the original version of this script was created, like so many scripts, in response to a problem. a necessary third-party export plugin was changing InDesign’s colour settings to a default custom set whenever it was used.

obviously, this is not an ideal situation for a colour-managed workflow and required each user to manually change the settings back every time the plug-in was run. needless to say, sometimes a user forgot to do this.

ordinarily, a script is not going to be of much use in this situation, because the user still needs to remember to run it. but this one takes advantage of yet another handy scripting feature supported by InDesign — the startup script. as you can probably guess, a startup script runs automatically whenever InDesign starts up — not an absolutely perfect solution to this problem, but at least a useful safeguard.

the structure of the script itself is quite simple :

tell application id "com.adobe.InDesign"
  
  set CMS settings of color settings to "macgrunt colour settings"
  
end tell

well, having gone that far, why not also reset a couple of other things, that might be periodically changed during the day, back to your preferred defaults at the start of the next day? this version of the script also resets some display preferences and the workspace :

tell application id "com.adobe.InDesign"
  
  set CMS settings of color settings to "macgrunt colour settings"
  set properties of display settings to {raster:proxy, vector:high resolution, transparency:medium quality}
  
  -----------------------------
  -- thanks to milligramme — adobe forums
  -- http://forums.adobe.com/message/3822734
  do script "app.applyWorkspace('macgrunt');" language javascript
  -----------------------------
  
end tell

that last command is an interesting one. if you look at the scripting dictionary for InDesign, you’ll see there’s an apply workspace command specified for applescript. problem is, it doesn’t work. but, as shown above, it’s possible to call the equivalent javascript using the do script command.

the finished compiled script looks like this :

of course, you would need to substitute your own colour settings and workspace names.

well, that’s all very interesting, but how do you make this thing run every time InDesign starts up? rather than the scripts panel folder — just save it using the script file format into this folder :
Applications > Adobe InDesign CS6 > Scripts > startup scripts

what other things could you use a startup script for to help make your day a little easier?