John Sapsford - Melbourne PC User Group member since 1983. John Sapsford - Melbourne PC User Group member since 1983.
Worked as a teacher and for the Anglican Church for most of my life until I retired in 1992.
Bought my first computer in 1983. A Bondwell which ran on the CP/M operating system, had two 5 1/4 inch disc drives, a seven inch black and white screen and 125 K of RAM. I used an early copy of Wordstar to produce a weekly news bulletin for church members.
In 1983 I enrolled in a year's course called 'Computer Business Applications Certificate' at the Collingwood TAFE in Melbourne, Australia. We used computers with the new DOS operating system.
In 1985 I obtained a copy of my first page layout computer program It was called 'Publish It!' It ran on the GEM operating system and revolutionised my efforts at producing brochures, flyers, and newsletters. I could lay out pages and add text and graphics.
Since then I have graduated to Microsoft Publisher, Adobe PageMaker and now Adobe InDesign.
My interest in scripting was aroused when I obtained a copy of Ashton Tate's dBase II running under CP/M. For its day it was a big step forward. Not only could you create databases, search records and print out reports, it also had its own programming language. It was possible to automate many database tasks. I poured over manuals and books, copied code and with a degree of success, despite a few 'bugs' in the program, produced a satisfactory mailing system.Leaning dBase II taught me about attention to detail, an essential skill for anyone wanting to develop their scripting skills. An error in typography or punctuation produced errors in the code which became difficult to locate d caused program crashes .
After I retired, I further enhanced my computer and desktop publishing skills by attending a full-time year-long course at Wantirna College of TAFE in eastern Melbourne. I became familiar with Adobe PageMaker and with my student card I bought a copy of the program at a discount price. While using PageMaker I discovered one of its best kept secrets. Behind the program was a complete scripting language. The compile page layout process could be automated. PageMaker Scripting could be used to produce a simple one page flyer or a 300 page full colour catalogue. A project which could take months to complete in Adobe PageMaker could be automated and completed in days.
The notion of automating repetitive tasks using a computer has always been of interest to me. Scripting should not be confused with Macros. Macros and scripting are both ways of automotive repetitive tasks. Whilst macros use the program's user interface to record tasks, scripting works behind the scenes and runs considerably faster.
Now I am confronted with a new challenge. To learn the new Adobe InDesign page layout program and its scripting feature which interacts with Microsoft Visual Basic.
I do not claim to be an expert in either Adobe InDesign or Visual Basic. This web site is designed to encourage others to make a start with InDesign scripting. You don't need to know all of the Visual Basic features. You do need a good basic understanding of how InDesign works. I hope the following pages will encourage others interested in Adobe InDesign and scripting to share what we have discovered about each of these programs. Apart from the Adobe web site there is very little about this subject on the Internet.
Please note that I cannot help debug your scripts, answer questions about how the scripting language works, help write or run a script or help with Adobe InDesign or Visual Basic problems. Making mistakes and finding how to fix them is a very powerful way to learn.
