Rorohiko
25 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 7 years ago -Kris Coppieters' blog
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What I did in my holidays...
January 11, 2014 22:09Bumped into this web site: http://codility.com It's a web site where they test coders, and every so often, they offer a public challenge you can use to hone your algorithm-design and coding skills. These are great brain-teasers, and I had tremendous fun solving the challenges - I did the last one of 2013 and the new one of 2014 that was just released. And I managed to get some badges! Codility badge Codility badge Warning: the challenges are not trivial, and it's one of those 'ca...
Adobe CC. From selling assets to selling consumables.
May 13, 2013 20:20Adobe recently made a massive switch: they switched from being a tool vendor to becoming a reseller of consumables. The Adobe CC is treated like a consumable (like electricity, petrol, toilet paper, air travel,...), whereas the Adobe CS was treated like an asset (like a chisel, a car, a house...). The question on my mind is: if I look at companies selling consumables, how much innovation do I see? How much innovation is for the benefit of the consumer? If I look at companies selling consuma...
ExtendScript Toolkit Unbearably Slow?
April 07, 2013 20:07ExtendScript Toolkit Slowness Note added 9-May-2017: in addition to the issues outlined below, another, now common, reason for slowness of ESTK on Macs is the 'app nap'. Background apps on Mac 'fall asleep' and become really slow (to save energy). If ESTK is talking to InDesign and InDesign falls asleep, things get really slow. Quickly switching back and forth to InDesign, then back to ESTK wakes them up. On CS6 you can disable App Nap as a 'Get Info' property on the ESTK and InDesign appl...
GetURLs.jsx - access HTTP content from InDesign ExtendScript
January 02, 2013 18:49 - 610 KB application/zipNote added 9-May-2017: I've revisited GetURL and made a more modern version. More info here: http://coppieters.nz/?p=133 ---- In 2008, I created a sample InDesign ExtendScript called GetURLs.jsx. GetURLs.jsx is a limited http client; it allows you to fetch http URLs straight from an InDesign ExtendScript. I used the script as sample material to demonstrate a programming technique (state machines). It turned out the script was quite popular in its own right; I've been adding little tweak...
Fun with Arduino - how to get into assembler programming.
December 06, 2012 09:44I am having fun with an Arduino Uno. I am old school; I started with a TRS-80 in the late 1970's, did a lot of Z80 assembly language. My computer had a massive memory (for the time) of 16KB, so in order to wring out a bit more, assembler was the way to go. Gotta say, this Arduino brings back a lot of memories. I bought a few tutorial kits (e.g. an Arduino Uno), and by the looks of it, the Arduino has a lot of similarities with my first computer, but it's a bit more powerful. Its clock is 1...
How to Use DropBox More Efficiently
December 29, 2011 08:42Lately, we've started to use DropBox more and more. Initially, we used it mainly as a tool to keep multiple workstations and laptops synchronized, as well as a means to quickly provide someone a downloadable link to a file without having to fumble about with FTP or WebDAV or other complicated things. Then we started using the shared folders more and more. As we nearly always work together with other people and companies scattered all over the globe, DropBox is a godsend: we set up a shared ...
Mac OS X Lion - how to get Unicode back on your Character Viewer.
November 15, 2011 20:00One handy little tool I use all the time in Mac OS X is the Characters Palette which I can access via the menu bar. You enable it by going to the System Preferences - Keyboard, and ticking 'Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar'. I've upgraded to Lion a wee while back, and had not needed the characters palette - but recently I wanted to have a quick look at some Unicode character codes. I brought up the characters palette via the menu bar: But the resulting palette seemed to be qui...
Software Distributors
July 12, 2011 02:12I am puzzled - not sure how to deal with software distributors. Here at Rorohiko Workflow Resources, we've been hard at work for many years now, to build a whole range of tools, mainly for users of the Adobe Creative Suite. Our range of tools is slowly but steadily increasing. In order to sell and try to make our investment pay back for itself, we've built an automated software selling system, which works relatively well: we have a peculiar approach to how we sell our software, which allows...
Fitting of Images Into Frames in Automated and Semi-Automated Page Layout Workflows
April 10, 2011 01:06When developing workflows around InDesign Server or similar automated page layout workflows, one of the recurring themes is the fitting of image material into frames on a page. In this blog post I'll demonstrate a method for efficiently storing re-usable image fitting data. The image fitting data is resistant to image replacement or layout changes in the page layout. This method can easily be implemented in ExtendScript/JavaScript or any other programming language. I'll also show a corres...
Are Mac users quicker to upgrade to InDesign CS5 than Windows users?
March 31, 2011 22:23I recently saw some Facebook 'polls' that looked like an attempt to probe who is using what version of InDesign. Oftentimes, these polls fall flat because the sample size is too small. But if you want to know how the InDesign user base divvies up, at Rorohiko we have fairly significant, up to date information - further down, I'll share with you some usable percentages and graphs for the month of March 2011. The clue is in our web server logs. We watch downloads of our APID ToolAssistant for...
More Efficient Storage of Virtual Machine Backups
February 12, 2011 02:21Here's a little trick I use to save substantial amounts of disk space. For testing our software, we heavily rely on virtual machines, mostly running various versions of Windows - we use VMware (both VMware Workstation on PC and VMware Fusion on Mac), Parallels, and VirtualBox extensively. VirtualBox is my current favorite - it's come a long way since the earlier versions, and to me it's now on a par with VMware and Parallels. Furthermore, it has a number of very handy features that the ot...
InDesign Scripting: Putting TextFrames in Perspective - for Visually Oriented Scripters
February 04, 2011 23:20 - 96 KB application/pdfI admit it: I don't know the InDesign Scripting DOM by heart, so I spend a lot of time browsing around in the ExtendScript Toolkit Object Model Viewer. I frequently work on very diverse projects - sometimes it's GWT/Java, sometimes it's ActionScript, sometimes it's PHP/WordPress, sometimes it's C++ or REALbasic, and so on... - and invariably, when I come back to a particular project, I need to spend some time refreshing basic knowledge. It's like my brain 'switches' programming environment,...
Easy Access to System Folders on Mac and Windows
February 02, 2011 23:44Time for a few tidbits! On my list of 'good intentions' for 2011 is an entry 'write more blog posts'. My idea is that I want to jot down a quick blog post each time I find myself using a trick or technique that might be useful to others, and that can be explained in a relatively short blog post. (The qualifier 'relatively' in the previous sentence is necessary - I tend to have trouble keeping the number of words in a post down to a reasonable number. I'll try to keep it short and to the poi...
Self-diagnosing code
January 13, 2011 02:28Been a long time since I wrote a blog post - so here's a short one, about how you can make your ExtendScript code help you diagnose issues, and how to do it without killing the execution speed. First of all, a fairly long intro about how I make my code self-diagnosing. I'll be skimping on the details - it's all part of my intro, and I'll get to the real point I want to make later. When writing code, I nearly always routinely add all kinds of logging to the code. For example, every single fu...
Don't Be a Tech Support Nightmare
June 06, 2010 22:17Synopsis: even if you're under stress, try to communicate clearly with the people in tech support. There's a little checklist at the end of this post. In this blog post, I want to share some issues people in tech support are facing, and raise some awareness of the difficulties anyone in tech support has to contend with. It all comes down to communication, or a breakdown thereof. I am sure a lot of other small software companies are facing the same issues - so please, takes this plea to hea...
Kill The Caps Lock!
December 27, 2009 22:20Here's a little tidbit that has made my life a little bit easier: kill the Caps Lock on your Mac. I don't think I've ever used the Caps Lock key - all it's ever done for me is cause pain and grief and wrong passwords or inadvertent 'shouting' in e-mails. It's a fossil from days gone by. Go into System Preferences, select the 'Keyboard and Mouse' or 'Keyboard' panel, click 'Modified keys...' and set the Caps Lock key to 'No Action'. Takes all of 10 seconds! I don't know about you, but I l...
BBEdit and ExtendScript
November 26, 2009 21:42Quick tidbit for my fellow ExtendScripters. I am using BBEdit as my main text editor on Mac OS X, and I've set it so .jsx files are seen as JavaScript files. That adds lot of nice features that are also handy when working on an ExtendScript. But when I am working on an ExtendScript, there is this little annoying thing: each time I started typing try followed by a return, BBEdit's auto-completion would kick in and convert it to something like Try.these( function() { ... }, foo.b...
InDesign Scripters and Plug-In Developers: How To Avoid Confusing File Duplications
October 24, 2009 05:52In short: how to avoid copying or shuffling scripts and plug-ins during development on Mac or Windows. When it comes to scripts or plug-ins, Mac alias files can be used as if they are 'the real thing' - InDesign will treat an alias file as if it is the script or plug-in it is referring to. I'll explain how you can use that feature to your advantage. Sadly enough, a Windows shortcut file is not treated with the same respect by InDesign - a Windows shortcut file is simply ignored, so shortcut...
Display Workflow-Related Meta-Info For Your Users From An InDesign Script
October 10, 2009 00:58When developing workflow software around Adobe® InDesign® or Adobe® InDesign Server®, as a scripter, you often find yourself attaching 'meta-info' or metadata in some form or shape to various page elements in an InDesign document. In this blog post, the samples should work with InDesign CS and above on Mac as well as on PC, and I'll use ExtendScript for InDesign for the scripts. But the information presented here can be applied just as well in AppleScript or VBScript. The syntax is sligh...
Apple Mail and the Drafts folder
August 12, 2009 06:04I use Apple Mail, and generally, it does work well. However, there's one thing that annoys me: if you don't have any 'pending' draft e-mails, the Drafts mail folder is invisible and cannot be seen in the mail window. That seems like a non-issue, but I like to use the Drafts folder for 'repetitive' e-mail. I sometimes send out a similar e-mail to two or three people, and I like to option-drag previously sent e-mail from the Sent mail folder back to the Drafts folder to make a modifiable copy...
Little Known Facts About InDesign Plug-Ins - There is More To It Than Meets The Eye
July 28, 2009 07:59Installing a plug-in for Adobe InDesign is normally fairly straightforward. • Quit or exit out of InDesign. • Navigate to the folder that contains the InDesign application file. • Find the folder called 'Plug-Ins'. • For neatness, create a subfolder inside 'Plug-Ins' - e.g. 'Third Party Plug-Ins'. Drag the plug-in icons (and possibly any associated files) into that subfolder. • Relaunch InDesign That's fairly easy. But when it comes to upgrading things might become a bit more complex. In ...
Some baffling behavior in InDesign CS3 scripts explained - beware of relative object references
July 21, 2009 20:58Lesson learned: be careful with references to page items in InDesign ExtendScript CS3 - you might be referring to the wrong object! The issue described below seems fixed in InDesign ExtendScript CS4 - but if you need to support CS3, you should be aware of it. Look at this code snippet: var itemB = app.activeDocument.pageItems.item(1); alert(itemB.id); ... do some stuff that does not affect itemB ... alert(itemB.id); What would you expect to happen? You'd expect to see the same id value di...
VMware Fusion and TimeMachine
July 17, 2009 00:21Been a while since I blogged; swamped in work. This quick post to share a solution I found on Mac OS X to make VMware Fusion (or Parallels) and Apple's Time Machine backup work better together. I use a fair amount of virtual Windows and Linux machines, and these tend to be primarily stored in large virtual hard disk files - 40GB, 60GB,... pretty massive. Because Time Machine finds and copies any modified file, and the mere act of running the virtual Windows machines caused these large fi...
May 11-15 InDesign Developer Training Sessions
March 22, 2009 20:58If you’re involved in automation around the Adobe Creative Suite, you need to mark the week of May 11 - 15, 2009 on your calendar - there’s another Creative Suite Developer Summit coming up in Seattle, on the Adobe Fremont Campus We’re running two training sessions this year - click the lines below for more info: On May 11: InDesign Plugin Development Workshop - Getting Started With The InDesign SDK On May 15: Feature Development for InDesign Using ExtendScript Both workshops...
New Cookbook Blog
October 16, 2008 19:41I've started a new blog which will be mainly like a 'cookbook' for Adobe Creative Suite scripters - how-to articles that show how to write much more powerful scripts. http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress The first entry in the blog is up - it's about how you can 'attach' little icons or labels to the four sides of page items as a means of feedback to the user of your scripts. The sample script adds a little floating label with the word count to each text frame - so the user can see the amount ...