Unique Identifier for plugin

[_Hayden_Jones_]

If we are to release an Illustrator plugin how do we give it a unique ID that would prevent conflicts with other plugins? Is there something similar to the process with InDesign?

Thanks,
Hayden

[A. Patterson]

Funny, I just posted something about this in another thread :)

You don't need UIDs for AI, there's nothing like that in Illustrator. The only reason you might have conflicts would be if you had two copies of the same plugin loaded, but you can use a technique like the one I'm about to describe to solve that problem (we do).

In AI, you can optionally set a plugin's name. You can then request a list of plugins (their names, really) from Illustrator and iterate over the plugin list at start up (before you set your name) and see if there's already a plugin with the same name. Once you see your name isn't in the list, set your plugin to that name and you know that any subsequent loads of the same code will fail that first step. We put up a nice error message to that effect and quietly quit the second plugin so only one is left running.