Use illustrator SDK or not?

[_Gioacchino_Noris_]

Dear all,

I'm new to the illustrator SDK and I'm trying to figure out if it suits my needs or not.

For the research I'm doing I have to develop an application where scanned images are taken as input, and treated by the user. Since the target of the application are artists, the interface has to be based on input strokes. Although the input and the output of the application are rasterized images, the processing is based on vectorial strokes, with a particular datastructure allowing quick queries for connected strokes.

I am bound to very strict time constraints, but on the other hand the application is for demonstrative purposes, i.e. it is meant to specifically do a set of feature and nothing more.

The part where it seems to me I could make use of illustrator is the interface for strokes and their vectorial representation.
However I cannot judge the overhead I need to get into the SDK and learn how to do what I want.

Although I understand it is hard to judge from an external point of view, I would appreciate you insight about this.

Thank you.

[A. Patterson]

The API is pretty good in Illustrator, and their sample plug-ins can give you a pretty good basis from which to write a fresh one. That said, I'm not sure what you need from it in terms of 'strokes'. You can design tools that work like the Illustrator built-in tools, and respond to that input, but I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about.

Manipulating vectors in Illustrator is pretty straight forward. If you have the vectors, adding them or interpreting them shouldn't be all that hard. I can't speak so much to the raster data that Illustrator uses. I'm not a raster guy, I'm more geometry, but our raster guy here didn't have much trouble pulling out the parts of image objects that he wanted.