I know some regex/grep – however this sounds more like an Illustrator script?

Hard to comment without knowing more of the technical details.

Although the attached screenshot is only for display of the media box or nominal crop box of a page, I think that it is worth enabling in preferences.

Links to the original discussions below, where further info can be found regarding how to setup the script to work in inches or metric, or how to round etc:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/10351349#10351349
https://forums.adobe.com/message/10351351#10351351
https://forums.adobe.com/message/10351273#10351273

My contributions to the script were minor as I can't write scripts from scratch, however I can sometimes modify them. The original script started out as only for showing Trim Box info, so I added in the other page boxes. The original script only showed Page Box info for the first page and not subsequent pages, so I also added the ability to show the currently viewed page. This is a one page at a time script, so less useful for long documents that may have different sized pages (but that is what Acrobat Pro or PitStop is for anyway).

Copy the code linked above and paste it into a plain text editor such as NotePad, TextEdit etc. (not rich text mode). Save the file with a .js extension, not .jsx or .txt etc.

Common Win OS and Mac OS installation locations:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\Javascripts\
/Applications/Adobe Acrobat Reader DC.app/Contents/Resources/JavaScripts/

(Mac users will need to right/contextual click on the .app and select "Show Package Contents" in order to find the folder)

Depending on the script in use, the new command may be found under the File or View menus.

I have uploaded/attached various versions of the scripts in a .zip archive, however they would most likely all be in metric so will need adapting for inches as per the links above (PDF uses PostScript Points [1/72 in] as the native unit of measure, so inches and metric need "translation").

Enjoy!

Quote from: Joe on November 24, 1974, 09:48:22 AMWhat script?

The Acrobat Reader PageBox script that I am going to post  :cool:  It would be good to know what people want, but perhaps I'll just post different versions with instructions for altering the code.

Sure there is, the script works in both Reader and Pro, however there are of course limitations such as one page at a time.

There are considerations such as inches or metric and rounding to how many decimal places etc.

We really need the ability to add regular expressions or otherwise alter the default variables (javascript or something), add new "user defined" variables or have a new variable for separate filename and separate extension, or a search/replace text option (which is hard to do with PDF text) etc.

I have a half-arsed solution that works in an action list to remove ".pdf"  – as long as the filename does not actually contain the characters "." or "p" or "d" or "f" elsewhere, which is not that useful in practice ("dog.pdf" would become "og" etc)!

The PitStop Pro "Reverse Page Order" standard action list is also one of my faves!

Quote from: motormount on April 25, 2018, 01:32:26 PMOne thing i could really use - but the action doesn't always ''behave'' like it should, is to create a layer and move inside what is selected either on top or bellow the working layer.

The '' move selected to new layer on top '' sometimes works, some others the new layer is created and i have to manually drag my selection to created layer.

Moving selected below most of the times doesn't do anything...

It would be helpful if you can post a download link to the action, or screenshots of the action, or screenshots of an object and the layers in before/after etc.

QuoteOne other thing i noticed is that the most productive co workers doesn't use layers....

On complex files i'm at a loss even with arranging things on layers ( text - die cuts etc ),cant imagine how could i work with
out them, but i see a huge difference in speed with those who work based on object order...

Object order can be all over the place, if you mean stacking order.

There are layers, sublayers and <objects> that are all visible in the layers panel, which can be confusing but also allows a lot of flexibility in "drilling into" the artwork.

The ability to manually and easily select similar objects is critical in Illustrator, just as it is with automated tools such as PitStop Action Lists. Illustrator's native selection tools can be limited, which is where scripts can help out. You may not always wish to move the selected object to new layers, as it may mess up the stacking order, however for dies/knives this may not be a problem.

http://prepression.blogspot.com/2015/01/illustrator-selecting-similar-objects.html

https://www.aridocean.com/illustrator-extended-select-script

https://www.adobeexchange.com/creativecloud.details.909.html | https://github.com/smorodsky/Select | https://github.com/smorodsky/Select/blob/master/select.zxp

Another option would be to use a regular expression based search/replace.

Copy the entire name column into a regex/grep capable text editor.

Use a find command entry such as:
(\b[a-zA-Z]{1}\b)

Or perhaps this search:
(?i)(\b[a-z]{1}\b)

Or even:
(\b[[:alpha:]]{1}\b)

Then use a replace entry such as:
$1.

Then copy/paste the result back into Excel.

Keep in mind that this will add a period character after any single alphabetical character that has white space on one or both sides, so double check that this makes sense with your data.

Screenshot attached to illustrate.

Illustrator offers tools such as: Object > Envelope Distort or Effect > Warp

Then there are 3rd part plugins such as being discussed here:

https://www.b4print.com/index.php?topic=9496.msg300871#msg300871

I used to like the "force empty trash" as some files would not delete until a restart.

The following code was suggested as a replacement, so I made an AppleScript application that sits in my dock.

tell application "Finder"
do shell script "sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*" user name "<username>" password "<password>" with administrator privileges
end tell
In my case, the secure delete is just a brute force means to an end, so I only use it when the regular trash is stuck (as I am on a SSD).

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/find-how-how-much-longer-your-ssd-will-last/

Useful for distortion where the top and bottom of the product are cylindrical with varying circumference, such as ice cream tubs etc. Some elements should not be distorted though, such as barcodes, eyespots etc. The trick will be in working out the correct dimensions to enter, is it based on the overall product, independent of where the label is placed, is it dependent on the area placed etc. Will likely require 3D software testing and or physical mockup to ensure that the distortion is correct.

I have not tested or used, however give these a try and remember that you often get what you pay for:

https://www.sejda.com/desktop

https://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/

As previously mentioned, I personally find ExifTool a whole lot easier to use and it is easy enough to put it into an Automator service for easy right click access.

The AppleScript code posted by Fat Boy Tim used 43 lines of code and 1051 characters.

The equivalent ExifTool command only uses 1 line of code and 91 characters and is cross platorm (apart from the specific shell script bits that are Mac OS only).

Both methods process "instantly" and will create a new folder based on the filename of the selected file and move the file into the newly created folder. The ExifTool command has the advantage of working on multiple selected files. Of course, ExifTool can "only do so much" and it is not a scripting language, so it is a case of horses for courses.

/usr/local/bin/exiftool '-directory<${directory}/${filename;s/(^.+)(\.[^.]*$)/$1/}' -r "$@"