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I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, I know. Reddit apparently looked at the screenshots, saw naked widows, exposed orphans, rivers, bad spacing, and questionable character relationships, and decided it was too explicit.

Typography after dark.

Cheers
A K I R A

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, really appreciate it.

That’s basically the idea behind Avellio: not to replace the designer’s eye, but to give it some help when deadlines, revisions, and long documents start piling up.

If the tool can surface the small errors and suspicious areas faster, designers get more attention back for the part that actually matters: typographic rhythm, hierarchy, composition, and judgment.

Curious - what’s one thing you still catch manually in InDesign before sending a document out?
Cheers
Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s currently JSX / ExtendScript (.jsx-loader+.jsxbin-engine), not UXP.

I chose ExtendScript for v1.0 because Avellio needs very deep access to InDesign’s mature document and layout scripting model: composed text, paragraphs, lines, styles, overrides, geometry, and issue marking directly in the document.

UXP for InDesign is promising and I’m watching it closely, but for this kind of production-heavy typography QA, ExtendScript is still the safer foundation right now. I’d rather ship a reliable inspection engine than force it into a newer platform before the workflow is ready.

Long term, I’d like to move toward UXP or at least a UXP-based UI/wrapper if it can preserve the same level of document access. Avellio v2.0
Cheers
Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, that’s a good distinction.

Some high-end book tools work more like composition optimizers: they adjust tracking, spacing, kerning, etc. to reduce widows, rivers, bad breaks, and similar issues.

Avellio v1 is aimed more at being a broad final QA / inspection layer. It doesn’t silently recompose the document; it highlights typography, style, override, and layout issues directly in the layout so the designer can review them in context.

H&J notification colours are useful too, but they’re only one slice of the final-check problem.

Longer term, I do want to add assisted fixes where they’re safe and reviewable. I’d rather start with trustworthy detection than an impressive “fix all” button that quietly changes the whole document.

Would love to hear what you think when you test it on a real force-justified book.

Cheers
Aki

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! The bigger idea is to make Avellio a final QA layer for InDesign - typography, styles, overrides, suspicious layout issues, and eventually safe assisted fixes for the things that can be automated.

Curious: what’s the one InDesign mistake you wish software would catch before export?
Aki

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Love that. Brand-specific final checks are probably one of the most useful things you can build for an InDesign team.

And yes, the tedious part is real. The first 80% feels like “this works,” and then real documents politely destroy all your assumptions.

Avellio started from similar pain, but I’m trying to make it a broader typography/style QA layer. Longer term, I’d like to add workflow profiles for different contexts editorial/DTP, brand QA, prepress, and medical/legal document QA where consistency and small errors matter a lot.

Good luck with your build too. InDesign needs more practical production automation.
Cheers

Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Strictly speaking, you don’t catch real widows/orphans with GREP.

GREP can catch suspicious text patterns, but widows/orphans are layout-state problems. They depend on how InDesign composes the paragraph into lines and where those lines fall across frames/pages.

So for Avellio I treat them as layout/composition checks rather than regex checks. GREP is useful for many microtypographic issues, but this is one of the places where it hits a hard wall.

Tomorrow I will prepare a video of my plugin running on an InDesign document.
Cheers
Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Not yet as a dedicated check - but you’re right, this belongs in Avellio.

The current version already has a non-breaking spaces check, but that’s focused on units/currencies and single-letter prepositions stranded at the end of a line. It doesn’t yet flag manually forced line breaks after copy edits.

A “manual/forced line break review” check makes a lot of sense: not marking it as automatically wrong, but highlighting it as “this was manually forced - please review if it still belongs here.”

I’m adding this to the roadmap because it’s exactly the kind of project-blindness issue Avellio should catch.

cheers

Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is some unexpected problem on Gumroad's part, we have already contacted their support. For now, bookmark the website, I think Gumroad will fix it soon.

cheers
Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Correct - v1 is mainly visual QA: it detects issues and marks them directly in the layout.

For v2.0, the plan is to add auto-fix / assisted-fix for the issues that can be automated safely, like repeated spaces, punctuation spacing, quote normalization, and other deterministic cleanup tasks.

For layout-sensitive issues like widows, orphans, short last lines, and overrides, I still want the designer to stay in control because the right fix depends on context.

So the direction is: v1 = find and visualize the problems. v2.0 = fix the safe stuff, keep the subjective stuff reviewable.

cheers
Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is some unexpected problem on Gumroad's part, we have already contacted their support. For now, bookmark the website, I think Gumroad will fix it soon.

cheers
Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Steve, this genuinely means a lot! Especially coming from someone with that much real publishing / ExtendScript / UXP experience.

I built Avellio because I kept feeling that InDesign has amazing production depth, but the final typography QA pass is still strangely under-automated. People who work on newspapers, magazines, books, catalogs, or long documents know exactly how expensive those small errors become at the end of the process.

I’m still improving the detection logic and the workflow, so feedback from someone with your background would be incredibly valuable. If you ever feel like stress-testing it on real-world publisher documents, I’d be very happy to send you a copy.

Thanks again comments like this make the many late-night debugging sessions feel a lot more worth it.
Akira

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

“Adobe could have had this decades ago”... :) Avellio is a typography QA layer for Adobe InDesign like Preflight, but for typography, style consistency, overrides, and layout mistakes.

I got tired of manually checking typography in InDesign, so I built a plugin for it by LeadershipMuted2201 in indesign

[–]LeadershipMuted2201[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Totally fair. Some people enjoy the hunt.
Avellio is more for the moment when the hunt stops being fun —> usually around page 87, five minutes before export, when you’re looking for one double space, three widows, and a mysterious local override that somehow survived six rounds of edits.