• Character/Language selection —> scripting button per language…

[dimitri_cas]

Hello -

I work in the food packaging sector.
Being in Europe, we have a lot of languages to put on the packaging.

In the "Character" palette (in the drop-down menu) we can choose the languages to be applied according to the texts.
However, when you have to do this dozens and dozens of times a day, you can quickly lose time.
So I'd like to program an external palette in which I'll place only the languages we need.
The idea is to make one button per language (these buttons would be grouped together in a palette).

NB. Unless I'm mistaken, the "paragraph styles" override the choice of language (because it's included in the paragraph style), correct?

From my question, is this possible and/or does anyone have a better idea?

Thanks, have a nice day

- Dimitri

[Kurt Gold]

I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to do it with custom paragraph styles and character styles.

Can you clarify and perhaps share a sample Illustrator file?

[dimitri_cas]

Hi Kurt -

Well instead of always have to go through the attached drop down menu,

I'd like to build/script my own (w/ only the language that always come on our packagings).

If I'm not wrong with a custom paragraph styles and/or character styles you're always dependent on a language since it's included in the "style".

- Dimitri 

[Egor Chistyakov]

Yead, the 'customizing default presets' problem again... We need to be able to hide uneeded stroke weights, fonts, languages, menu items... this does not specifically solve this problem fully, but it’d be easier in a way.

I know of several feature requsts about it: 

• Ability to customize menu bar commands (hide, as in Photoshop) and reorder
• Allow to edit predefined and add new preset sizes for each document profile (like A1, A5...)
• Customize Preset Stroke Weight (along with Add commonly used stroke weights in a document to a dropdown)
• Hide / disable unwanted fonts

There are more, since Ai has a lot of dropdowns.

As for the problem itself, with a custom panle with buttons to change the lanuage per current paragraph selection — I wonder if scripts can do it...

[Sergey Osokin]

Are you working on Mac OS or PC? I think there might be a solution using a palette script window that is always active on top of the Adobe Illustrator interface and that will have language buttons in it.

[dimitri_cas]

Hey Sergey -

I'm working on Mac…

[Sergey Osokin · Accepted solution]

LanguageSwitcher.jsx — this is a template for a script that you can use to customize your panel with your favorite languages by adding buttons and changing their labels and language types in the name property. The full list of languages is also available at the link

[Sergey Osokin]

"Adobe Illustrator 2024 Scripting Reference: Javascript" (PDF) contains 34 languages. The Object Model Viewer (omv.xml) for CC 2024 contains 46 languages. Why is there such a difference? It's just Adobe, I don't have an answer.

Here are the "missing" 12 languages:

ARABIC
BENGALIINDIA

FARSI

GUJARATI
HINDI

KANNADA
MALAYALAM
MARATHI

ORIYA

PUNJABI

TAMIL
TELUGU

There are also differences between this list and the list of languages in the Character panel. If there is no language, "Multiple Languages" will be displayed in the panel when using the script. For example, there is a Serbian language in the list, but it is not in the Adobe Illustrator installed dictionaries.

[dimitri_cas]

Hi Sergey -

I've only just come across your reply...
Superb, it works, many thanks.

Enjoy your day.