January has seen a bunch of script updates, a couple of minor ones and one biggie. Let’s start with the biggie.

FormMaker 3.0.6

FormMaker has advanced by leaps and bounds! In January, we released version 3.0.6, which is such an important update that it gets its own dedicated post.

FormMaker now has the most advanced user interface of all Id-Extras add-ons at this point. It basically emulates Acrobat’s Properties window for form fields. The UI updates as you select various form fields in your InDesign document, displaying your settings for each field as you go. The good news for users, though, is that you don’t need to think about any of that. You’ll simply find at this point that working with FormMaker is a smooth, intuitive and familiar experience that lets you create amazing interactive PDF forms in InDesign and stays out of the way!

Download this free update and see for yourself!

Hyperlink Pro

Hyperlink Pro has been updated to version 2.1.5. This is a free update for all current users.

An undocumented feature of Hyperlink Pro has been that it avoids breaking lines between English-language syllables. How does it know what a syllable is? Well, apart from a list of a couple dozen of the most common prefixes and suffixes, it also includes some basic heuristics for identifying the ends of syllables. The success rate is around 70%, I would guess, but it seemed worth including.

However, I have noticed that sometimes because of this avoidance of breaking words in the middle of syllables, the resulting line spacing was not optimal. And especially in cases where the URL contains a long string of meaningless letters and numbers, there seems no point in this restriction.

So in version 2.1.5 I have allowed the user to choose whether Hyperlink Pro should attempt to keep syllables intact or not. If line spacing is more important to you than editorial propriety, you can now disable this feature.

Here’s a short video that explains this feature in more detail: