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I've pretty much finished a CEP/Extendscript based premiere plug-in, and on going to the developer console, I don't see any way to create a plug-in of this type and get an ID for it for this older format. The choices are Adobe XD or Photoshop. As I understand it, CEP is still the format that is current for Premiere.
How do you register a new premiere plug-in project in this case?
Thanks, Ryan
It would seem you're going in through the UXP door.
Try the Developer Console: https://developer.adobe.com/console
I've confirmed with the Extensibility team that your road to publishing a CEP-based extension on the Adobe Exchange store, starts here.
https://partners.adobe.com/exchangeprogram/creativecloud
[It is not required that you publish your extension on our store]
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It would seem you're going in through the UXP door.
Try the Developer Console: https://developer.adobe.com/console
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Hi Bruce. Actually that is where I was asking this from... Is it correct you create a project and add a plug-in to it? I also saw the steps in the github page here: https://github.com/Adobe-CEP/Getting-Started-guides/tree/master/Package%20Distribute%20Install
I wasn't clear which is the path forward right now.
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I think you want 'Plugin'.
Since Apple changed their HIG, it's become fashionable to call plug-ins, "plugins".
Since Adobe standardized on UXP, it's become fashionable to call extensions, "plugins", even though they are demonstrably not plug-ins...er, plugins.
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So if you choose plugin, then you get back to the start of my question above. The two choices are XD or Photoshop... Photoshop seeemed obviously wrong, so I chose XD, but then realized that's not right either. And... it doesn't let you remove things, so it says you need to email to make changes. A bit strange...
So, perhaps forget everything we just said and I'll start over. 🙂
How do I register this ID with adobe?
<Extension Id="com.audiodesigndesk.ppro" Version="1.0.0"/>
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I've confirmed with the Extensibility team that your road to publishing a CEP-based extension on the Adobe Exchange store, starts here.
https://partners.adobe.com/exchangeprogram/creativecloud
[It is not required that you publish your extension on our store]
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How do I register this ID with adobe?
<Extension Id="com.audiodesigndesk.ppro" Version="1.0.0"/>
For Premiere, are you still requiring the manual certificate signing as outlined here?
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I see, thanks. So it is acceptable to install it ourselves if it is signed. Given that our application that this extension communicates with is macOS only, is it recommended to go via the exchange distribution, or simply self install it in place? I don't mind either - just trying to understand the best path. Thanks, Ryan
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The majority of CC users are on individual accounts, and will have full access to the Exchange store; for them, Exchange store will make your extension available in CC Desktop.
For some users who operate 'disconnected' (either behind a firewall, or with only occasional connections to Adobe available), you can distribute a .zxp file, and use UPIA (which is included with CC Desktop) to install it:
https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/working-from-the-command-line.html
For use cases wherein neither a web connection nor CC Desktop is an option, standalone installers can work.
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Hi @ryan.f !
Your confusing experience is acutally a treasure trove of insight for our Developer Experience team. (Strangely...)
Do you remember how you wound up on the Console (developer.adobe.com/console) in the first place? (Bonus points for your actual Google search terms if that's how you got there.)
Also below:
For Premiere, are you still requiring the manual certificate signing as outlined here?
https://github.com/Adobe-CEP/Getting-Started-guides/tree/master/Package%20Distribute%20Install
Why did say "still"?
Just cheking! Thanks in advance!
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Well, I would say this system has some pretty large issues for someone walking into it cold.
I said “still" for a number of reasons. For one, I read this:
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The PProPanel example should be refactored for clarity. That is what 100% of people are going to look at first.
I often had to guess at errors as the debugger for vscode doesn’t have an arm64 Mac version, and it slows the editor down too much for me to use.
Currently your developer portal site doesn't load either.
Wait, which one? Do you mean this one? https://partners.adobe.com/exchangeprogram/creativecloud Did it give any errors, or was it just a blank page? Because I've heard this complaint before, but it seems hard to prove... Edit: Oh I see, that's your last image there.
That and the same team is busy building a new developer portal.
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There are numerous CEP sample panels that show off the capabilities of CEP panels in general; I often refer to the CEP HTML Test Extension. While PProPanel is undisputably ugly, it does thoroughly exercise PPro's ExtendScript APIs, and will likely not be refactored before we move to UXP extensibility; no dates available. I agree it could certainly be made more modern/approachable, but >500 partners have successfully used it so we're hopeful it can still help others. As before, happy to help with specific questions.
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@Bruce Bullis From my point of view, I don't really understand any reason to not release the most elegant and clear code you can -- especially for a company the size of Adobe. But I know these things ultimately come down to a single person who has other things to do. Cleaner examples would mean less answering of questions. For me going in, I was confused about the different versions of javascript used and the namespace clashes and so on. The black jsx box doesn't help this. If you broke that example into a number of demos that would be best.
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@ryan.f A few comments:
I often had to guess at errors as the debugger for vscode doesn’t have an arm64 Mac version, and it slows the editor down too much for me to use. I have an older M1 airbook. Bruce says the debugger works great fine for him in emulation, but it doesn’t for me. It’s unusable.
The ExtendScript Debugger extension for VS Code does work on Applie Silicon devices. I should know - I made it on one 😉.
The trick is that you need to run VS Code itself under emulation. This means that you have to right-click on the "Visual Studio Code.app" bundle (likely in your /Applications directory), select the "Get Info" option, and click "Open using Rosetta". (This is the workflow for Universal bundles of VS Code. You can alternatively download the Intel-specific version and not worry about this.)
Once you start VS Code after clicking that checkbox, then the ExtendScript Debugger extension will work fine.
That all said, the workflow is definitely subpar and I hope that @Erin F. is able to find the funding to update the extension to work with Apple Silicon devices natively.
If the above workflow doesn't work for you then that is a separate matter and likely indicates a bug somewhere or some other change that has entered into the picture. Narrowing that down if possible would be good.
Can you confirm that you have started VS Code in Rosetta (either with the checkbox I described above or by downloading and running the Intel-only version for macOS)?
@ryan.f wrote:And - that matches my impression of CEP exactly. It’s a very inefficient development environment, as least for how I normally work. Without any code completion, type checking, or modern tools, it’s slow.
Yes! More feedback like this, please! The more Adobe hears this from us users, the more likely they are to do something about it!
In your case, there are actually several options that will help you with Code Completion, Type Checking, and modern tooling. Specifically, see the following resources:
@ryan.f wrote:Many things about this system are hidden in mystery. Bruce told me about the QE Dom but wouldn’t tell me what the calls are. So, in order to use it I had to walk the js document object for it to make my own documentation. Honestly, it would make more sense to just be clear as the information is publicly there - it just makes it tedious. Commit to an API or deprecate it - At least resolve the syntax differences in the qe vs app.
@Bruce Bullis can't tell you what the QE APIs are because they're intended for internal use only and any explicit mention of them may be interpreted as some as a form of "support" (i.e. "Bruce told me about that API and now it's gone! What the heck is that?!").
That said, this is where the community has your back. You're definitely not the first person to run into questions about the QE APIs. I myself cooked up some "documentation" for that hidden set of APIs and then shared it with the community (that's the link earlier in this paragraph). It doesn't have full documentation, but the doc is both searchable and can power autocompletion/IntelliSense/Type Checking in VS Code and other IDEs. So there's that.
Hopefully this is helpful to you. I also hope that your feedback here will be helpful for Adobe's UXP teams to better understand what sorts of documentation will be most helpful for empowering their users (us) to hit the ground running (type declarations for IDEs go a long, long way to helping us users...).
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yeah sure - it runs in emulation - I tried rosetta vscode running the intel version as well as in emulation - but it doesn't run well. That was my point - I didn't mean to say it doesn't work at all.
I even ran it on my older intel mac, but that actually didn't feel all that much better to me. I need a snappy dev enviroment.
Perhaps if I had a faster M1 - but I really don't have a need for one other than running vscode in emultation... and well. Thanks for the other info! I don't wish to continue using CEP past what I need to do now, but the future uxp system looks promising - it's just not very nice to put a lot of effort into a deprecated system.
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yeah sure - it runs in emulation - I tried rosetta vscode running the intel version as well as in emulation - but it doesn't run well. That was my point - I didn't mean to say it doesn't work at all.
I even ran it on my older intel mac, but that actually didn't feel all that much better to me. I need a snappy dev enviroment.
By @ryan.f
I mean... that sounds like it could be a bug. To be certain, you're running the latest version of the extension, yes? Currently that's v2.0.3.
The experience should be very peppy. It has been peppy on all macOS environments I've tested on (2018 Intel MBP and 2021 Apple Silicon MBP) and this is the first report I've heard of "it doesn't run well." While people did say that of v1.x, v2.x has been massively streamlined to run with almost little processing.
I would say "well, maybe Ryan is talking about the responsiveness of VS Code in Rosetta in general", but your statement that the Intel Mac you tested on had the same issue would discount that.
Would it be possible for you to do a quick screen recording (Quicktime makes this trivial) to show what you're describing? This might help us identify an issue that needs to be addressed (or otherwise point out some configuration issue you may be experiencing).
I don't wish to continue using CEP past what I need to do now, but the future uxp system looks promising - it's just not very nice to put a lot of effort into a deprecated system.
By @ryan.f
You will likely be using CEP for a while yet. Adobe has not announced any timeline for UXP adoption in the DVA apps (PPro, AE, Audition, etc.), though they do claim to be working on it. They have suggested that there will be a "bridge period" where both environments are supported for a while. It is likely that ExtendScript will survive in some capacity for at least a few more years.
I would like to point out that your feedback here is extra helpful, though. Adobe's type declaration efforts for UXP thus far have been... middling at best. I have recently been doing my utmost to convince them that providing declarations for users like you and I is of critical importance and should be a foundational element of the system/environment. It sounds like the teams are taking this to heart, but the more they hear things like:
It’s a very inefficient development environment, as least for how I normally work. Without any code completion, type checking, or modern tools, it’s slow.
(those features are enabled in IDEs by Type Declaration files), the better as it reinforces the ask!
At any rate, anything you can provide that shows the debugger extension behaving sluggishly would be very helpful.
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If a company doesn't have a native arm64 mac application at this point (extendscript debugger), they simply aren't supporting macs. If extendscript itself is going to be retired I can understand not investing further in it, but regardless, it makes for a second class experience and reflects badly on Adobe. @Erin F.