes and link with new targets.

• itemlist::doc_notes
• itemlist::page_notes
• itemlist::group_notes
• itemlist::frame_notes
  
  
• frame::note::get_dest
• frame::note::change_dest

The script commands are available for both InDesign^® and comet_pdf.

The Excel import (e.g. excel::read) now reads all standard number formats and all date/time formats. Only user-defined numbers are not yet imported in an Excel-compliant way.

There are several new enhancements to the Python integration, inlucing a bugfix for the notorious 'ModuleNotFoundError'.
For more information see here

It is about the import via the comet.pyImport() method, of a file that has already been imported by another script. Apparently there is the problem that the already imported script cannot be recognized from the XCache.

This problem is fixed.

When I update a template, the preview of the template is animated in the panel, but the old preview is still displayed. Only when I reload the panel, the new preview appears. Also, in my Templates panel, the icon for the template type is missing.

This happens when the configuration is incomplete. In this case the panel statement 23 was missing. This is of course a configuration error. Anyway, we now use a default statement anyway when panel statement 23 is missing.

It seems that the Comet Plugin has issues in keeping the correct document ids after a manual save. This needs to be discussed with WerkII to assure that they check for issues on their side.

The problem was that we had mistakenly defined the integer parts of the document IDs in the script as char* strings. Because of this, the IDs were no longer correct, of course. The error is fixed.

Comments for Outlined Comet Notes could be made directly in the Comet Notes panel. This works, but it is very slow. Each letter takes about 2 seconds.

The reason is that every change is immediately applied to the document and the panel. Of course, this takes a moment. But of course, 2 seconds is too long. We managed to shorten this so that you can write (almost) at normal speed.

The content search for Comet Notes of the Comet Notes panel unfortunately ignores the comments of Outline notes.

This is fixed. The search now also works for outline notes.

When I delete a Placeholder Variant from the Placeholders panel, the placeholder list is reloaded afterwards. But then almost all entries are missing. Only when I press the magnifying glass again, I get all entries again.

Yes, this is because the ALT key is held down to delete the variant - and it is still held down when the list is (automatically) reloaded. But Load+ALT means : Load the Recent Entries. So you see the recent entries now only.

We solved this problem now and you will get the same panel entries as before the deletion of the variant now (except the one you've even deleted of course :-) ).

Is ist possible, to format an integer value as unsigned in the wlog, printf, ... functions of cscript?

Int numbers are internally represented in cScript as 64-bit numbers. These are gigantic numbers and there are actually no applications for unsigned in our environment. But if you really want to do that : with %u you can do it now. See here for more information.

Try this:

showmessage ("%d\n%u\n%x",
 	0x800000000000000F,
 	0x800000000000000F,
 	0x800000000000000F);

If the cScript alloc function is to allocate more memory than available, InDesign^® crashes on the Mac.

The reason for the crash seems to be different for Intel and M1:

• Intel : The function llvm::report_bad_alloc_error(char const*, bool) of the Apple-System-Library AppleIntelKBLGraphicsGLDriver aborts the program.
• M1 : Very strange - When we write the result to the log, it says 0, but the test result==0UL says false. Thereupon the char* string is initialized with *result=0; - and this leads to the crash. Huh?!!

We were able to work around the problem by reaching deep into the bag of tricks. 18 Exa-Bytes of RAM are still not available of course, but it no longer leads to a crash

The function document::get_links can shrink its results by a given page number and/or layer. This work perfectly if all the links (images) are 'normal' images frames. But if there are also some inlines with images, the results are wrong.

The bug is fixed now.

If a placeholder is loaded with TaggedText and the text contains coded tabs (<0x0009>) then the TosDos panel always reports an error. The funny thing is that when comparing the document and database values, it still says that both values are equal.

Yes, the problem is that TABs should not be encoded in TaggedText. If you replace <0x0009> with a TAB (\t), the problem no longer occurs.

Nevertheless, we have adapted our string comparison (string::get_netweight) so that <0x0009> is automatically taken into account as well. This solves the problem even without any changes on your side.

Every time I load the Placeholder list, I get a message that placeholder_variants.xml cannot be loaded.

The error only occurs in PubServer/SOAP connections and only when the + button at the top left of the panel is enabled (blue). In this case, the panel tries to load all Placeholder Variants as well. If the system is not yet extended accordingly, this message appears.

The problem is fixed now. You will now only get a corresponding message when you actually want to create a new variant (the small + at the bottom of the Placeholder panel), and not already when loading the placeholder list.

In the xml created by productlist::to_xml the product type (normal, new, deleted, moved, page template) is missing.

We have added this entry now. The value is also read by productlist::from_xml

Apparently, in the methods of the Table Module, the variable gFrame is no longer defined since v4.2.

This is fixed. The variable is now defined again in Table Module Insert and Layout methods and contains a reference to the first frame of the tables text chain.

It should be published only in v4.3. But you can test it already today: The JSON support of cScript. A (not yet quite complete) documentation can be found here.

Sometimes the next product of a build-chain after the one we build with the continue frame has the wrong position (not always but in some cases). The next product does not place in the position x and y of the page template element but got moved to the top with an offset.

This problem is solved.

The product build-up falls into an infinite loop in the following situation:

• Two products are kept together.
• The second product may have continuations.
• The first part (the main template) still fits on the same page like the "Keep with next" product

The problem is solved now.

The product build-up falls into an infinite loop in the following situation:

• Two products are kept together.
• The second product may have continuations.
• The first part (the main template) still fits on the same page like the "Keep with next" product

The problem is solved now.

itemlist::adapt_by fails while adapating frames of master parent pages.

This problem was a little bit more difficult to solve: Geometry operations always require the page of the frames. But master parent page frames do not have a page. To solve this problem, we had to dig a little deeper into the bag of tricks. It works now.

I tried to use the itemlist::adapt_by script command. This works. But it always opens a new document, which then becomes the new front document. When my script then continues to work, it continues to works there of course - and unfortunately not in my original document.

Oh, the document was only open for testing purposes. Apparently no one has used this command until now. The problem is fixed.

When I export an unlinked frame (e.g. no placeholder) to W2ML and re-import the W2ML again, the frame gets an "unlinked" marker afterwards in the document.

This frame marking is now prevented.

Is there a way to query the executing program of a script?

Yes, you can use system::version:

• -1 = comet_pdf
• 0-23 = InDesign + Parameter isServer
• >=24 = Illustrator

But since the version number increases by 1 every year, this will no longer work in 5 years. To prevent this the parameter isServer is called hostApp now and returns the program type:

• 0 : InDesign (like before)
• 1 : InDesign Server (like before)
• 2 : comet_pdf
• 3 : Illustrator

The CScript function document::get_styles always returns an error even if the collected styles seem correct.

The problem is fixed.

There are several new enhancements to the Python integration.
For more information see here

I discovered two small typos in the latest New Features and Bug Fixes splash screen. As a result, 'Improved' and 'highlighting' are both misspelled.

...

When downloading the actions from a SOAP (Pub Server) connection, the error -43 occurs from time to time. The error only happens on the Mac (tested with Mac OS X 10.14 - Mojave) and always affects diffferent files. Most of actions can be loaded, but in about 1 out of 100 cases this error occurs.

We've' found a workaround that solves the problem after a long search.

My document contains a number of hidden frames (hidden by itself!, not by the layer!). Unfortunately, these frames are ignored when linklist::insert_toc_entry is called. What can I do about this?

If the value 8 is added to parameter flags of the function, the placeholders of hidden frames are also collected. This hint was unfortunately missing in the documentation (and has now been added.) So you can use the feature immediately even without new plug-ins.

In the order dialog there is also a license for a product called priint:xcell. What is that ?

This is the license for the priint:xcell plugin of the same name. At our CEO's request, we have now removed this entry.

Most panel have a label with the current data connection at the bottom. But on some panels the text overlaps the following button, is cut off incorrectly or ellipsized differently. I would suggest that the 'overset points' (...) are always in the middle of the label.

I would like to have your problems ...

Anyway, I have revised all the labels again accordingly. The labels should all fit now and are abbr...ed in the middle.

All other panel now have a small help button in the lower right corner. In the panel Placeholder Values this was probably forgotten, right?

The panel even has FOUR help buttons - one for each category - the turquoise name of the category. You just have to click on it. But if it calms you down, we have additionally added another button at the bottom right :-)

All other panel now have a small help button in the lower right corner. In the panel Web Images this was probably forgotten, right?

Yes, that's it. The Help button has now been inserted.

Unfortunately, the BuildSupport for Creating New Pages does not work properly yet. I only add a single product that creates another page with an additional frame. But unfortunately the product is built TWICE. And also the second product gets a following page with an additional frame. It's just like building the same product two times.

Magic Moments :-)

The problem is solved now.

When I create new pages in the BuildSupport script and create new frames there, all these frames lack the display of the UID in the document. Is that a bad thing?

No, that's not bad. But I fixed it anyway.

Is there any way to easily export an cScript XML tree to JSON?

No, there is no possibility for this so far. But with the methods of the xmlnode module you could write it yourself with reasonable effort.

We have also implemented the new xmlquery::to_json method.

The xmlquery::open function does not seem to read the XML tree ht immediately. Unfortunately, if you try to write a copy with xmlquery::write immediately after opening the tree, the copy remains empty.

The tree is not read in immediately because at this point it is not yet clear whether xmlquery or XPATH should be used as the query language. Both methods require different internal representations of the tree and parsing the tree is therefore done first if necessary for performance reasons.

Nevertheless, we have added another optional parameter to the function, which can be used to read the tree immediately when it is opened. For more information see here.

Hi Team, I’m using “priint.comet 4.2 R31859” across InDesign^® 2020 thru 2022 on MacOS. I’ve run into an issue where the Comet Notes panel has a display issue when there are many notes in the list. They crash behind the rest of the panel.

FXD

In the latest build, “priint.comet 4.2 R31859” a new tool was introduced for Comet Notes. The translation of the fly-out menu is still in German.

FXD

The doc now comes with built-in syntax hilightning for cScript and XML. In addition, behind the functions, types, keywords and global variables of cScript there are tooltips and links that are activated on mouse hovers.

Here's an arbitrary example script. To see the tooltips, please move the mouse over a cScript function, type or keyword. Nevertheless, the Copy buttons in the upper right corner of the code examples will continue to work.

#include "internal/types.h"

int main ()
{
    ItemRef	frame	= item::alloc ();
    int		result;

    result = frame::create (
     			frame,
     			kStar,
     			10.0, 210.0, 300.0, 400.0,
     			2,			// Page
     			"Layer 3",	// Layer name
     			1,			// Number of columns
     			0,			// Vertical columns
     			12.3,		// Column gutter
     			13, 40		// Sides and length
     			);
    if (result != 0)
    {
        showmessage ("Error %d" ,result);
        item::release (frame);
        return 1;
    }
    result = frame::create (frame,
     			kLine,
     			10.0, 210.0, 300.0, 400.0,
     			2,			// Page
     			"Layer 3",	// Layer name
     			);
    frame::stroke_rgb (frame, 255, 0, 0, 20.0);
    frame::color (frame, "", 1, 1);

    item::release (frame);
    return 1;
}

With the script functions table::cell::get_strokecolor_cmyk et al. the color name (swatch) can also be determined. This works with InDesign^® but with InDesign^® Server unfortunately not.

This problem is solved now.

In the BuildSupport Script, additional frames can be created after creating new page. These frames are then properly placed in the current 1:N page element. Unfortunately, this only works for a row-by-row page elements. Is it possible to do this also for a column-wise elements?

I've improved the behavior accordingly.

The Template Behavior setting 'Ignore Frame' () unfortunately does not work properly.

This problem is fixed.

The plug-ins now support documents whose ZIPs are larger than 2GB.

Please note: From a user's point of view, such large documents are not a nice experience. These documents not only push InDesign^® to its limits, also the times for packaging and loading these files become unbearably long. Usually it should be possible to reduce the size of the documents - e.g. do not embed images but link them or even do an intermediate export of the documents to IDML, that can work wonders here! If nothing helps, you can try to split the documents and combine the parts in books.

Next to the Comet Notes button in the toolbar you can find a new tool for so called Outlined Comet Notes now. The left one is for the (old) Comet Notes with its text text inside, the right one is new and will create so called outlined Comet Notes and arrows:

To add a describing comment to the outlined notes, please use the new multi-line edit field at the bottom of the Comet Notes panel. Here's a screenshot of some new outlined Comet Notes.

The Comet Notes panel has four new fly-out menus now:

• Standard Layout
• Use as Standard for ~ Notes
• Reset Standard Layout for ~ Notes
• Reset All

With the help of these menus you can manage the the default layout of your note types (stroke width and type, colors, corners, etc.).

All Comet Notes are coming this rounded corners now (but you can easily change your default layout - see above).

The download files of Web Images can now be provided with own name suffixes or even own file names and the display names are automatically sent through the translation process now. See here for more information.

I have a template with a frame. This frame has a placeholder that does the following:

1. Create a new frame at the position of the frame.
2. Then the frame removes itself.

Really?! You add a frame, only to delete it again right away?! You're practically sawing off the branch you're sitting on? And then the tree and the saw are to blame? Yes, that used to be possible in the past - but at the high price of crashes if you were just a little careless.

Anyway, we got the problem solved with some effort.

The function file::size unfortunately returns wrong results for files larger than 2 GB.

This bug is fixed now.

The cScript functions file::read and file::write are obviously delimited by a file size of 2GB. Could that be?

Yes, that is unfortunately the case so far. The problem is that the corresponding functions of the MacOS API for reading and writing files are limited to 32 bit lengths. We were able to work around this problem and can now read and write files larger than 2 GB.

I was writing some documentation and discovered that the language used for the placeholder visibility options is different between the InDesign^® toolbar and the menu bar/ right click context menu:

The menu bar/ right click gives us:

• Hide
• Show
• Show with State

But the toolbar gives us:

• Hide Placeholder
• Show Placeholder
• Show Placeholder with Modification Status

Is it possible to make the language match between these two elements?

Both 3rd entries are called now Show [Placeholder] with Status.

I was trying to better understand smart templates and found an unclear tooltip for the frame settings in the Template Behavior Panel. I have included a screenshot below.

For the third column (Text Continuation), the tool tip refers to three settings: Black Triangle, White Triangle, and Empty. However, there is not a black triangle in the current UI, and what is described as "White" may be incorrect.

The help text is changed to Filled resp. Empty Triangle now.

When I call textmodel::get_linenr with a text position inside a table cell, I get a line number that is greater than the line number of the entire text.

Yes, the line numbers in the table cells isaresimply incremented after the primary text. Of course, you can't do that much with these numbers. In table cells, therefore, the line number within the cell is now returned.

If the list of frames contains frames from multiple pages, the function itemlist::move_to moves only the frames from the page of the first frame.

The frames are not moved individually but as a 'group'. Therefore it makes no sense to move frames of different pages at the same time. But we improved the function to move the frames page-wise.

When I insert multiple Web Images with the same URL and password into the document, each frame gets its own container in the panel.

Yes, this is because in each frame the password is coded differently. The issue is fixed now.

Products can be kept together with their successor product in such a way that both products are placed on one page when building-up products now. See here for more information.

See here for more information.

To support a little bit longer search field labels in thr Previews panel we rearranged the Previews panel a bit. If you change the panels width, the following is done with the controls on the top of the panel:

• The search labels have a little more space
• The search fields grow to the right
• The template and image part shift to the right

When I use a larger UI scaling in InDesign^® 2022, the cursors of the nails and magnets become invisible.

This problem is fixed now.

Workaround: Turn off Scale Cursor Proportionally in your InDesign^® preferencens.

I think the translation key may have be misconfigured for this dialog when assigning a user for a Comet Note. Could you look into it for the next release. Or, is there a global way we can change it for our customer? We’re getting ready for UAT for them and want to have a good user experience.

FXD

Pressing the << key of panel Products of Document while holding down the ALT key will crash InDesign^®.

This is fixed.

We have now implemented the following functions for to set/get line ends (arrows):

• frame::set_lineends
• frame::get_lineends

There are several new enhancements to the Python integration:

• New functions
• Several bugfixes
• and more...

For more information see here.

You now can use Web Image URLs with //// delimited display names in the Previews panel. In addition, if the previews name is empty, the Web Image display name is used as the previews names in panel.

The passwords in URLs of previews should not be shown in the panel 'Previews'.

We replace the passwords in the Previews panel now by '***'. The same we did in the help text, in the Preview Details panel, in Web images and for the log file.

Unfortunately, when I select a preview entry with an URL image, no image is displayed in the Preview Details panel.

FXD

Since the change to the PlugIn version R31400 and InDesign ^® 2022 we have the issue that "gRun" is no longer recognized in the double-click script (1002). Please for info and/or examination.

gRun is defined in panel actions and placeholder scripts only, see here. For the sake of peace, we now define the variable with the value 0 in all other scripts as well.

Base64 decoding is Base64 decoding but just in case: To check the SOAP log files I want to be sure, that I use the same Base64 decoder like SOAP. Is there a way to do this with cScript?

In principle there is the function decode_base64 for this. Anyway, I have added another parameter there. If this parameter has a value unequal 0, now exactly the same Base64 decoder is used, which is also used by gSOAP.

Our customer thinks that it used to be possible to use a page layout or page reorganization in such a way that the distance to the next product was not increased by hidden frames.

This is a regression of fix FogBugz 32585

We reverted the change and are exploring other options

The images of my Previews panel all show 1 x 1 px as image size.

This always happens when the preview entries are configured via the PubServer with Java. The default size of the images here is always set to 1 x 1. To fix the error, the following lines should be added in the Java method:

preview.setWidth(0);
preview.setHeight(0);

Then the InDesign^® plug-ins will automatically calculate the sizes correctly. To avoid this fix in the future, the plug-ins will now calculate the image sizes also if the 1 is given for image dimensions.

In the Preview Panel I can define URLs for the images. This works and I can link my document frames against this images. Nice! But unfortunately I can see no preview of in the panel itself. 

This only happens with so-called Mediaproxy URLs with the specification ?downloadUrl=http... . The bug is fixed now, we had defined the cookie needed in these cases incorrectly.

Everytime I use the gProductsDirect list provided in Build Support Scripts my InDesign^® crashes immediately.

The problem is fixed now.

We have found an issue in selected product in the product pool while testing the Previews panel new feature.

 ■ Preproduce steps

1. Create text placeholder and assign first product in product pool panel
2. Open Preview panel, check box Watch Document Selection
3. Select created placeholder, Previews panel will show all images having in the first product
4. Unselected Watch Document Selection in Previews panel
5. Select placeholder again and assign the second product in product pool panel

■ Problem

In the preview panel, it doesn't change anything, it still shows images belong to the first product

■ Expectation

In the preview panel, it should show all images having in the second product.

This is fixed now.

It is possible that during a product build, a template containing of multiple frames next to each other gets torn apart when a new page is created.

Some frames are moved to the right by the width of the newly created page, resulting in a product which never fits any page element. Afterwards the build process is cancelled. For this to happen the following conditions have to apply:

• Build is 1:N and row-wise
• Build is on a left page
• There is already a product on the page
• The next product template has a minimum expected size configured which would still fit next to the first built product
• The next product template consists of multiple frames horizontally next to each other
• The next product template is so wide that some frames entirely leave the page when placed next to the first product
• There is no more space below the first product for the next product template

When creating a page in InDesign, frames not on the left page (>50% of area) get moved to the right by the width of the newly inserted page. This is an InDesign behavior. We build a hopefully correct workaround around this behavior.

When e.g. triggering a Python rendering script through priint planner which fails for any reason, the InDesign^® Server becomes unresponsive afterwards. Also it seems the script is triggered twice.

FXD

During a row-wise product build it can sometimes happen that the grid position of the next product is calculated wrongly when layout rules change the size of the current product in the situation kAfterBuild. This then causes wrong placement on a newly created page.

FXD

In comet InDesign® the translations panel seems to crash when I undock it.

FXD

When using the CScript function run_python in a text placeholder which has loaded text before the call, the value of gLen is wrong and reflects the initial value before replacing the text

FXD. We now properly update the value of gLen before executing the Python script

You now can mark Layout Rules as to be Exclusive. If at least one Layout Rules is mark as Exclusive, all other layout lules are ignored until the exclusivity is taken away from all layout rules. See here for more information.

The newly introduced feature that I can automatically create missing page template documents via ALT click on the fly unfortunately does not work for ODBC connections.

FXD

It's only a small update issue: If I select a Comet Note of type 'Page' I can see a small screenshot of the page in panel 'Comet Notes'. Then I change a frame of this page and select the note again. But the page screenshot remains the same. Only when I select another page note, the image changes.

Really, a very small 'bug'. It is a side effect of the fix for FB 27451 and could be fixed now. The page preview will now be updated correctly.

priint:comet URLs for the media proxy cannot be loaded if the download URL contains encoded characters of the like %3A. These characters are apparently converted back before the download.

In the example the %XX's are re-translated into their original letters. But the included download URL must be passed on unchanged:

https://aaa.bbb.de/...?downloadUrl=https%3A%2F%2F...
https://aaa.bbb.de/...?downloadUrl=https://...

Yes, in the plug-ins any corrections are made to the URLs. This was exactly the default in other cases and without these corrections these URLs will no longer work. Since we can't decide which parts of a URL need correction and which don't, I suppress the correction in all URLs that contain the text 

    ?downloadUrl=http

(in exactly this notation!) after consulting our IT. This solves the problem (again : for exactly such URLs). See here for more information.

In the template metadata dialog, in the lower part there are some settings for 'The template is to be used the placeholder of a repeating element'. What is this for?

This is an old setting that automatically links (or creates) a placeholder to the template that supports the template as a repeating element. This setting is no longer needed and the entire block is removed from the dialog therefor. Here's a screenshot of the new templates metadata dialog:

What is the Placeholder panel fly-out menu 'Initial Placeholder Versions' for?

The menu come from the early days of our plug-ins, when the definition of the placeholders has grown again and again. The submenus were used to add the new data to the missing placeholders already set in documents. That was all a long time ago and noone will have placeholders that old anymore. We have therefore now removed these menus.

In the panel Products of Document, I can start the reorganization only from a certain entry (product or page template). In the productlist::reorganize script command, I can only specify a starting frame, but not a list entry. But my list entry would be a page template (and therefore naturally has no frame) - because I want to reorganize from this page.

I have added a corresponding parameter to the function. If the new parameter firstEntry is not empty and contained in the product list of the call, the reorganization is only started from this entry. The specification of the first frame is ignored in this case.

I remember that the description of a placeholder was shown as a tooltip in the placeholder list. But that apparently doesn't work anymore.

The hints are now shown again.

Under some circumstances the magnifier glass of the Placeholder Option panel does not work. In the log I see error messages like these:

select class, type, id, ...,
 	objectnameidprefix, postfix, ... node
 	metadata.placeholder where id > 0 orderby id

Node 'objectnameidprefix' used in columns not found.
Node 'objectnameidprefix' used in columns not found.

Yes, the problem occurs with XML offline and SOAP when the placeholder definitions contain the attributes postfix, prefixifempty, .... The problem is solved.

If you have selected a publication when closing InDesign^® (selected is sufficient, the publication does not have to be open), InDesign^® cannot be started afterwards. Only a single start without the priint:comet plug-ins solves the problem.

InDesign^® tries here to restore the old list selection. This is not possible, of course, because the publications are not loaded at all. No idea why InDesing^® is so brash and optimistic here. We have to disappoint InDesign^® at this point and now expilcitly resolve the list selection again when restarting. This solves the problem.

The rect::alloc function apparently corrects the input values so that a rectangle is created that is as correct as possible. E.g., the input (0.0, 20.0, 0.0, 0.0) creates the rectangle (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 20.0).

That's actually only fair from the InDesign API behind it. But we now set all components individually, then you can also define 'wrong' rectangles.

Everytime the layout rule Search and Replace should be executed, InDesign^® chrashes immediately.

The bug ist fixed now.

Even if I choose 'all corners' the function frame::set_corner only sets the top left corner of the frame.

This is apparently a new bug in the InDesign^® API. It definitely worked in the past. But the workaround is of course simple :-) The bug is fixed.

All priint:comet panles now have a ? link at the bottom right to display an appropriate help. May it be helpfull :-)

In the Table Module and PlaceHolder Options panels, the help can be opened by clicking on the (green-blue) subheadings.

I include the following image info in my PreviewStatement:

"", 234, 567, 360, 24, // Format, Width, Height, Resolution, BitDepth

But in the panel my values for width, height, ... are not displayed.

This is because the given format is empty. In this case, we charge for the image info inside the plug-ins. I know that I wrote in the doc that the internal calculation is only done when all the entries are empty (or 0). This remark was actually wrong, but anyway, we only fill in the values of the internal calculation that you have not filled now.

Here's an example:

"", 234, 0, 360, 0,

Here we will only calculate the image format, height and color depth. For the image width and resolution, we will use your information, whether it is correct or not.

My URLs of the preview palette unfortunately always generate the 35 error (SSL connect error), but if I use the same URL for a Web Image, the download works. 

The bug is a side effect of Case 2129681 (file::download ends with error 35 (SSL connect error), see below. We have created the workaround here, but please keep in mind the following hint from the Previews Documentation:

Attention : Despite all efforts, it may happen that URLs cannot be resolved. Non-resolvable URLs are not subject of the WERK II support! Please feel free to contact our support in these cases, but please understand that we treat enhancements in this area as (chargeable) feature requests.

I try to download an URL using file::download. But unfortunately this always ends with the error 35 (SSL connect error). I have tried a lot with combinations of the CURL options, but nothing helps. Can you please help me here?

We ran into a bug in the CURL version we are using here, which we had already fixed for the Web Images some time ago: 

The communication endpoint (the so-called peer) checks the incoming SSL certificate, but is configured in such a way that the certificate check may also be omitted. On the client side, this is controlled by the CURL option CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER. When the verify value is 0, the connection succeeds regardless of the names in the certificate. At least according to theory :-) But in the used CURL version 7.55 setting the option to 0 does not work. Instead of setting the value to 0, you must omit the option completely. Then it works.

What a trick. The error is fixed.

An error has crept in during a revision of our internal error handling and affects the following functions:

• CFrame.getTextModel
• CFrame.getColumnGutter
• CFrame.setColumnGutter
• CFrame.getText
• CFrame.setText
• CFrame.getColumnCount

Thesse bugs are fixed.

When I set the value of a function variable to 'Custom', any existing old value is removed. Is it not possible to keep the current value with this action?

We can do that as well. If a value is already entered, this value is now automatically taken over by the inline edit. Then you can change the value.

In the function variables one can set the value 'Custom'. To set the value then, the column 'Custom Value' must be clicked three times. Then an inline edit appears where you can enter the value. Can't the inline edit appear automatically?

Yes, we can. This is how it is done now.

When the Function Variables are locked, the values of the function variables are unfortunately grayed out and therefor difficult to read. Unfortunately, the locked state is the normal case. Is there anything that can be done here? 

Yes we can, the values of the list are now no longer disabled - but they can also not be changed when the lock is closed. When trying to change a value, only a warning appears.

The panel Placeholder Options with the function variables is unfortunately so high that it no longer fits on every screen. Is there anything that can be done?

We have re-designed the panel a bit, so that it is now a little less high. Hopefully that fits then.

Sometimes there is no document for a Page Template. Product Build-Ups and 'Show Page Elements in document work this way, but if you want to change the page template, of course this does not work.

You now can ALT double click such entries. A new document with all defined elements is then generated automatically.

The textmodel variable kEnd does not work properly in Table Layout Rules.

FXD

If a Function Variable has more than 30 values to choose from (we have heard of up to 2,000 (sic!) values), you should talk to your IT about user experiance. Regardless of your IT, a dialog instead of the dropdown will automatically appear when clicked.

This list can be easily narrowed down to a manageable length using the Value search field. Additionally you can reorder the list with 

DragAndDrop and with ALT+arrow keys. Maybe this creates a better overview. With a click on the word Value you can restore the original sorting.

Double clicking a list entry will take this value. By clicking 'Okay' the first selected (or first) entry of the list is used as value.

See here for more information.

All new priint:comet plug-ins (starting with release) for Adobe InDesign^® 2022 and Adobe InDesign^® Server 2022 require version 17.2 of Adobe InDesign^® and Adobe InDesign^® Server. With older versions of Adobe InDesign^® 2022 and Adobe InDesign^® Server 2022, the new priint:comet plug-ins will no longer start.

Python Support on Macs

For the Mac InDesign^® 2022 plug-ins of the last release R30683 it was mandatory to have Python 3.10 installed. Without the installation of Python 3.10, the plug-ins could not be started on the Mac. We are pleased to inform you that this restriction is no longer necessary:

The plug-ins will start now even if no Python is installed. Python scripts are terminated with an error in this case.

If you wish to run Python scripts, the following Python versions must be installed:

• Python 3.10 for all Universal Mac versions of the 2022s
• Python 3.8 otherwise (This means, for example, that InDesign^® 2022 also requires Python 3.8 if the 'normal' plug-ins are used.)

In all cases, the installation must be located at the default path /Library/Frameworks. Deviating Python installations are not supported. Python installer can be found at www.python.org.

Native Apple Silicon (M1) Support

Since a while Apple Macs are delivered with Apple Silicon M1. Apple said that this chip has the world's fasted CPU core "in low power silicon", and we also think our new Macs are quite fast!

Well, this architecture change requires some software changes. Adobe InDesign^® release 16.3 onwards, InDesign runs in native mode on Apple computers using the Apple Silicon M1 chip. Today we are proud to announce that our comet plug-ins for Adobe InDesign® 2022, Adobe InDesign® Server 2022 and Adobe Illustrator® 2022 are available in native versions for Mac OS 12 (Monterey).

To install these so called universal plug-ins use the installers with Universal (or ARM for releases pior R30370) in their names. These plug-ins will work natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon M1 based Macs with Mac OS 12 (Monterey) at least.

Please note, that the universal plug-ins will not run on Mac OS versions prior Mac OS 12, not even on Mac OS 11 (Big Sur)! Please use the 'normal' installers in these cases and activate the Rosettta 2 mode in case of Big Sur für InDesign resp. Illustrator.

• get_script_clipboard set_script_clipboard clear_script_clipboard

Is there any way to determine the pre/postfix of a placeholder I got by linklist::collect?

We have added the following new functions to do that:

• link::prefix
• link::prefix_if_empty
• link::postfix
• link::postfix_if_empty

There are several new enhancements to the Python integration:

• 3 New Classes
• 45+ New functions
• And more...
  

For more information see here

There are new cScript functions available:

• run_python

There are installers for the native Apple Silicon plug-ins now for InDesign® 2022 and InDesign® Server 2022 as well. From MacOS 12 (Monterey) use the installers with the name suffix ARM to install the so called universal versions of the plug-ins. These plug-ins will run on both Intel and Apple Silicon (M1) machines.

But please note : The universial plug-ins will not run on system prior Monterey!. For versions prior Monterey (MacOS 12) please use the 'normal' installers without the ARM suffix.

The function frame::get_rotate always returns the value 0.0 since some time. Tested with v4.1.8 R30603.

FXD

The doc says that all parameters of the document::sync::create_variant function have default values. But if I don't specify any parameters, I get the error parameterMissingErr. At least the first parameter must have a value.

FXD