Monthly Archives: September 2011

Date variables in InDesign

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Interesting [InDesign][indesign] problem: the format for a modification date variable changes per document.

*(This post describes a problem using Adobe InDesign CS4 but applies just as well to CS5 and CS5 and a half.)*

Suppose you have a text frame containing the [file modification date variable][variable], created using *Type* → *Text Variables* → *Insert Variable* → *Modification Date*, displays as “14 September 2011 7:50 PM” (on my system). Now open an existing document that was created on a different system and copy and paste the text frame containing the date variable. But depending on what system created the other document the date displays using a different format, e.g as “September 14, 2011 19:50”.

It appears that the date format is determined by the document in which it is placed, rather than by the date format in use when the variable was created.

Workaround: define a new / custom text variable that uses the file modification time but with your own explicit format, then insert your custom variable instead of the pre-defined “Modification Date” variable.

In my brief testing this custom variable and its format is preserved when pasting the text frame into other documents that were created on other systems.

But now I want to know exactly how the format is chosen for the built-in “Modification Date” variable. I am guessing that when a story with a variable is pasted into a document the format is determined by the format of an existing variable of the same name, and if there is no existing variable of that name then InDesign brings in the new variable definition (along with its format) from the clipboard.

[But why models?][models]

No, that’s not what I mean… why the default date format? I tried changing the date formats in System Preferences. Doesn’t seem that InDesign picks it up from there. I tried trashing the *Adobe InDesign* preferences folder, changing the date format in System Preferences and launching InDesign again. InDesign is still using the original format, so doesn’t get it from the user’s preferences. I had a look through `~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.InDesign.plist` but nothing date-related in there.

Perhaps it is set by the local-domain `/Library/Preferences/*`. Perhaps it is set by the built-in preferences of your installed language version of Creative Suite. Perhaps…

So I gave up. I will leave the investigation for some day when I am younger and it is more important to understand how Adobe’s InDesign picks the format for the built-in date modified variable. The workaround works around.

Suite!

[indesign]: http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html
[variable]: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using/WS6A9BE096-77B2-4721-9736-797C4912B6C9a.html
[models]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkuCPYf16xI

Free software FTW! Updated filetimes.py

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[Two years ago][old] (flippin’ heck it seems like only yesterday) I wrote about converting between Unix timestamps and Windows timestamps using Python. In that post I linked to my very simple implementation of a module that provides converting back and forth between the formats.

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from Timothy Williams with changes to the my module so that it preserves the fractions of a second in the conversion. How sweet is that?!?!! Exclamation mark question mark exclamation mark cellida diaresis em-dash full stop king of punctuation.

It is fantastic that not only did someone find my code useful but also that they were generous enough to take the time to improve it and give the changes back to me. I love tasty, delicious free software and the people like Tim who make it tastier and more delicious.

So here is the new version of [filetimes.py incorporating Tim’s fixes][ft].

[old]: http://reliablybroken.com/b/2009/09/working-with-active-directory-filetime-values-in-python/
[ft]: http://reliablybroken.com/b/wp-content/filetimes.py

XPath bug in old versions of ElementTree

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I figured out why my XML parsing code works fine using the [pure-Python ElementTree XML parsing module][elementtree] but fails when using [the speedy and memory-optimized cElementTree XML parsing module][celementtree].

[The XPath 1.0 specification][xpath] says `’.’` is short-hand for `’self::node()’`, selecting a node itself.

Parsing an XML document and selecting the context node with ElementTree in Python 2.5:

>>> from xml.etree import ElementTree
>>> ElementTree.VERSION
‘1.2.6’
>>> doc = “BUG”
>>> node1 = ElementTree.fromstring(doc).find(‘./Example’)
>>> node1

>>> node1.find(‘.’)

>>> node1.find(‘.’) == node1
True

See how the result of `node1.find(‘.’)` is the node itself? [As it should be][selfnode].

Parsing an XML document and selecting the context node with cElementTree in Python 2.5:

>>> from xml.etree import cElementTree
>>> doc = “BUG”
>>> node2 = cElementTree.fromstring(doc).find(‘./Example’)
>>> node2

>>> node2.find(‘.’)
>>> node2.find(‘.’) == node2
False

Balls. The result of `node2.find(‘.’)` is `None`.

However! I have a kludgey work-around that works whether you use ElementTree or cElementTree. Use `’./’` instead of `’.’`:

>>> node1.find(‘./’)

>>> node1.find(‘./’) == node1
True
>>> node2.find(‘./’)

>>> node2.find(‘./’) == node2
True

*Kludgey because `’./’` is not a valid XPath expression.*

So we are back on track. Also works for Python 2.6 which has the same version of ElementTree.

Fortunately Python 2.7 got a new version of ElementTree and the bug is fixed:

>>> from xml.etree import ElementTree
>>> ElementTree.VERSION
‘1.3.0’
>>> doc = “BUG”
>>> node3 = ElementTree.fromstring(doc).find(‘./Example’)
>>> node3

>>> node3.find(‘.’)

>>> node3.find(‘.’) == node3
True

However! They also fixed my kludgey work-around:

>>> node3.find(‘./’)
>>> node3.find(‘./’) == node3
False

So I can’t code something that works for all three versions. This is annoying. I was hoping to just replace ElementTree with the C version, makes my code run in one third the time (the XML parts of it run in one tenth the time). And cannot install any compiled modules – the code can only rely on Python 2.5’s standard library.

[celementtree]: http://effbot.org/zone/celementtree.htm
[elementtree]: http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm
[xpath]: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/
[selfnode]: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/#path-abbrev