Quick and Dirty Config

Verify Environment

First, open a new command line or Terminal window, and type:

cd_tightener

(with an underscore between cd and tightener).

This should take you into the Tightener directory. If it does not, you need to verify the installation.

Configure your text editor

Tightener assumes by default that you have Sublime Text 3 installed - that's what I have.

That assumption is nearly certainly wrong, and before anything else, you need to tell Tightener what your favorite text editor is.

You need a text editor that can be invoked from the command line. There are lots of options; to name a few: Sublime Text 3, Visual Studio Code, BBEdit, TextMate, Notepad++, Notepad... should all work fine.

You need to figure out how to call your text editor from the command line. Once you know, you can configure Tightener.

For Mac, amend the file:

${TIGHTENER_SYSCONFIG_ROOT}editFile

For Linux, amend the file:

${TIGHTENER_SYSCONFIG_ROOT}editFile

For Windows, amend the file:

%TIGHTENER_SYSCONFIG_ROOT%editFile.bat

Initialize config.ini

To initialize a new config, or reset the current config to factory settings, you can issue the command

copyConfig

This command will copy a template config.ini from .../Config/config.ini to the correct location.

It's not an exact copy - copyConfig will prepend some local configuration info to the active config.ini

Modifying config.ini

Issue the command

editConfig

All we need to configure for an initial whirlwind tour is the location of your copy of InDesign.

Scroll down until you see the following entries

[placeholders]
INDESIGN_VERSION=...
INDESIGN_SDK_VERSION=...
INDESIGN_COORDINATOR_SUFFIX=...
INDESIGN_SERVER_CONFIGURATION=...
INDESIGN_SERVER_PORT=...

Adjust these as needed, e.g. (for InDesign 2022 on the desktop):

INDESIGN_VERSION = 2022
INDESIGN_SDK_VERSION = 17.0
INDESIGN_COORDINATOR_SUFFIX = "${INDESIGN_DESKTOP_SUFFIX}"

or (for InDesign Server 2022):

INDESIGN_VERSION = 2022
INDESIGN_SDK_VERSION = 17.0
INDESIGN_COORDINATOR_SUFFIX = "${INDESIGN_SERVER_SUFFIX}"
INDESIGN_SERVER_CONFIGURATION = configuration
INDESIGN_SERVER_PORT = noport

If you're not using InDesign Server on this computer, you can ignore INDESIGN_SERVER_CONFIGURATION and INDESIGN_SERVER_PORT.