Symbolic Links

TrevorAdobe Extensions, CMD / Terminal, Extensions, Tips1 Comment

What are symbolic links? REALLY OVER SIMPLIFIED they are hyped-up shortcut files that placed in one folder (the destination) point to a file or folder (the source) and are treated as the source. There are many different types of symbolic links and you can Google to find out the differences between the different types and the difference between them and regular shortcut / link files. Why would you want to use symbolic links? For extension development it makes no sense to keep your repositories in app folders 😜. Changes in the extensions will be reflected without the need to reinstall the extensions. You can add a restart "button" to the extension's html and then you don't even need to restart the app. One can normally use something as simple as <a href="./index.html"> Restart </a>. The system extension folder require Admin rights which can be a real pain for a development environment, if the a symbolic link is used one doesn't need Admin rights to make changes to the extension. (Another simple workaround is to use the user level extensions folder see Where to plonk my Adobe extensions?) How can we setup symbolic links? There are various user interface tools but … Read More

Keyboard Shortcuts For Illustrator Scripts

TrevorIllustrator, Scripts, Tips1 Comment

Copy the script file into Illustrators Scripts folder. Windows: Somewhere like "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CC 2019\Presets\en_US\Scripts" Mac: Somewhere like "/Applications/Adobe Illustrator CC 2019/Presets/en_US/Scripts" One can easily navigate to this path by holding the command key and clicking on the Illustrator icon. If Illustrator is open then close it and restart it. If it's closed then open it. The script should now appear in the File menu File > Scripts > mySuperDuperScript Open the action panel Windows > Actions Pick or create an action set. To create a new action set click on the actions panels folder icon. Call is something really nice like "My Scripts" or "Creative Scripts" Create a new action by clicking on the actions panels folded paper icon. Call it something informative like "My Super Duper Script", make sure it's plonked into the correct set. Assign it a function key with or without key modifiers (Shift / Control) as desired. Click on record (The circle icon at the bottom of the panel). Click on the actions panels menu icon (located at the top right corner of the panel), click on "Insert Menu Item…" . If you forgot to click on record this option could be grayed out. … Read More

InDesign Thin Font Finder

TrevorInDesign, Scripting, Scripts, TipsLeave a Comment

So how can we detect if a font is too thin? That basically was Karthi's (AKA tpk1982) question on the Adobe InDesign scripting forum. Well the answers like this: 💡 Take a sample letter which is comparatively simple to measure like an English T, Arabic Alef , Hebrew Vav or Japanese Shi etc. basically glyphs that have a long vertical to them and not too much else. A, Q, W or M wouldn't be good ideas. For our script we only dealt with English fonts (Freebie) but integrating the other language scripts should be very simple, just as one hint the font's writingScript property could be a useful property for deciding the 1st choice of which glyph to check for. Convert the T or whatever into outlines myT = myChar.createOutlines(), manually you would find the "create outlines" option in InDesigns "Type" menu. 💡 The T outline could be made of several paths take the T on the far left of the bottom row of the "Feature" picture, it has 2 separate paths, others might have quite a few more, so which path do we go for? That's right the tallest one, that's the one that's most often is going to … Read More

Logging with a smile 😃

TrevorProductivity, Scripting, TipsLeave a Comment

The ability to see snapshots of a script progress throughout it's execution is crucial for the writing and debugging of complex scripts. There are scripters who are dependent on using the ESTK for developing scripts for the most of Adobe's well know products like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier Pro and After Effects to name but a few. What they do not appreciate is the degree of handicap they are inflicting on themselves because of their dependency. I'll probably discus this topic in the future, don't get me wrong I'm not saying that there is no place for using the ESTK just that it should be used cautiously as an exception. I want to show that the use of the ESTK for the purpose of writing to the console is a bad idea. OK for your little 20 line snippet it's not necessarily exactly the end of the world, but one has to know that writing to the ESTK console is really incredibly slow, it's comes out pretty illegible, trying to find one entry amongst a multitude of other is no pleasure to put it mildly. There's no keeping of the output from session to session and there's no built in … Read More