Welcome
Welcome to Michèle’s DoAll plugin, designed to run all automation tasks as described in the <a href=”../BOOK>InDesign Automation of Nonfiction Books via JavaScript</a> tasks consecutively.
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For information on other plugins please go to my InDesign Automation page plugins section.
General information
Plugin name: DoAll
Version: 1.0.0 – 8/18/26
Fee: US$299.99 – includes minor updates until major version release
Availability: Adobe Marketplace
Status: Not yet published
Source code in book: Adobe InDesign Automation of Nonfiction Books via JavaScript
Requirements
Since this plugin undertakes what all my other document processing plugins do, the overall requirements are the requirements of the individual plugins. You will find links to the individual plugins in the What it does section below.
What it does
The overall objective of the DoAll plugin consist in converting a Word document into an almost ready-to-publish document, a PDF which can be submitted to the printer or an ePub file for distribution via Amazon KDP. But before getting there, the author will have submitted his/her manuscript countless times to the InDesign user who will have processed it and return to the author for review. Each back and forth cycle is under an hour of InDesign JavaScript time as the DoAll plugin does its job and 10 minutes max of InDesign user time to oversee the process.
The round-robin workflow between the author and InDesign user is a three phases process, as follows: 1 – The InDesign user loads the Word manuscript into InDesign and launches the DoAll plugin. 2 – The InDesign user reviews the document superficially for blatant problems then submits to the author the docName.pdf and the DoAll.txt file generated by the DoAll plugin. 3 – The author reviews the docName.pdf and modifies his/her manuscript accordingly and resends it to the InDesign user to repeat the cycle. When the the author finally gets the book’s contents in a ready-to-publish condition, the InDesign user fine tunes image positioning. The outcome is an extremely fast round-robin exchange between the author and the InDesign user.
The DoAll plugin sequences the work of nine plugins, as follows:
- CH1 – Preliminary tasks – After importing the author’s manuscript, the DoAll plugin undertakes five tasks: 1 – It checks that imported images are coherent with the InDesign links array. 2 – Automation tasks require that there should be leading pages before page 1, where the manuscript is to be imported into. 3 – It starts by looking for hidden typographical symbols as these can interfere with regular expression searches. 4 – It then looks for paragraphs whose style has been overlaid. Overlaid styles are reset to their proper paragraph style. 5 – It removes excessive new lines.
- CH1 – Referral-indexes – Since the document may have many Referral-indexes (my InDesign automation book has more than 500), these are processed immediately to free space to reduce document reflow as other processes do their work.
- CH1 – Image repositioning to page 1 – Embedded images in Word documents do not import well into InDesign. They overlay text and are solidly anchored which prevents the InDesign user from doing anything with them except by his/her cutting/pasting them to remove the anchor. Since practically all tasks modify the document, the InDesign engine reflows the document which impacts performance. The image processing task cuts/pastes all images into page 1 thereby making the part of the document which tasks handle smaller, thereby improving performance.
- CH2 – BadTags checks the document for malformed tags. It provides a list of bad tags and where they are located so that the author could correct them. Bad tags should be fixed before attempting to process the document with other plugins.
- CH2 – ChapterTitles – Splitting a numbered chapter’s title into two lines was a typographical choice. Since it expands text somewhat, this task gets undertaken early on to facilitate subsequent tasks.
- CH2 – FirstParagraphs – Adding a drop-cap to the beginning of a paragraph expands text by approximately 50 characters, not much but gets the document closer to its final state.
- CH2 – Cross-References are processed next; they have little impact on reflow.
- CH2 – ChapterTitles – 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 this; the ChapterTitles task does this automatically. - CH2 – FirstParagraphs – 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.
- CH3 – Page indexes take up a lot of space, one line each. My InDesign automation book contains 3000+ indexes, that is 3000 lines. Given 50 lines per page, that is a total of 60 pages worth of content. Processing them early liberates space thereby improving performance as subsequent tasks do their job.
- CH4 – Footnotes – Processing footnotes consumes text real estate. Inserting footnote text in the bottom of a page causes text to expand, hence InDesign reflows the document. Since InDesign automatically positions footnote text in teh same page as the footnote superscript number, processing footnotes early facilitates subsequent tasks.
- CH5 – Image repositioning to destination page – Images are by this time in page 1. The image processing task uses the contents of <img> tags to create a caption under the image which it groups with the image. It then moves the grouped image/caption combo to the page where the <img> tag is located, aka the destination page. Having moved the image; it changes the <img> tag to a <grp> tag to serve as a target so that the InDesign user could fine tune the image’s position.
- CH6 – TopOfPage Inserts – 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.
- CH6 – BlankPages – 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.
When the author’s manuscript is finalized, i.e., when the author is satisfied as to its condition, he/she gives the InDesign user the green light to finalize all work on the InDesign document.
One final steps awaits the InDesign user: he/she relinks images with 300 dpi resolution images. Please note that the InDesign user does three imports: one for hardcover, one for paperback, and one for ePub formats.
Please note that a dialog box displays the HOMEDIR full path to enable the plugin user find the IndexesReadme.txt file.
For more information
You will find source code in my InDesign automation book so that you could roll your own ImageProcessing plugin.
For information on other plugins please go back to my InDesign Automation page plugins section.
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