adding pasteInto()

[ffd8]

• student duo tried to export text as a png, then import to create a clipping mask. this is akin to the GUI right-click 'pasteInto', which opens gates for wild clipping masks and within clipping masks inception!

[ffd8]

this is a minor feature – but it would help to have a quick look over incase anything is wrong..

[ffd8]

small update – tried integrating isText() function on the newly masked pageItem.. but realized it doesn't catch it.. maybe because it's a text within the pageitem... needing to be reached with destination.pageItems[0].hasOwnProperty('texts'). Maybe this type of hasproptery check should find its way up the stream to the isText() function itself.. or just leave alone?

[trych]

Hey @ffd8,
sorry for the lack of replies, I am not very active here currently as I am really occupied with other stuff.

Is there a way to "paste into" without using the actual copy() and paste() methods? I seem to recall you could avoid those entirely and that they are not supported on InDesign Server. If not, let's just go ahead and use them.

Two observations:

• Why does the text get returned when I paste the text frame into an object? I get that users most likely want to change the text eventually, but it just feels really inconsistent. What if a user actually wants to target the text frame? I think it would be preferrable if it's always the pasted object that is returned and then in this case, users have to access the .texts[0] property themselves.
• as it is currently implemented, this method resets the user's selection. The method should take care to reset the selection to whatever it was before.

[trych]

See my comment above. I am too dumb to use GitHub's review feature properly lol

[ffd8]

@trych – noo problemo, this project jumps between front/back burners, so i totally understand.
nevertheless, thanks for having a quick look!

I also don't really get the review feature – so just plain old comments are also preferred.

To my knowledge, pasteInto totally depends on the clipboard, Jongware on pasteInto notes:

Pastes data from the clipboard into the selected object ...

I originally found the solution for what to do in this StackOverflow.

Re: returned object when text is involved.. yeah, wanted to return whichever type of object was being fed into it (for ease with students.. feed text into mask, when set as var = your text now masked). Figuring out what to return was odd.. the same paths seem to be the same item within the mask after pasteInto():

• myMask.textFrames[0] » expected text
• myMask.pageItems[0].texts[0] » expected text
• myMask.pageItems[0].textFrames[0] » null

I went with the later, because when feeding any other pageItem into the mask, you want the mask.pageItems[0] back.. so I figured that the .pageItems[0].texts[0] was preferable (to still work with pageItem) – but happy to use either.. just important that the actual text(Frame) gets returned. Is there actually a difference or to InDesign, it's the same object?? Happy to change it to option using textFrames[0].

Re: selection, yup, you're totally right, the selection should be temp stored and returned when done! aaand changed.