Please note – page work in progress
I am currently updating all my V1 plugins to V2, a major enhancement.
The Adobe InDesign Automation of Nonfiction Books via JavaScript book I published August 18th, 2026, provides source code for 14 InDesign JavaScript automation tasks. Their use translates as significant cost savings as they reduce dreary, repetitive InDesign professional time significantly. The book provides the know-how to automate them and pertinent source code. They will be progressively available via the Adobe Marketplace. Please note that they are available for Windows 10+ only. Their availability on Mac will follow however, no date has been set yet. This being said, they should run on Mac as the plugins do not contain Window specific code and If you choose to use them on Mac, I shall not be in a position to respond to running on Mac issues.
The free ones have been published as version 1.0.0, one plugin per task. The user interface was rather simple. It was plain text-based dialogs. I have since worked on an enhanced HTM -based user interface, version 2.0.0. It represents a major enhancement relative to the primitive text-based dialogs.
Plugins
I grouped related tasks into individual plugins. The 15 tasks listed below are now grouped into seven plugins, as follows:
- DDDocData plugin – V2 free, release pending, V1 tasks available in Adobe marketplace – This plugin enables running three tasks: DocStats, ImagesList and UserData.
- DPDocPages plugin – V2 free, release pending, V1 tasks available in Adobe marketplace – This plugin enables running four tasks: TopOfPage, BlankPages, ChapterTitles and FirstParagraphs.
- DCDocChecks plugin – V2 free, release pending, V1 tasks available in Adobe marketplace – This plugin enables running three tasks: BadTags, TagRemnants and PostProcess.
- IXIndexes plugin – V2 free, release pending, V1 tasks available in Adobe marketplace – .
- FTFootnotes plugin – V2 free, release pending, V1 tasks available in Adobe marketplace – .
- IPImageProcessing plugin – V2 free, release pending, V1 tasks available in Adobe marketplace – .
- DDDoAll plugin – V2 free, release pending, V1 tasks available in Adobe marketplace – .
Tasks
Some of the tasks are run individually as plugins, others are run as one of several tasks.
- DD DocStats task – DocData plugin – The DocStats plugin provides document metrics: number of characters, paragraphs, images, footnotes, swatches, index tags, etc. It is an unassuming little program which quantifies a document.
UserData task– DocData plugin – Some of the automation plugins rely on hard coded data contained in the UserData object, used to generate the userData.json file located in the plugin’s data directory. This plugin enables customizing the data.- ImagesList task– DocData plugin – Lists images embedded in the document: name, page, size, resolution and page/width.
BadTags plugin – Four of my automation tags rely on HTML-like tags. The BadTags plugin detects malformed tags thereby reducing significantly proofreading time.
Cross-References plugin – The author may want to refer the reader to some other place in the book; cross-reference tags free him/her from InDesign cost constraints. They are easy to create and maintain. And if the author makes mistakes, the BadTags task above uncovers these.
Indexes plugin – My motto: If it is in the book, you should find it through the index table. I have often been frustrated trying to find something in a technical book which I am sure is there. The problem is that the author did not take the time to create a thorough index table or found that inserting indexes as needed entailed a prohibitive InDesign user cost. Any technical, history, biography… book worth its mettle should have an extensive index table but creating these can prove expensive. The mechanisms I created make it extremely easy for the author to create and maintain indexes and for the programmer to create scripts to transform them into InDesign indexes at InDesign professional zero cost. Please note that Word indexes are InDesign compatible. IMHO, creating them via tags is a lot more practical and maintainable.
Footnotes plugin – Footnotes enable the author to insert comments in the middle of a paragraph without breaking the narrative. Using HTML-like tags to create footnotes turned out to be easy for both the author and the programmer. Although Word footnotes are InDesign compatible, footnote tags are a lot more practical, less error-prone and maintainable than inserting footnotes directly into the Word document.
ImageProcessing plugin – The ImageProcessing plugin is a two-tasks process: It moves all images out of the way into a repository prior to launching other automation tasks knowing that images will not interfere with document reflow. When close to finalizing InDesign work, the InDesign user can launch the second image processing subtask: it adds captions to the bottom of images, joins them as an InDesign group, and moves the image/caption groups to their destination pages. The InDesign user finalizes the process by fine tuning image positions.
The ImageProcessing plugin also provides the ImagesList task. It lists all of the document’s images: name, page#, size, format, resolution, height and width.
TopOfPage Inserts plugin – A book should contain top-of-page inserts which inform the reader where he/she is at in the book. This task may be launched time and again whenever the InDesign user tweaks the document in ways which cause pages to shuffle around.
BlankPages plugin – Blank pages should not be anonymous empty pages. They should contain text informing the reader that the page is intentionally blank. Better still, empty pages could be endowed with designs or images whose contents depend on the nature of the next chapter; this is an idea which needs further work.
ChapterTitles plugin – There are two types of chapters, numbered ones and unnumbered ones such as Prefaces. I chose to spread numbered chapters titles into two lines, as follows:
Chapter 10
Image processing
The author need not be burdened with details as to how to accomplish the above; the ChapterTitles plugin does this automatically.
FirstParagraphs plugin – I chose to start the first paragraph of a chapter with drop caps. This plugin runs through the entire book to ensure that the only paragraphs to be drop-capped are the chapters’ first ones.
DoAll plugin – Converting a nonfiction book, such as my C++ and InDesign automation books requires applying all of the tasks enumerated above in a certain order. Doing so one task at a time is feasible but too time consuming and error prone. I consequently created a task which assembles all tasks into one DoAll task and runs them. The overall author/InDesign user workflow reduces to: Load the Word manuscript into InDesign; Launch the DoAll task; The InDesign user reviews the document superficially for blatant problems then submits a .pdf of the book to the author; The author modifies his/her manuscript; The InDesign user reimports the manuscript for another process/review/reimport round. When the the author finally gets the book’s contents in a ready-to-publish condition, the InDesign user fine tunes image positioning and looks for typographical flaws. The outcome is an extremely fast round-robin exchange between the author and the InDesign user. The end product, such as my InDesign automation book, is a cost effective professionally typeset book.
TagRemnants plugin – When tag-based automation has done its job, some HTML-like parts and pieces may remain because of author typos when creating them. The TagRemnants plugin detects practically all of them. plugin
PostProcess document plugin – This plugin standardizes font size of items in footnotes, sets colors on automation tags to blue, and relinks images,
I shall attempt to release all plugins as soon as possible. It is a tall order, but the going looks promising. The book is scheduled for an August 18th, 2026 release. I should also be releasing some of the free plugins.
If you have questions concerning the plugins or the book, please contact me, Michèle Delsol, at InDesign@md-dsl.fr.