A ColdFusion UDF Designed to Format a Unicode String for InDesign

I was generating InDesign JSX files using ColdFusion and creating PDFs that happened to have Unicode characters in them. This task is not difficult, but it is rather boring. At least, it was boring until I realized that I could not use Unicode characters inside an InDesign JavaScript file. JSX only accepts Unicode characters by their "glyph id number," or "code point," or whatever name you geeks prefer to call it. So I put together a small ColdFusion function that formats the Unicode characters in a string into code points that are recognized by inDesign. I prefer to save ascii characters as they are, so if I have to read the converted string, it will make sense to me.

This function will convert a string, such as "Peace™ Justice® and යුනිකෝඩ්", into a string that is recognized by InDesign script, such as:

"Peace\u2122 Justice\u00AE and \u0DBA\u0DD4\u0DB1\u0DD2\u0D9A\u0DDD\u0DA9\u0DCA"

   1: <cffunction

   2:  name        = "toCodePoint"

   3:  returntype ="string"

   4:  output     = "no"

   5:  description = "Convert Unicode in to inDesign friendly code point values">

   6:      <cfargument name="string" required="Yes" type="string">

   7:     

   8:      <cfset newString = "">

   9:      <cfloop from="1" to="#len(arguments.string)#" index="i">

  10:      <cfset thisChr    = mid(string,i,1)>

  11:          <cfset deci    = asc(thisChr)>        

  12:  <cfif deci gt 4096>

  13:              <cfset newString = "#newString#\u#Ucase(FormatBaseN(deci,16))#">

  14:          <cfelseif deci gt 255>

  15:              <cfset newString = "#newString#\u0#Ucase(FormatBaseN(deci,16))#">

  16:          <cfelseif deci gt 127>

  17:              <cfset newString = "#newString#\u00#Ucase(FormatBaseN(deci,16))#">

  18:          <cfelse>

  19:              <cfset newString = "#newString##thisChr#">

  20:          </cfif>

  21:      </cfloop>

  22:     

  23:      <cfreturn newString>

  24:  </cffunction>

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