Automated Text Line Count?

[Ken Orth]

I am helping convert a weekly newspaper over to InDesign.
Legal ads are billed per column line. Currently they the lines manually with a ruler. I have found that I can count lines in an InDesign text box thru the info window. This will still make counting lines a semi-manual process, though probably better than using a ruler.
I am wondering if there is a plug-in of somekind that might count lines from multiple text boxes and then display/print the totals.

[rob_day@adobeforums.com]

Ken, This script displays the line count of the parent story of the selected text:

tell application "InDesign CS"
set mydoc to active document
try
set mySel to selection
set myClass to class of selection
on error
display dialog "Select some text and try again"
return
end try
set linecounts to {}
if myClass is text then
set linecounts to count of every line of parent story of selection
else
display dialog "Select some text and try again"
return
end if
display dialog "Total lines in selected story: " & linecounts
end tell

==========

This one displays the entire document's line count:

tell application "InDesign CS"
tell active document
set linecounts to {}
tell every story
set linecounts to linecounts & (count every line)
end tell
set total to 0
set totalstories to count every item of linecounts
repeat with i from 1 to totalstories
set total to total + (item i of linecounts)
end repeat
display dialog "Total lines in " & totalstories & " stories: " & total
end tell
end tell

==========

If you need compiled versions I can post them.

Rob

[Arnold_German@adobeforums.com]

Rob,

Who wouldn't like compiled versions? :)

[rob_day@adobeforums.com]

<http://www.evansday.com/scripts/LineCounts.hqx>

[rob_day@adobeforums.com]

This one is probably more useful to Ken:

<http://www.evansday.com/scripts/LineCountTag.hqx>

Puts a line count tag in the upper left corner of first text frame of every story. The tags are in a new layer, so they can be easily deleted.

Rob

[Ken Orth]

Good man yourself!
Did you just write this? I am not fluent (yet) in Apple Script, but I am impressed.
Can we make the added line count text red so that it shows up better?
(Is that looking a gift horse in the mouth?)
This is just what I need.
Ken

[rob_day@adobeforums.com]

Can we make the added line count text red so that it shows up better?
(Is that looking a gift horse in the mouth?)





Almost, except you can fix it yourself outside of the script. The script makes a paragraph style named Story Line Count. After running the script just change the style's color (or any other attributes) from Black to whatever you want.

[Ken Orth]

I figured the color thing out while I was in the shower just now.
A little problem is that the script creates the style every time it runs and gets an error if it already exists. I assume that once the style is created, I'll just remove or comment out the "create style" lines from the script. I'm learning, slow but sure.
Thanks so much!
ken

[rob_day@adobeforums.com]

putting it in a try statement would be better—try before and end try after:

try
set InfoStyle to make paragraph style with properties {name:"Story Line Count", applied font:"Lucida Grande", font style:"Bold", fill color:swatch "Black", point size:7, justification:center align}
end try