Getting old plugins to run in Illustrator 2015.3

[btempleton1982]

Here's how I got my plugins to run in Illustrator 2015.3 (on Mac, though I'm betting it's similar for PC):

New plugins folder:  /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3/Plug-ins

New extensions folder: /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3/CEP/extensions

The installer didn't put them in the right place, but did find an old version that it helpfully stuck in there. I moved everything to those folders and restarted Illustrator. Everything worked fine after that. No changes to the manifest or recompile required. I was using 2015.2 before though, so if you're coming from an older version, your results may be different.

Edit: Well... I spoke too soon. My extension panels are not showing up. Maybe there is something that needs to be adjusted in the Manifest?

There was a post on one of the other forums that said something about using CEP version 7, but that there isn't any information about where to get it. That post has been deleted.

Examining the first-party extensions in the folder, their manifests still reference CEP 6.0, but Illustrator version 20.0 rather than 19.x.

Changing Manifest to Illustrator version [19.0, 20.9] gets a blank panel to appear.

Edit 2: And... my menus show up but don't seem to do anything.​ Menu commands work fine.

Message was edited by: Brian Templeton

[Toto RoToTO]

No need to compile c++ plugins.

Just have to update the extension manifest file.

But you have already found the solution!

[btempleton1982]

Well, I still haven't gotten my panel content to show up. Just the panel frame.

[Toto RoToTO]

No exceptions popped in the console while remote debugging?

Have you checked cep log files?

[btempleton1982]

I've never actually gotten remote debugging or cep log files to work. Remote debugging causes issues with the network here. Where are the log files supposed to be?

[Toto RoToTO]

here are some links very useful:

GitHub - Adobe-CEP/CEP-Resources: Getting Started with Adobe CC 2014 Extension SDK

P7-P9: (remote + logs):

CEP-Resources/CEP_7.0_HTML_Extension_Cookbook.pdf at master · Adobe-CEP/CEP-Resources · GitHub

Thomas.

[btempleton1982]

I have read through the docs. Just haven't been able to get the debugging stuff to work right. I'm stuck doing it the trial and error way. Not very convenient. I wasn't aware that CEP 7.x had been released though. That is very interesting!

[denvercb]

Re: Mimaki FineCut plugin. I simply copied the "Mimaki FineCut" folder from the old "Adobe Illustrator cc 2015\plug-ins" folder to the "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3\Plug-ins" folder and it seems to work fine (pun intended).

[Toto RoToTO]

Remote debug:

Did you add the '.debug' file like described in the documentation?

it should be something like that:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ExtensionList>
  <Extension Id="com.your.extension.Panel1">
  <HostList>
  <Host Name="ILST" Port="8003"/>
  </HostList>
  </Extension>
</ExtensionList>

extension id should be the same as the one defined in the manifest file.

Then type this url: http://localhost:8083/ in Chrome.

Enjoy!

[btempleton1982]

Ok, my panel is finally showing up. I'm not sure exactly what was going on. I was getting this error in the Xcode console:

ERROR PlugPlugDispatchEvent: PlugPlugErrorCode_internalError (PlugPlugSetup must be called first)

I noticed in my log files (thanks Toto RoToTO!) that the log level was still set to 1, when I had changed it earlier today to 4. There's an issue with newer OS X that it doesn't update plist preferences when you change them, just when it feels like it, or when you kill cfprefsd process. So I did. Restarted Illustrator and now my panel is displaying. I still get the same error in the XCode console though.

Still can't figure out why localhost:port remote debugging isn't working.

[DropZoneSpec]

What did you finally end up doing to make it work?  I have tried everything to get FineCut 8 to run in AI 2015.3 without any success. 

[btempleton1982]

The steps above are only for plugins which you have access to the development files for. If you're trying to get someone else's plugin to work, you'll likely have to wait for them to update it. If the plugin has no panels, you might be able to get it to work by putting it in the /Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3/Plug-ins folder. Or maybe not.

[DropZoneSpec]

My computer crashed yesterday and after having it wiped and reinstalling

everything, Adobe Illustrator updated and FineCut won't install properly

like it always has before. Is there a way to install the older version from

Creative Cloud (with the green astronaut girl on the loading screen)?

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016, 8:56 AM btempleton1982 <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[denvercb]

Re: Mimaki FineCut plugin. I simply copied the "Mimaki FineCut" folder from the old "Adobe Illustrator cc 2015\plug-ins" folder to the "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2015.3\Plug-ins" folder and it seems to work fine (pun intended).

[DropZoneSpec]

Didn't work for me; however, I did find that you can download the older versions of AI from CC desktop...I did this and ran back through the install process (even though it does state that it cannot find AI), browsing to the "plugins" folder and installing it there. That worked for me.

My tech said that Mimaki doesn't announce updates ever, so check mimakiusa.com periodically to check for 2015.3 compatibility.

[Arrakis]

This post may as well be in another language.  None of it makes any sense to me.  Im not a programmer.  I just want my extensions back.  

[btempleton1982]

You're in the wrong forum then. This is the Illustrator SDK programming forum. There is one for Illustrator users up a level.

[btempleton1982]

Just to follow up on this, I did get Remote debugging to work now. It looks like it was an error caused by improper types of quote marks "" and new line characters in the .debug file.

[Silly-V]

I too have a problem with content inside the panels showing up. Still trying to solve it..

My extension I would like to share across all the applications, so it lives in:

/Users/<<me>>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions

It used to work before, but now that I'm on CC2015.3 it looks just like a blank panel - that is after I changed the version numbers in the manifest.xml.

[student_driver]

Had the same issue. Followed your steps above at first and got the empty panel. Was able to get the panel to display its contents by adding the PlayerDebugMode 1 value to the registry for CSXS.7 (new with June's updates).

Once this is done your panels should work again.

See Davide Barranca's: HTML Panel Tips #21: Photoshop CC 2015.5 survival guide | Photoshop, etc.

Applicable to Illustrator in this case as well.

Edit: If you're dealing with 3rd party panels and not your own you may just want to shoot your developer a quick message and not mess around with your windows registry. Should have added this to begin with, even in the SDK sub forum.

[Silly-V]

adding the PlayerDebugMode 1 value to the registry for CSXS.7 (new with June's updates).

Yes! This worked for me, not it shows up again. Now I wonder if I had some extension added on some customers' computers and they all quit working- how would one deal with this, exactly? Can some software you write be able to remotely change these things on their computers all at once? I'm planning on making some extensions for others, that do not only have to run on my personal machine, so this is sort-of unsettling. However I'm quite new to this.

[student_driver]

I'm also rather new to this as well, but from what I understand, if the panel extension is 'signed' the debug value does not need to be set. I have a couple extensions i installed from the adobe marketplace that do not break on updates, each these however is using an open ended version target in the .xml manifest and not a range. I suspect the one's that were using a range are the ones that are breaking.

Here's a snippet from one that kept on working across updates using older ILST and CSXS targets:

[Silly-V]

Wow thank you for this elucidation. So it appears if I want an extension which works in all versions, I just put any old version string as long as it isn't a range array? Counter-intuitive, but whatever works!

[btempleton1982]

You are correct that if the extension is signed, you do not need the PlayerDebugMode flag set. Any extension you're releasing to the public should be signed. Changing settings on user's computers to allow unsigned extensions to run would be considered bad form. If that's even possible.

As for the range string, you should set it to whatever value your extension will work with. No extension is likely to work in "all versions." Setting it to anything else will break your extension at some point.

[Silly-V]

I am learning more about this, it may be time to order Davide's course.