Tag lifecycle

[Toto RoToTO]

A simple question about Tag. For a given tagged object, after having applied filters on it, will its tag still there?

for instance:

     - tag a path, then transform it, add points,........ will it still tagged correctly?

     - tag a path, distort it, will it still tagged?

     - tag a path, use pathfinder plugin, will it be still ok ?

Thx,

Thomas.

[A. Patterson]

This is something that has concerned us at Avenza for years since we make heavy use of tags (well, now dictionaries since they're far superior, but same idea).

Basically, you just have to try every operation to see what happens to the art. If the handle stays the same, the tags/dictionaries survive. If not, they're gone. There appears to have been no effort made by Adobe to preserve dictionaries (I'll stop mentioning tags now since they use dictionaries and are a subset of functionality) across various operations. To be fair, its not always obvious what should happen. If you cut a path in two, should you copy the dictionary to both? If you make a compound path out of two paths with dictionaries, whose would you promote to the compound parent? Should you at all?

Note that in this last case, the dictionaries are preserved since the original paths aren't deleted or really altered, simply moved inside the kCompoundPathArt container.

As for your three specific cases:

1) Tag should be preserved

2) Depends on whether the distortion creates a new path; probably preserved though

3) The original path may survive inside the resultant kPluginGroupArt, but unless you specifically walk inside the kPluginGroupArt you won't see the tags -- the kPluginGroupArt created as a result certainly won't have your tag

Hope that answers your questions!

[Toto RoToTO]

Thx Andrew for this quick reply! It was very helpful.

I have to check every actions, operations, filters to be sure what will going on.

Tag suite is now considered "obsolete". We can handle this with using Dictionary suite, but I do not need all dictionary functionalities.

I need only to add ID (string ID) for each handle, that's all. this could be done easily using Tags.

But what about for memory usage for this suite compare to Tag suite ?

Best regards,

Thomas.

PS: nice plugin you've done! impressive.

[A. Patterson]

Tag suite is now considered "obsolete". We can handle this with using Dictionary suite, but I do not need all dictionary functionalities.

I need only to add ID (string ID) for each handle, that's all. this could be done easily using Tags.

But what about for memory usage for this suite compare to Tag suite ?

From what I understand, when you call the AITagSuite it just calls the AIDictionarySuite -- so it should be exactly the same, even if you just use strings. Take a look through it and AIEntry.h though, there's some nice stuff -- in particular, the ability to store an art handle and have it still point at the right object after a document reload is pretty useful. If you're using IDs you might also look at AIUID.h -- maybe you don't need it, but there's built-in stuff to 'brand' art objects in such a way that you can find again very quickly using a unique ID. I don't know if that'd be of any interest or not, I only mention it becuase you were talking about IDs

PS: nice plugin you've done! impressive.

Thanks! Though it's not just me, there's a whole team of us here. I'm just the guy who handles all the parts that talk to the SDK

[Toto RoToTO]

Thanks Andew!

I am going to look at AIUID.h to check if it is what I need, and let you know if it was what I was looking for.

Thomas.