If you're simply automating standard Illustrator behaviour, you'd probably be best to work with the scripting. The SDK offer a much broader range of control, but it comes with a much steeper learning curve if you're not familliar with C/C++ programming. I'd start with scripting, and fall back on the SDK if it doesn't provide enough of what you need. ... View more

It's been a loooong time since I worked in AI10 -- the text engine is completely different in CS and later -- but my first instinct is to ask "Why are you using Text*Byte*() calls?" Admittedly, it's been a while, but I don't remember ever using anything as 'low level' as that. I thought there were much simpler methods of getting the text, at which point you could just execute your trim() and put it back. But maybe I'm wrong, I don't even have a copy of the AI10 API to look at anymore, and the newer ones don't contain the old text suites since they're history. ... View more

Actually, this sounds similar to a problem we recently discovered: if one of our users put certain symbols into isolation mode, then left isolation mode, the symbol would suddenly shift. Sounds like it might be related, or even the same problem! We never could figure out how to detect & correct the problem though. It feels like there should be a way to divide out the extra transforms sitting on a symbol from the base 'locate me here' transforms, but there isn't that I could find. ... View more

Now that's interesting! I wonder if that's the expected behaviour or if it's a bug in Illustrator. Unfortunately, if that's the case I doubt there's a way to tell Illustrator to to it. If you want consistent timer messages, you may have to tie into the OS directly. ... View more

If you're asking about how to display a preview of an AI file in your own application or widget, I'm not sure you'll find much help here. There's nothing in the SDK to help with that I'm afraid, as the SDK only deals with things you can do from within Illustrator. Presumably AI installs their own preview handlers on the target OS, but I don't know of any way to tap into that. ... View more

I don't think you'll find much help for that here, unless you get extremely lucky. Try Google Groups & see if you can find a discussion on the subject. http://www.google.com/grphp?hl=en ... View more

It is not possible, but it's quite easy to tap into the OS & use the AIDocumentViewSuite to translate global coordinates into document coordinates. We do something like this in our product so I can tell you it works. You just need to make sure you 'hook in' to the correct window -- namely the document window you'd like to track mouse movements in. ... View more

I'm not familliar with the AiDrawArtSuite unfortunately, but another way you might consider doing it is to rasterize the art you want to display using the AIRasterize suite. This will give you back the raw image data that you can put into an ADMImage (and cache). ... View more

I assume you mean ai::UnicodeString, not AIUnicodeString -- the name of the header in which the former is found. I'll proceed on that assumption.<br /><br />The method you want is ai::UnicodeString::as_ASUnicode(). This will give you a basic_string<ASUnicode> as a result. You should be able to use this to get a ASUnicode* result using c_str(). <br /><br />The important thing to note is that ASUnicode & ADMUnicode are the same type; one is a typedef of the other.<br /><br />I'd provide code but we actually use a third party library that handles our strings, so I actually convert from ai::UnicodeString to our third party string, and from that to ADMUnicode when the time comes. It's not hard though, once you have the result of as_ASUnicode(). ... View more

On that note, it's even possible to rasterize the result using AIRasterize & pull out the raw image data. We use that in our product to push the data into the format our GUI needs to display some of results. ... View more

If you're just trying to calculate that value in page units, there's a function AIPathSuite::GetPathLength() that should give you the length in *points*. You'll have to convert that to whatever units you want that in (be it inches, millimeters, centimeters, etc.). From what I remember, this should work for bezier lines as well. If that doesn't work for some reason, I can point you to some example code that would let you do that yourself. ... View more

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but at least part of it sounds like you're wondering if you can display the length of a path in the Info window. If that's what you're asking, no, that's not possible. Nothing stops you from creating your own small palette to display such information though. As for constraining the ability to edit parts of a path, no, you can't do that either. You might be able to construct a custom art type that let you do that, but it wouldn't be considered path art by Illustrator. If that's okay though, you might check out the AIPluginGroup suite. > Would it be possible to add some sort of conversion tool that > allows someone to take full illustrations a scale them to > architectural scales. but does not affect the scaling of the > illustration. some sort of window that has preset scale > measurements. Again, I'm not quite sure I follow. It kind of sounds like the work we do with MAPublisher, at least a little. If so, I'm guessing 'yes', but I'm not 100% sure since I don't quite understand what you're trying to do. ... View more

Illustrator doesn't provide any functionality to do this; they mainly just provide a cross platform method by which you can manage file paths. After that, it's up to you to use standard IO calls or even OS-specific calls when necessary. ... View more

The ADMNonModalDialog project is the one you want I believe. ... View more

Actually, I just thought of a hacky way to do this. AIDocumentSuite has a method SetDocumentModified() -- if you set this to false, Illustrator will not allow the user to save because, well, there's nothing TO save...right? :) ... View more

Hmmmm, that's interesting. I didn't realize it until now, but I guess I've never had to move a layer -- I've always just created them in place. Now this will all be conjecture on my part since I've never tried it, but it's probably worth a try! Layers are essentially just specially-marked groups. Granted, they have some kind of 'layer data' associated with them (the AILayerHandle would be proof enough of that, since it's not the same as the AIArtHandle that represents its group art). Since the layer information isn't really changing, and the layer group art is really how a layer is tracked in the file, I'd suggest moving that guy and seeing if it works. To that end, use AIArtSuite::GetFirstArtOfLayer() and then try AIArtSuite::ReorderArt(). This might be completely wrong, but if I was going to do it, that's how I'd try it first. I mean, it's got to be possible; 95% of Illustrator is written in its own SDK, so I imagine the Layers palette has to manage it somehow! As for symbols, I've never encountered any restrictions that I can tell. We routinely create new layers and dump a ton of symbols on to them, and as far as I can tell we're using kPlaceInsideOnTop! And the layers are even sorted, so they can be literally anywhere in the hierarchy. ... View more

Yeah, this has been a problem for a long time. I just hand edit the file (including the DIALOGEX -> DIALOG), since as you point out, you need to alter the FONT line anyways (which I just entirely remove). At one point I had a segex pre-build step that simply did all this for more, but somewhere along the line this got dropped from my project. I've filed a bug about this on a couple of CS* betas, but no dice as yet. The last time I did so, it was suggested to me to try EVE, which I will when I get a chance. ... View more

Ah, Illustrator 10? I'm afraid I can't help you then, there isn't an ASScripting.h header anymore, at least not in the CS3 SDK (nor in the CS2 SDK I believe). If you're trying to use it in AI10 or CS it should still work I think. Beyond that, I have no idea. I'm not sure what the replacement is supposed to be. ... View more

You've probably tried this, but the AITransformArt suite has some options for applying transforms to objects, including things like 'kTransformStrokePatterns' and 'kTransformFillPatterns'. I assume these aren't helpful or you've already tried them? I'll admit, working with the nitty-gritty of patterns isn't something I've got any experience in :( ... View more

If you want to use the Action Manager, create your own action set & record a macro of changing the document size. The save the action set (.aia) on to your desktop or somewhere you can find easily. Open the .aia in a text editor and it should present the action name & the parameter names it's expecting. That should let you feed those into the AIActionManager::PlayAction() method -- and use whatever numbers you want for the page size. Hope that helps! ... View more

Okay, in a nutshell, you have to get the page origin and then use the AIHardSoft suite to convert to 'hard' coordinates. There are two coordinate systems at work in AI, the 'hard' & the 'soft'. The 'soft' coordinate system is the what you see displayed and can be shifted & have its units changed. The 'hard' system is static and never changes; so if you have a 'hard' coordinate you know it's rock solid. The trick is knowing which you have; they both use AIReal so you can't tell just by looking at the type. Now, the solution I was talking about depends on how this system affects you. In our case, I have to pull the page origin when a document opens & record it's true 'hard' coordinate. Then when I perform certain operations, I check to see if the page origin (0,0) has shifted. I can do this by converting (0, 0) to a 'hard' coordinate and comparing it to what I recorded last -- if they're different, there's been a shift. Moreover, I can tell how it's shifted. Then I just make whatever changes I have to make and then update the 'hard' coordinate for the origin with it's new location. And so on! I don't know how a shifting page origin will affect you -- it might not at all! But this information might still be useful. With luck you won't need to handle a shifting origin, but if you're concern about the 'true' location of something, the AIHardSoft suite is what you probably want. ... View more

I'm a little confused by the question, but it sounds like you're asking how to count the number of files with a particular extension in a given directory? That's not really an AI SDK question, but it's a fairly easy one to find if you google it. If you're trying to use Illustrator to do it, AI doesn't have a general purpose file API. It has a few functions to do some things that Illustrator needs, but I don't think enumerating directories is one of them. ... View more

Where did you get ASScripting.h? I can't find it in the SDK! ... View more

As far as I know, you can't control a native Illustrator menuitem I'm afraid. I presume you're trying to prevent the save operation, but perhaps there's another way to accomplish your aim. At least, I hope so, because I don't know of any way to prevent saving. If you expand on your problem, maybe I can suggest something. ... View more

I believe the coordinates returned are (like almost everything in the SDK) in points/pixels (which are the same numerically). It doesn't matter what the document is set to, the API always uses points/pixels. So I'm *assuming* you're working in centimeters or something that's not points or pixels, which would explain the discrepancy. Looking at how I use that call, I don't see any special sauce to make it work well with the rest of my code, so I'm assuming there's nothing peculiar about it. Let me know if my assumption is wrong though. One thing you should note: if you're using the document origin, make sure you test for the case when the user changes said origin (show rulers, click in the upper-left box of the rulers & drag). That's a very common problem for anyone depending on the origin for anything (even Adobe has some trouble with this). There is a solution, but I won't post it unless you need it (or someone else asks for it) since it gets into discussions about a part of the SDK most people don't need/want to know about :) ... View more

I hope it works out -- if there's anything I've learned from getting to know this API is that there is a *ton* of great stuff in there, but for some reason a lot of it is named about as unintuitively as you could imagine! :) ... View more

Interesting -- there wasn't a binary parameter in there? I assumed there'd b a struct of some sort for handling export-to-PNG options. Have you looked at AIImageOptimization.h? There seems to be a way to rasterize art to a PNG using AIImageOptPNGParams, but maybe you've looked at this and ruled it out. ... View more

In a similar vein, here's an inline function that will convert the SPErr (or AIErr) into it's four-character human-readable code: ] inline void ConvertSPErr(const SPErr error, char* buffer) ] { ] static const int kErrorByteSize = sizeof(SPErr); ] static const int kCharBitCount = sizeof(char) * 8; ] static const int kBaseMask = 0xff; ] int mask = 0; ] ] for (int i = 0; i < kErrorByteSize; i++) { ] mask = kBaseMask << (kCharBitCount * i); ] int value = error & mask; ] value = value >> (kCharBitCount * i); ] buffer[kErrorByteSize - i - 1] = (char)value; ] } ] ] buffer[kErrorByteSize] = 0; ] } ... View more

> no matter witch API function I'm calling I end up directly in the > Illustrator. This means I'm steping through the code with the debugger > Step over the to lines above next time I step over an API function it > leaves the debugger and jumps to Illustrator without executing any > code after the API Call (jumps from within the API function to > Ilustrator and doesn't return to the debugger) Well, whenever that happens it means something so bad has gone wrong that Illustrator has given up on your code and returned. I inherited a code base that had this happen quite often years ago but it's much less common in my stuff now. A big part of that is constant vigilance on the return values, and ASSERT()s on the states of various things. If it's constantly dying on a particular call, the it's usually because something you're feeding that call is just plain wrong. E.g. if you didn't initialize the handle you were expecting to get filled with a new art handle in that NewArt() call and NewArt() failed for some reason, you'd end up passing a handle with a bogus value. That might very well cause the behaviour you're seeing. I'm not saying that's what your problem is, but that's kind of thing that causes the API to barf sometimes. At any rate, we use a few PluginGroups in our MAPublisher product and I just checked our code -- that's pretty much exactly what we do so I don't know why it would complain. I'd stick in a whole whack load of test code and query very carefully all the variables you use there to verify they're okay (maybe the custom art registration failed for some reason?) If any of THOSE fail unexpectedly, that should give you a pretty strong indication of where the problem lies. Hope that helps, but let me know if you can't get it working and uncover anything else. ... View more

> To PDF. Since illustrator ignores my AIPDFFormatAction args for > everything except save as, I'm forced to save - specifically, I save > the user's document, then I save as (that's my export), close, then > reopen the original document. This is not the ideal user experience, > because there's a bunch of flashing as documents open and close, and > sadly, the user loses his undo history. Hmmmm. We used to have functionality to export to a modified PDF format that worked by invoking that action. It's literally been years since we had it though so I can't swear that we required the user to have saved the document first, but I don't remember it needing that. I'll see if I can dig up the code after this post, maybe there's a clue in there...assuming I can find the code (we didn't have source control back in '99!). > Applescript's my next stop, but at the risk of sounding whiny, why > on earth do functions like PlayAction and WriteDocument[WithOptions] > have "suppress gui" arguments if they just go ahead and ignore them? You're confusing the SDK with the Action system here, at least partially. PlayAction() is the SDK's way of invoking a recorded macro; and that means you're allowed to say what you'd prefer, but you're not in charge -- there's a plugin on the other end of the macro, responding to whatever you fired. It's up to that plugin whether or not it respects the 'suppress gui' flag. That's not the SDK's fault, that's the fault of whoever wrote that plugin; though they may have a good reason (or not) for ignoring the directive. I haven't had call to use WriteDocument() so I can't speak to that. If you can't avoid the GUI on that, I'd suggest posting to them as a feature request; it doesn't sound unreasonable. > Nothing's perfect, but in the world of page layout SDKs both the > archaic XPress and overly wordy InDesign seem to have way fewer > holes, hide fewer nasty surprises and are a lot clearer to boot. I've never worked with XPress, but I found InDesign to be far, far less clear & harder to manipulate than the AIs SDK. I tried to bootstrap a simple plug-in for InDesign 1.5 and nearly pulled my hair out getting it to do anything. I had a plugin up & running in AI in half an hour and had it manipulating the art with ease. Different strokes I guess? >> No, but you can create a menu in any existing menu, so this hardly >> seems like a problem to me. > > It's a very minor gripe, probably a design choice. It is, and it's one that may change in a future version of Illustrator. We were actually just discussing this with Adobe a couple of months back. They explicitly don't want to clutter the top-level menu space with extra menus, but they're going to re-examine the position for CS5. >> - can't resize document > > Again, the SDK is not designed or intended to automate user actions. > You can do this with the scripting capabilities however. Hopefully this won't bring the wrath of Adobe down on my head, but this is possible in CS4. I can't elaborate, but it's super easy. > When I figure out how to programmatically store and add actions that > I've pre-recorded I'll probably do just that. That's an interesting approach, but I've always found it far easier to invoke the functionality directly. Especially if you're looking to not see a GUI. Invoking a series of macros to perform a task could get daunting, depending on how complex the over-arching operation you're trying to perform is. > I seem to have touched a raw nerve - I'm just venting my > frustration. Don't get me wrong, I love illustrator the program - I > could play with text on a path for hours, but illustrator the SDK > has yet to win my loyalty. I'd love to proven wrong. A great deal of it depends on where you're spending your time in the SDK. Manipulating artwork is stupidly easy in Illustrator; I have a whole C++ wrapper object library that makes altering artwork trivial, and it was easy to build. There are plenty of gotchas, but as I think we all know, every SDK has some time bombs lying in wait 🙂 And there are definitely areas of the SDK that could use beefing up. PDF export is actually one I'm trying to have a conversation with Adobe about, but we're having email trouble at the moment. For some reason my mail between here & there gets dropped randomly, and it's impossible to tell the difference between when I'm being ignored & when the email has fallen in the bit bucket :P ... View more