( function () {
/* ADD items to CONTEXT MENU
    The locale-independent name (aka "key string") for the context menus:
    - Layout menu: $ID/RtMouseLayout - when an image is selected
    - Default menu: $ID/RtMouseDefault - when nothing is seleced
    - Text menu: $ID/RtMouseText - when the mouse is in text, or text is selected
*/
var contextMenu = app.menus.itemByName("$ID/RtMouseText");

var xrefMenu = app.menus.item("$ID/Main").submenus.item("$ID/&Type").submenus.item("$ID/XRefSubMenu");
var refItem = xrefMenu.menuItems.item("$ID/New XRef...");

     try {
          contextMenu.menuItems.itemByName(refItem.name).remove();
     } catch( ex ) {};
     contextMenu.menuItems.add(refItem.associatedMenuAction,LocationOptions.AFTER,contextMenu.menuItems.itemByName("$ID/InsertSpecial Footnote"));
})();

You can save the above file as AddCrossRefToContext.jsx and save in your InDesign Startup Script folder, for me that meant in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS5.5\Scripts\startup scripts . Next time you start in-design, if you right-click in a text box you should see the following:

Hurrah! I'll also document how to modify the script to get other menu items instead of cross-references.

First, you need to understand how to get the InDesign locale-unspecific 'key'. To do so fire up "Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CS5.5", and also open "InDesign CS5.5". Select InDesign as the linked application:

Find the name of the menu item you want to add, for example I'll demonstrate adding the "Odd Page Break" item. This item is located in the following menu structure: Type -> Insert Break Character -> Insert Odd Page Break. We need to find the name of each of those menus/submenus/items.

You also need to decide where in the context menu to go - I'll put it after 'Show hidden characters'.

Some methods for discovering them are discussed in http://forums.adobe.com/message/4061217 . The easiest is running the following command in the Javascript Console (found by John Hawkinson):

app.findKeyStrings(app.menuActions.itemByName("Insert Cross-Reference...").title)

Which gives you the "$ID/New XRef..." you see in the code. For some reason it doesn't seem to work with the break character menu. Using the other method (with 'alt' key) shown in that thread, you can discover the following:

Also figure out the location in the context menu, here I use the other method to find the key:

Finally:

( function () {
var contextMenu = app.menus.itemByName("$ID/RtMouseText");

var xrefMenu = app.menus.item("$ID/Main").submenus.item("$ID/&Type").submenus.item("$ID/Insert Break Menu");
var refItem = xrefMenu.menuItems.item("$ID/Odd Page Break");
 

    try {
          contextMenu.menuItems.itemByName(refItem.name).remove();
     } catch( ex ) {};
     contextMenu.menuItems.add(refItem.associatedMenuAction,LocationOptions.AFTER,contextMenu.menuItems.itemByName("$ID/Show Hidden Characters"));
})();

They actually seem pretty easy to recreate. First, you need a little setup. Create a paragraph type, this paragraph type should be setup to use a new numbered list. This will automatically create the endnote numbers as you type, as such:

Next, create a table. Be sure to make the lines hidden in both the cell & table styles, e.g.:

Next put all your references down. Insert each one into a new row in the table, and apply your previously created style. You can adjust the indenting of the style to get the alignment to look correct:

Finally to insert a reference, simply use the 'Type -> Hyperlinks&Cross References-> Insert Cross Reference' command, which lets you see your list of references to easily insert the correct one:

The advantage of putting all your references in a table before was you can reorder them alphabetically if you want too, see for example: http://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/tablesort.html

If you wish to have another method of referencing the endnotes, you have a few options too. Most likely you will have to hide anything you don't want visible as I demonstrated in my previous post. Or apply a certain character/paragraph style to the cross-reference you insert to make it e.g.: superscript.

With a simple scrip to add the inserting of cross-references on the main right-click menu, productivity could be improved greatly I think! Something to look into perhaps...

I'm far from the first person to suggest using a paragraph style in this manner. Here is a few links to get you started too:

http://carijansen.com/2010/11/13/footnotes-and-endnotes-with-indesign/
Peter Kahrel's site has all sorts of useful scripts and information, browse around it!

I'm building my coin cell battery tester (image below) to accomplish this. It is capable of applying different loads to the battery under computer control, and monitoring the results. I plan on publishing the raw results in the DVD attached to the book, with a few summaries/graphs in the book itself. It had been a while since I've done a PCB with fly-wires, normally SMD and custom boards are just easier. In this case the fairly simple circuit combined with easy DIP availability of all the parts made me decide to work on my fly-wiring again. The underside of this board looks a lot less tidy than the top ;-) Funnily enough I recently moved, and in the move decided to leave all my non-SMD parts in storage across the country since I never use them. Which also meant I had no bread-board, so it was built from design straight, and luckily so far seems to be working perfect...

I needed some equations added in, and InDesign doesn't have any real built-in support for this. I wanted tight integration with InDesign, and not just inserting images of equations. The main ways I found of getting them into the document:

1) Use Math+Magic Pro, which costs $300 Academic
2) Use MT Editor, formally InMath, costs 450€, no academic discount

A third option I found is the use of MathType, which does not integrate with InDesign, with a little known script called MT-Script. It took a fair amount of effort to get this working, but the end result is I can work with equations in my document for much less! So here is some documentation on it:

MT-Script is written by a Russian developer, works only on Windows, and has both English & Russian language options. See the MT-Script site, not everything has been translated though so you might need to use Google Translate. He posted a demo of it too on YouTube, it seems to have most of the features I needed. This includes the ability to edit equations in-place & update all equations to change the font to match the rest of your document.

So, here is what you do:

1) Install MathType, can just use the demo mode for now
2) Register on http://www.mtscript.ru , you need to be registered to download
3) Download the "SETUP MT-Script EXE 1.6.0.0" or whatever version you have
4) Close InDesign
5) Run the installer, select your version and hit 'setup'. if it fails (it did to me), see work-around below.

6) Start InDesign, by default the plugin seems to be in Russian. We'll need to fix that.
7) Start a new document & save it. It is just an empty document, but if you don't have (a) an open document and (b) a saved document, MT-Script gives you errors, and those errors are in russian so you can't read them (most likely).
8) Go to the bottom menu item, click it, then change the preferences to English. You'll need to restart InDesign for this to take effect:

9) Done! Be sure to watch the YouTube demonstration of all the features. It's a little long but is worth it.
10) You can purchase a license for $30 USD of MT-Script, or use it for free with full functionality on Weekends (Sat/Sun).

Work-Around For Installation Error

I got the following error on installation:

The download seems to fail for some reason. Figure out where it is downloading the file to, this should be your default download directory I think. For example for me there was a file called "MT-Script-CS5.5.zip" which had a zero-length size.

The work-around is to manually download this file, and stick it where the installer is expecting it to be.

For me this meant downloading http://www.indesignscripts.ucoz.ru/myScripts/MT-Script-CS5.5.zip to "My Documents\Downloads". If you have another version of InDesign change the file to download as needed. Once it is downloaded (takes a while from Russian server), mark it as Read-Only. This is critical to prevent the installer from overwriting it (note the filename is incorrect here, I had downloaded the CS5 version instead of 5.5 by accident when making the instructions):

Now fire up the installer and try again. If your installer was previously open from the failed attempt be sure to close it & open it again!

It will still give you something about "Error Opening File #3" or similar, as the download fails since it cannot overwrite that file. But then it should proceed OK and give you an "Installation Successful". The easy test is to open InDesign and see if it worked!

Other Notes

There is another website by the developer at http://indesignscripts.ucoz.ru/, although the previously given one seems more updated.

But when referencing figures with InDesign, it doesn't seem possible to only have a reference to the number. The preceding text seems to come with the number, so you will get Figure 3.2 instead of just 3.2. This is annoying when you want to have a number of figures (e.g.: "see Figures 3.2 and 3.4") or you want the capitalization to be different from the caption (e.g.: "See figure 3.2"). If you just delete the offending text, it will automatically be put back in when you update your cross-references.

Here is how I solved the problem, without resorting to buying an extra plugin. Partially this was for the cost savings, partially it is so my cross references remain standard CS5.5 if I need to share the file.

First, insert your references as normal:

Then, create a new character style called 'invisible'. I just made it a tiny font with no colour, you could (should) also adjust the kerning.

Then just highlight what you don't want to show up, and make it the 'invisible' character style.

Tada! This doesn't break the cross-references, so you won't get in trouble when you do an update. Type anything else you need.