JavaScripting InDesign

One disappointment that PageMaker users experience is that InDesign doesn't have a universal pasteboard. Instead, each spread has its own pasteboard. In a discussion this morning on the U2U forum, the idea was voiced that a feature in InDesign to move all pasteboard items to the current spread would be a good substitute.

Well, that's what scripts are for.

But before I leap in and write a script, I thought I'd post some immediate thoughts about what the script should do about certain situations.

First, to find if an item is on the pasteboard, particularly if you know in advance that the item in question is know not to be inline or part of group (for example, the item is a member of the collection returned by document.pageItems).

Something along these lines works:

myDoc = app.activeDocument;
myObjs = myDoc.pageItems.everyItem().parent;
for (j = myObjs.length - 1; j >= 0; j--) {
  if (myObjs[j].constructor.name == "Page") { continue }
  moveToCurrentPB(myDoc.pageItems[j]);
}

Of course, we still have to write the function, but some issues have to be resolved:

1. What if the item is on a hidden layer?
2. What if the item is locked?
3. What if the location of the item on its source spread would put it on a page of the current spread?
4. Conversely, what if, when moving from a two-page spread to a single-page spread, the item will be more than a page width away from the live page?
5. While we're thinking about that, what about multi-page spreads or even dragged apart single-page spreads?

Clearly, these questions need to be answered before I can write the function. I welcome any input.

Dave