The Adobe InDesign Automation of Nonfiction Books via JavaScript book I published August 18th, 2026, defines 14 tasks available as plugins listed below. 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.
DocStats plugin – Free – Release programmed for August 18th, 2026 – 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 plugin – Free – Release pending – 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.
BadTags plugin – Frehttps://md-dsl.fr/indesign-plugins/badtagse – Release programmed for August 18th, 2026 – Four of my automation tags rely on HTML-like tags. The BadTags plugin detects malformed tags thereby reducing significantly proofreading time.
Cross-References plugin – Fee $99,99 – Release pending – 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 – Fee $99,99 – Release pending – 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 – Fee $49,99 – Release pending – 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 – Fee $199,99 – Release pending – 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.
TopOfPage Inserts plugin – Free – Release pending – 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 – Free – Release pending – 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 – Free – Release pending – 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 – Free – Release pending – 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 – Fee $299,99 – Release pending – 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 – Free – Release pending – 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 – Free – Release pending – 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.