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APID ToolAssistant

APID ToolAssistant is a plug-in for Adobe InDesign. You can use most of the free tools from Rorohiko Workflow Resources without purchasing a license. Purchasing the optional license unlocks some very useful extra functionality in some of our freebies – see further, ‘Licensing’.

By itself, it does not ‘do’ anything apparent – instead it assists other plug-ins to do their job. You need this plug-in installed to use most of the free InDesign tools you can find on this web site.

The current version is 1.0.47.

When you want to use any third-party (non-Rorohiko) tools which are built around APID ToolAssistant, purchasing a license becomes a must. Things won’t continue to work beyond the demo period without a proper license. Make sure you check the third party’s web site for more info – don’t come here and purchase a license to APID ToolAssistant unless explicitly instructed to do so.

If you are a software developer, you might want to check out what APID Toolkit can do for you – amongst many other things, it helps you protect your intellectual property, and generate some income from scripted solutions for InDesign.

(Note for Windows users: On some Windows installations, the APID ToolAssistant plug-in will refuse to load. If that’s the case, you need to download and install the following Microsoft update (Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)).

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displaylang=en

After installing the VS2005 SP1 redistributables, you must first remove APID ToolAssistant from your Plug-Ins folder, launch and subsequently exit InDesign, and then put APID ToolAssistant back into the plug-ins folder. This cleans up some internal InDesign cache files that get out of sync after an attempt to launch APID ToolAssistant while the computer has some missing DLLs).

Licensing

Many of the tools that we’ve built around APID ToolAssistant are free, and work with a free, unlicensed copy of APID ToolAssistant. But purchasing the optional license has its benefits: some of our more advanced freebies like TextExporter and ImageLibraryLoader have extra functionality that is only available when a licensed copy of APID ToolAssistant is installed.

If you don’t purchase a license, APID ToolAssistant will list itself as ‘Demo‘ for the first 20 days, and after the 20 days are up, it will change to ‘Unlicensed‘. Don’t be alarmed by this. Our freebies will NOT stop working. Some features might become disabled, but the freebie will continue working.

If you have installed the same serial number of InDesign twice (e.g. once on a desktop computer and once on a laptop computer), or if you have two copies of InDesign on a single computer (e.g. CS3 and CS4), or if you simply buy a new computer, you would need to purchase two separate license files for APID ToolAssistant – one for each installation of InDesign. In that case you might consider purchasing a US$45 dual personal license – see below.

To purchase the single US$25 license, select the API – APID ToolAssistant… menu item, then select the APID ToolAssistant entry in the list, and click the Get License… button. That will lead you through the purchase process, and eventually you’ll receive a license file via e-mail.

This license file will only work with the copy of InDesign you were using when you clicked the Get License… button. This way of purchasing is fully automated – you should receive your license file within 20 minutes or so.

A dual personal license gives you a coupon code meant for use by a single individual. It allows two separate license files for APID ToolAssistant to be requested at a reduced rate.

Click the button below to purchase a coupon code for a dual personal license for US$45. At the moment, someone here at Rorohiko Workflow Resources has to manually generate this coupon code, so it might take up to 24 hours before you receive this coupon code via e-mail – don’t use this option if you’re in a hurry.


Once you have the coupon code, you can select the API – APID ToolAssistant… menu item, then select the APID ToolAssistant entry in the list and click the Get License… button. Then use the coupon code on the very first web page you encounter.

We also have multi-license bundles available for the APID ToolAssistant at progressively lower per-copy rates. These are meant for use within a single company or entity. Multi-license bundles should not be split and re-sold separately. E-mail us for the purchase of larger bundles.

ToolAssistant Bundle Size Price (excl. tax/GST) Price per license Purchasing
1000 US$8099.0 US$8.10

E-mail
sales@rorohiko.com
100 US$1599.0 US$15.99 E-mail
sales@rorohiko.com
10 US$199.0 US$19.90

Dual Personal License US$45.0 US$22.50

1 US$25.0 US$25.0

Single licenses can only be purchased from within a ‘live’ demo of APID ToolAssistant.

Install the demo version, then click the Get License… when you see a ‘beg’-dialog forAPID ToolAssistant appear. You will then be guided to a PayPal screen for payment.

When you purchase one of the above multi-license bundles, we’ll send you a coupon code. Install APID ToolAssistant as usual, click ‘Get License…’ when the beg-dialog shows, and use the coupon code on the first web page presented to you.

When purchasing one of these coupon codes, allow us some time – we currently generate and e-mail them manually, so it might take a while before one of us gets round to do it. But if you don’t hear from us within 24 hours, please e-mail support@rorohiko.com – the PayPal notification might have gone astray.

When the APID ToolAssistant plug-in is installed for the very first time, it will work in licensed mode for about a month, for demonstration purposes. It will eventually ‘time out’ and drop down to unlicensed mode – unless a license file is purchased and imported. For most of the free tools available from our web site that won’t affect their use.

There are no provisions for upgrading or side-grading.

The cost of a single license is kept purposefully low, and does not reflect the real cost nor the real value of the plug-in – instead the fee is a contribution towards further development. The low license fee does not allow for the administrative overheads that would be involved in tracking things like upgrades. Instead we use a very simple, automated system and we charge a fee per installed copy of InDesign.

So, keep in mind: if you buy a new computer, you’ll need to purchase a new license of APID ToolAssistant!

Installing

The first thing to do is to install APIDToolAssistant in your InDesign Plug-Ins folder (you can also use a subfolder of the Plug-Ins folder). After downloading, you need to decompress the .ZIP file.

You might need to decompress some more .ZIP archives that are nested inside of the decompressed result. On a Mac, you also might need to mount a .dmg file to finally get to the file you need.

Eventually, you should manage to ‘drill down’ through one or more nested .ZIP (or .DMG) and nested folders, until you find the correct APIDToolAssistant plug-in for your platform (Mac/Win/CS/CS2/CS3/CS4).

Don’t attempt to put .ZIP files, .DMG files, or any of the enclosing folders into your Plug-Ins folder.

Quit InDesign before dragging the correct APIDToolAssistant plug-in into the Plug-Ins folder.

Make double-sure it’s the right one for your platform. Trying to use, say, a Windows Plug-In on Mac does not work at all.

Once the proper APIDToolAssistant plug-in is in place, you need to supplement it with one or more .spln files associated with the tool you want to install.

The name of the .spln file varies depending on the tool you are installing – it will be a file with an .spln file name extension, and it might or might not carry a sensible icon – don’t worry about the icon you see on the .spln file.

Just like other plug-ins, that .spln file must go somewhere in the Plug-ins folder or a subfolder of it.

Depending on the tool you’re installing, there might be some additional plug-ins or additional files to install – put these also in that same folder where the APIDToolAssistant plug-in lives. Examples are Color2Gray and the SudokuGenerator – they have additional plug-ins that need to be added into the mix.

Keep in mind that most .spln tools will not activate until you open a first document. If you look in the API menu for the tool and it is not there – open or create a document, and then look again.

Version history

15-Sep-2009 Version 1.0.47:

  • Fixed crash on doc close when adornments were being modified by an event handler during document close.
  • Adornments now draw correctly on flipped items
  • Added new opcode:
    kOpCode_SystemID = 10022
    Sample:
    theSystemID = app.callExtension(0×90B6C,10022);
    This is the optional system ID that is used to generate license files.
  • Adornments are not any more subjected to transparency effects applied to their page item.
  • Adornments now draw correctly on rotated items
  • Adornments now stay same size when user zooms in or out.
  • Adornments now don’t print, don’t display in preview mode, and don’t show up on page thumbnails
  • Fixed ‘Missing plug-in’ dialogs that appear when a document is opened without APID ToolAssistant installed
  • Fixed issue where a user-undo immediately after doc open could inadvertently clear a loaded SPLN’s JavaScript code.
  • Fixed bug in MenuName.txt handling (on Mac the file had to be named \MenuName.txt, with a leading backslash, instead of MenuName.txt)
  • Fixed undo/redo menu names for SPLN-provided context menus
  • Fixed Mac issue where a document name with double quotes would break SPLN functionality
  • dataStore is now persisted into InDesign libraries, snippets, .INX and .IDML files
  • Modifying an inline graphic should now trigger a modified-text event
  • External SPLN events are now properly collapsed into a single Undo step.
  • Improved ‘event cascading’ behavior (where scripts modify page items, causing further modified* events,…) – there is a fine balance between causing infinite loops, and not being able to detect the consequences of a scripted page item modification.
  • Added new opcodes:
    10018 = kOpcode_OwningDocument
    10019 = kOpcode_OwningPage
    10020 = kOpcode_OwningSpread.
    The spread and page are very simple-minded versions – they cannot handle any kind of nesting; we intend to improve these in 1.0.48.
    Sample:
    theDoc = app.callExtension(0×90B6C,10018,thePageItem);
  • Added new opcode to access value of ‘theItem’ as predefined at the beginning of each event handler call – even if ‘theItem’ is overwritten, calling this opcode allows you to retrieve its original value.
    theItemAgain = app.callExtension(0×90B6C,10017);
  • Fixed issue where ID would crash on export to EPS after printing and closing a previous document
  • Fixed bug where some slightly corrupted documents would lose their dataStore
  • Fixed bug where an undo just after doc open would disable events
  • Support more glyphs in adornment strings (e.g. Hebrew characters).
    Left-to-Right text support is very limited: you can request an adornment string to be drawn left-to-right instead of right-to-left by appending a new, optional boolean parameter = true to the adornment specification.
  • Fixed an issue where undoing a change to a page item event filter or script tag change could corrupt APID’s internal lookup tables, causing all kinds of strange effects.
  • The ‘Cancel’ button on the ‘beg’ dialog has been renamed to ‘OK’ which is much less confusing
  • New opcode:
    function IsValidID(doc,id){
    return app.callExtension(0×90B6C,10021,doc,id);
    }
  • Fixed issue where a change of ID serial number or ethernet card on a computer would cause the wrong license file requests to be sent.
  • Missing PNG in adornments now don’t draw at all.
  • Stories in anchored frames should now get more modified* events.

7-Nov-2008 Version 1.0.46:

  • CS4 compatibility
  • Improved speed on document load if multiple .spln files are installed.
  • Fixed a few crashes
  • The ‘delete’ event is currently inoperative.
  • Scripted page adornments. You can now use scripting (ExtendScript / AppleScript / VBScript) to add little text labels or little icons page items to show additional info to the end-user. These adornments are non-printing. They can be either text (a string), a little PNG image, or both (text on top of a PNG image). Very cool, very useful.
  • Added a bunch of new ’story’ events
  • Custom context-click menus now also work without having any page items selected
  • Guides can now also have context-click menus
  • You can now install your .spln files anywhere in the plug-ins folder, and APIDToolAssistant anywhere else – making .spln files now behave a lot more like ‘real’ plug-ins.
  • You can now set a PNG logo to be shown in the ‘beg’ dialog for your spln
  • You can access the file path of your .spln file from an event handler script (e.g. to access associated resources)
  • There are new functions around document GUID: you can call a function to find the GUID of the frontmost document, the active document (these are not necessarily the same), or the containing document GUID of any page item.
  • The Undo/Redo menu now shows the proper names of your scripted menu items instead of the bland ‘Undo Scripted Operation’.
  • You can now dynamically remove menus that you’ve added
  • You can now control the showing of checkmarks in menus and context menus
  • You now have more control over the order of placement of menu items
  • You can now access InDesign’s serial number from scripting (e.g. to implement seat/license-dependent functionality)
  • Previously, using an .spln file caused a copy of the complete encrypted script to be embedded in every single document. That does not happen any more – which greatly reduces the footprint APID leaves on document sizes.
  • You get ‘modified’ events when a page item is detached/attached/reattached from/to a master page.
  • More info can be found at http://www.rorohiko.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=APIDDoc (work in progress)

15-May-2008 Version 1.0.45:

  • Merged APID Kernel and APIR; an unlicensed mode APID ToolAssistant
  • is equivalent to APIR, a licensed APID ToolAssistant is equivalent with APID Kernel.
  • Added doc.multiPropertyAssign() event to scripting DOM
  • Fixed sporadic crash-on-quit issues
  • Send ‘parent…’ events to sub-elements, e.g. when a story is modified, anchored frames are now notified of the modification

20-Mar-2008 Version 1.0.44:

  • Fixed issue that caused InDesign to sometimes crash when copying guides.
  • Fixed some potential redraw issues.
  • Documents don’t show unexpected ‘modified state’ after installing new or updated .spln files.
  • API ‘About Window’ now shows all .spln files even if no document has yet been opened.
  • API ‘About Window’ has support for .spln version numbers
  • Beg window can bow be dismissed with the <Return> key
  • For scripters: new opcodes added to app.callExtension(0×90B6C,<opcode>,…):
  • kOpCode_RunScriptInEngine = 10007
  • kOpCode_GetDocGUID = 10008
  • kOpCode_FindDocGUID = 10009
  • Added scripted DocGUID support to allow scripts to better handle situations with two documents carrying the same name.

5-October-2007 Version 1.0.43:

  • Fixed issue when printing book files
  • Fixed issue that caused duplicate events on text frames in InDesign CS and CS2

24-Oct-2005 – Version 1.0.11a:

  • Initial release

15-June-2007 Version 1.0.42:

  • Improved speed of menu handling
  • Fixed a number of crashes and other issues

19-May-2007 Version 1.0.41:

  • Fixed conflict with Softcare’s K4
  • Support for saving/loading preferences (used by TextStitch)

9-May-2007 Version 1.0.40:

  • Menu handling speed improvement

25-Apr-2007 Version 1.0.39:

  • Added CS3 Support
  • Fixed conflict with CS2 ExtendScript Toolkit

27-Feb-2007 Version 1.0.38:

  • Fixed conflict with Win 2000
  • Now supports standalone compiled scripts in addition to Scripted Plug-ins

1-Dec-2006 Version 1.0.37 (versions 1.0.34 up to 1.0.36 were not publicly released):

  • Resolved issue that caused ‘missing links’ dialog to be suppressed on opening of document.
  • Added a number of new features to support some upcoming freebies.

19-Sep-2006 Version 1.0.33:

  • Attempted to resolved issue that caused ‘missing links’ dialog to be suppressed on opening of document – but problem was not fixed.

23-Aug-2006 Version 1.0.32:

  • Fixed conflict with TextExporter and HistoryLog scripted plug-ins

23-Aug-2006 Version 1.0.31:

  • Substantial speed up operations when using scripted plug-ins with context menus and the user performs ‘Edit-Select All’

17-Aug-2006 Version 1.0.30:

  • Not released. Fixed palette conflict with Softcare’s K4 system.

14-Aug-2006 Version 1.0.29:

  • Support for new feature in APIE (public datastore).

12-Aug-2006 Version 1.0.28:

  • Resolved potential issues with other plug-ins

6-Aug-2006 Version 1.0.27:

  • Not released (part of InDesign Server CS2 developments)

31 Jul-2006 Version 1.0.26:

  • Fixed issues with Japanese CS2
  • Fixed issue when modal dialog opens on document open (e.g. missing fonts).

31-Jul-2006 Version 1.0.25:

  • Improved progress bar facilities

17-Jul-2006 Version 1.0.24:

  • Faster handling of save, close, quit
  • Corrected handling of keyboard shortcuts assigned to menus managed by scripted plug-ins

25-Jun-2006 Version 1.0.23:

  • Fixed crash when handling book files

7-Jun-2006 Version 1.0.22:

  • Added support for menu bar menus from scripted plug-ins

25-May-2006 Version 1.0.21:

  • Resolved conflict with AppleScript
  • Resolved timing issues related to context menus

16-May-2006 Version 1.0.20:

27-Apr-2006 Version 1.0.19:

  • Resolved some conflicts with other third-party plugins
  • Includes license management and demo mode for commercial scripted plugins

23-Dec-2005 Version 1.0.15a:

  • Fixed crash when using ‘Save A Copy…’. Added support for ‘History Log’ plug-in.

19-Dec-2005 Version 1.0.14a:

  • Fixed crash when exporting to INX or using snippets.

15-Nov-2005 Version 1.0.13a:

  • Added more support for PlaceAutoSynchronizer.spln

13-Nov-2005 Version 1.0.12a:

  • Fixed crashes that could occur when Scripted Plug-Ins were removed from the InDesign Plug-Ins Folder
  • Added support for PlaceAutoSynchronizer.spln

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