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Damian Gibbs
Solutions Consultant, Typefi
The word “standard” does not appeal to the creative spirit of publishing. With connotations of enforcing rules and guidelines on people, it appears to be the very antithesis of creativity!
Looking at the broad variation of beautiful publications available, this surely is proof that publishing thrives on non-conformity and thinking outside the box?
There are many repetitive and labour-intensive Adobe InDesign tasks that can be solved with scripting.
If you want to learn how to access Adobe InDesign’s hidden scripting riches, Peter Kahrel’s book JavaScript for InDesign is a great place to start!
Thanks to the team at InDesign Secrets, you can now download an excerpt which first appeared in the April 2020 edition of InDesign Magazine.
The excerpt also includes an exclusive set of simple one-liner scripts that Peter came up with to give you a quick taste of success!
At first glance, it may not look like much—but Peter Kahrel’s extensive online repository of free scripts is an essential resource for anyone who works on long documents in InDesign.
After hosting the script repository on his own website for many years, its future was in doubt late last year when Peter made the decision to relocate from the UK to Spain. His UK ISP refused to let him keep the site, or even set up redirection links.
Fortunately, David Blatner at CreativePro Network came to the rescue, and the repository now has a new home at CreativePro.com.
In this interview, Peter shares insights into the repository’s history, and some of the ways that InDesign typesetters can use his free scripts to make their lives easier.
Damian Gibbs
Solutions Consultant, Typefi
It is a curious thing, publishing books. I’ve never been sure if it is more art or science; either way, there is no doubt that both are involved, and one without the other amounts to naught.
Access to literature has come a long way since early handwritten manuscripts, thanks to moveable type and the printing press, largely attributed to Johannes Gutenberg. The “technology” Gutenberg leveraged was his own trade of blacksmithing. This is as far from being a scribe as you could imagine—metal versus paper, a loud, hot workshop versus the quiet library environment.
It is unknown how or why Gutenberg formalised the concept of moveable type and the printing press, but it is an early example of “disruption” by someone “outside of the business”.
