Design philosophy: all information in this web site should be accessible to the intended audience regardless of platform, browser, or size of screen. Graphics are kept to a minimum to reduce download times. If you see a frame or an animated GIF, feel free to flame me mercilessly.

This site uses fully compliant cascading style sheets (CSS). Older browsers should display text in their default fonts, while more recent browsers will all display fully formatted text. (However, the styles sheets will look best viewed in Internet Explorer 4.0 or above.) The site also complies with major accessibility standards.

Colophon

The base font for this page is Trebuchet MS, a free font from Microsoft designed for on-screen readability at small point sizes. The headlines are 32 pt Times bold italic, combining elegance, classical proportions, and compactness.

The logo is variation on the original logo from Aldus PageMaker and depicts Aldus Manutius, a student of Johannes Gutenberg and inventor of italics. This is to echo the roots of desktop publishing, both in the 1450s and the 1980s. The logo uses Courier from ITC to evoke the feel of metal type and Poetica from Adobe Systems to evoke the era of hand lettering.

Made on a Macintosh using Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia DreamWeaver.

PageMaker Scripting

Extending PageMaker

One of the main uses of scripts is to extend the power of PageMaker. For instance,

J's CopyFile & Footnotes

O's Recorder

Cresby <cresby@cresby.com>: Requesting a link to my site that has a PM7 script (more to follow). Return link will be added soon. Pagemaker Script to create a Table of Contents that has subsection headings with their page numbers removed. Script and preamble can be found on http://www.users.waitrose.com/~cresby/siena/TOCSect.htm there is a link to it from the more memorable http://cresby.co.uk which includes other things like family pictures and a webmail form to e-mail me. http://www.users.waitrose.com/~cresby/siena/personal.htm is effectively the same page.

I am working on my bete noir - cross references. I was hoping in PM7 there would be a way of making the "(see page XYZ)" keep track of the page number. Word does it. In writing an educational book or a manual it is what I would have reckoned was way up there ahead of drop caps in importance. OK maybe I can't see the obvious but having it in the index is not the kind of cross reference I had in mind. I use cross references in my indexes already to assist the manual editing. The concept will be to extend that by scooping-up the index entries and going to those pages and replacing the XYZ page numbers with updated ones. I don't see any barriers. Just a bit of a slog to think-up the script / "system" and how much of each. I have a need & half of it done.

Reference & Documentation

If you would like to know more about scripting in PageMaker 6.x, there are several resources available. First, there's a Help file on the PageMaker CD that's pretty good (it might even have been installed when you installed your copy of PageMaker). You can read the scripts guide put out by Adobe (or which you can reach in PageMaker 6 on the PC by right clicking any script in the script palette, then clicking on Edit Script, clicking in the script and clicking on Help).

Perhaps the best reference, Hans Hansen's book on PageMaker scripting, is out of print. If you can find it, buy it. Hans' website is still up, though — it contains many PageMaker scripts available for downloading. Hans has even updated his book and generously made it available online in PDF format!

Vladimir Samarskiy, the author of most of the new scripting features in PM 6.5, has a site on PageMaker scripting at <http://www.oz.net/~vsamarsk/PageMakerScripting.htm>.

Another outstanding reference is the PageMaker Scripting Page by Marc Zeedar. Marc is also the author of the Mac shareware editor "Z-Write," an excellent "non-linear" editor capable of collecting large amounts of material — notes, chapters, etc., into one file and then outputting to text, RTF, or HTML. Marc's site has more scripting documentation and examples, plus a FAQ, numerous essays, and related links.

You'll also find miscellaneous columns by Olav Martin Kvern on the topic at the online archive of Adobe Magazine, at <http://www.adobe.com/store/products/adobemag.html>.

Gordon Woolf's site The Worsley Press, has a number of scripts, a newsletter aimed at those who use PageMaker in newspaper production, details of his book Newspaper Production using PageMaker, and subscription instructions for his free Format newsletter. Gordon writes: "But it was easier for me to learn by looking at some scripts, especially the examples within PageMaker. From there I started to create some simple ones which would be useful to me. [Note: available as pmscript.zip] To use these scripts, copy the text which is in preformatted style (probably in Courier typeface on your browser) and paste it into a new text file. Put that text file in the script folder (directory)."

Sample Scripts

All of these have been tested in the PC version of PageMaker 6. Most, but not all, will also work in PageMaker 5 and most will work on either PC or Mac. For example, the straight/curly quote pair is a PageMaker 6 set because it has 15 parameters to the preferences setting and PageMaker 5 has only 14.

A drop shadow headline (hard)
A drop shadow headline (feathered)
Swap the first two words in a paragraph (e.g. first and last names)
Make the first word of a paragraph bold
Switch from straight to curly quotes
Drop shadow behind a box
Set an intro style and put first word in caps
Indenting both sides of a column

Make the first word of a paragraph bold

To use this script place the cursor at the beginning of a paragraph and it puts the first word of that par and the next in bold. You can keep clicking to keep it running again and again. It could easily be adapted for other uses.

textselect +word

typestyle bold

textcursor +para

textselect +word

typestyle bold

textcursor +para

A simple drop shadow headline

Try this one which creates a black drop shadow to a coloured heading. Save it as a text file and put it in the script folder.

-- start this using the pointer tool to select a text block heading

-- which is in colour and create a black drop shadow;

zeropoint last left, last top

copy

-- this sets the shadow offset as 2 points

multiplepaste 1, 0p2, 0p2

textedit

textselect +all

-- this sets the shadow tint as the same as the colour

-- reset this to 25 for a 25 per cent shadow tint etc.

color "Black", dontcare

deselect

select 0 0

bringtofront

zeropointreset

A feathered drop shadow

This clever script uses a loop to create a series of successively lighter shades of grey to simulate a soft or "feathered" drop shadow. Works on text or any PageMaker drawn object. (Use it on a text block, not text selected with the text tool.)

--THIS SCRIPT CREATES A SOFT-EDGED DROP SHADOW BEHIND ANY

--SELECTED PAGEMAKER-DRAWN OBJECT

--TURN PAGEMAKER'S REDRAW OFF

Redraw Off

--TURN OFF AUTOSAVE

SuppressAutoSave on

getcolorpalette >> VarState

if VarState = 1

colorpalette 0

endif

--TURNS OFF THE COLORS PALETTE REDRAW

SuppressPalDraw colorpalette, true

SuppressPalDraw controlpalette, true

--SET THE VARIABLES FOR THE TINT PERCENTAGE

--OF THE FILL AND STROKE AND THE X AND Y

--RESIZE PERCENTAGE

VarFillTint = 60

VarStrokeTint = 60

VarXResize = 90

VarYResize = 90

Copy

--CREATE A LOOP UNTIL THE FILL TINT EQUALS WHITE

Repeat

--CREATE A DUPLICATE

Paste

--SCALE THE DUPLICATE

ResizePct Center, VarXResize , VarYResize , True, False

--APPLY A FILL AND LINE TO THE SELECTED OBJECT

FillAndLine 2, "Black", 0, 31, 0, 1, 0, "Black", 0, VarFillTint, VarStrokeTint

--SEND THE OBJECT TO THE BACK

SendToBack

--CALCULATE THE NEXT TINT PERCENTAGE

--FOR THE FILL AND STROKE AND THE X AND Y

--RESIZE PERCENTAGE

VarFillTint = VarFillTint - 3

VarStrokeTint = VarStrokeTint - 3

VarXResize = VarXResize + 1

VarYResize = VarYResize +1

until VarFillTint = 0

--TURNS ON THE COLORS PALETTE REDRAW

SuppressPalDraw colorpalette, false

SuppressPalDraw controlpalette, false

--TURN REDRAW BACK ON

Redraw On

--TURN AUTOSAVE BACK ON

SuppressAutoSave off

getcolorpalette >> VarState

if VarState = 0

colorpalette 1

endif

Switch from straight to curly quotes

Two little scripts for PM6ers to overcome the straight and curly quote mix...

I called script 1 "feet.txt"

-- this sets the preferences to straight quotes

preferences dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, false, dontcare, dontcare, false, 256, dontcare, 0p1, 1, dontcare

I called script 2 "feet-off.txt

-- this sets the preferences to curly quotes

preferences dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, dontcare, true, dontcare, dontcare, false, 256, dontcare, 0p1, 1, dontcare

Just one warning: you have to have all the parameters, and some don't accept the dontcare entry, so the 256 is the default max size of images to include in PM and the 0p1 and 1 are my horizontal and vertical nudge options (one point and 1 millimetre). You should enter what your preferences are ... do you know? :-)

I now have two entries next to each other in the scripts box: feet, and feet-off.

Drop shadow behind a box

Now for a way to create a simple drop shadow behind a box. This could be used for a box drawn around a pic. You may need to give the box a "paper" fill, but that depends on how you will use the script.

-- this takes a box drawn in PM and creates a dropshadow

-- box behind it. You may have to adjust the offset and

-- the linestyle and tint figures

copy

multiplepaste 1, 2m, 2m

linestyle twelvepoint

color "Black", 25

sendtoback

The above works in PM6 where you can set the percentage of colour. In PM5 you'd have to create a specific tint colour, called, for example, Black25, in which case the fourth line of the script above would be: colour "Black25."

BACK TO TOP

Set an intro style and put first word in caps

Lets say you use a style where the first paragraph of every story is in a different style (say with no first line indent), and you have the first word in caps. It is easy to create a style for the "First Par", but what about that first word. Here's a simple answer. Put the cursor anywhere in the first paragraph other than right at the beginning, then click on this script. You can add all kinds of bells and whistles to this.

textcursor - para

style "First Par"

textselect +word

case allcaps

Indenting both sides of a column

An irritation in the script language is that there isn't a "dontcare" setting for the first line indent, so a simple thing like indenting the whole of a single column story by six points either side (so you can put a box around it) becomes a little complex if you want all but the first paragraph to have an indent. Try this one with the cursor anywhere within the story.

-- this indents both sides of a single column story

-- by 6 points. Put the text cursor anywhere within the story.

textcursor - story

textselect +para

indents 0p6, 0, 0p6

textcursor 0

textselect +story

indents 0p6, 0p9, 0p6

textcursor 0

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