Is there a way to set an HTML frame to be ignored for processing by in5?

Question

The search module we developed to be able to search the contents of a book (multi-page web with live HTML) is contained in an HTML frame (Object > Insert HTML...) and populated via a script that scrubs through the book and copies all the written content into a javascript array within the HTML frame. After several testing attempts i finally determined that this massive collection of raw text is what is slowing down our export times considerably and exponentially. It took me this long to realize it was the source of the slowdown because i had made the incorrect assumption that in5 wouldn't need to process the content as it isn't text included on a page, has no paragraph or character styles, and is never actually visible but used as a search query for our module.

SO, is it possible to set a frame to be ignored by in5's export processing but still included in the final export? i couldn't see any options in the Object Export Options dialog that i think could work. Rasterizing the frame seems like it would create an issue on export but i havent tested it yet.

P.S. Sorry for all the questions, i've realized i'm a significant single source of questions asked here!

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I understand the question...ignoring the frame and exporting it seem mutually exclusive.

If you don't want JS to be processed on export, you could export a rectangle with an Object Style applied. That will apply a CSS class name to the rectangle the output. Instead of putting the JS into the InDesign doc, attach a different version of it as a Resource JS file, and target the class name of the rectangle in the JS file.

Hope that helps!

Comments

yea its a bit of an odd question, sorry about the phrasing. the complication is that the in5 is processing all the written content within the html frame as if it was text content. as an update i tested setting the object export options to Rasterize content and Rasterize frame with image quality set to Use Object Export settings with no benefits being gained in the export time.

For more content, exporting a 46 page book with the search module (which contains some html and the contents of book as javascript created via a script) takes me about 10-12 minutes, if i remove the HTML frame with the search module it takes me 5-6 minutes on a 2019 intel Macbook, my teammates on M2 Macbooks take about %60 of that time.

yes the idea about using the js as a resource was my backup idea, but that would require the time of our software engineer who made the module and script, i thought id check here to see if there was an in5 or indd option to avoid requiring his time. thanks!

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That's my best idea for now. I'll let you know if I think of anything else. :-)

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i edited the script so it exports that search and js content into a separate js file and added it as a resource and it works fine while reducing the export times. its not much extra work so this will be the method we use for the time being. thanks again!

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Wonderful! Glad you were able to work things out.