Illustrator Scripting :: Accessing Elements Of A Page Item
Jan 6, 2014
I am working on a script that performs a series of things on all of the artwork in a document. At one point, it needs to compare the fill color of every item to a sample color. The problem is, the artwork is a collection of compound path items and path items. When I look for pathItems[x]. fillColor, it works fine. When I look for compoundPathItem[x].fillColor, it comes back undefined. So, I've moved to looking at page items, but I seem to be unable to get to the internals on the page items. If I have a compound path item, how would I address its properties from its parent page item? I tried:
Does name property of a page item appear anywhere in the user interface in Illustratpr CS6? I thought it would be the name you assign to it in the Layers palette, but it does not appear to be.
I just got CS6, and I'm wondering how I access menu items using Javascript?Also, I'm looking at the CS6 JS reference, and it doesn't say whether app.activeDocument.selection is Read-Only. I would need this for my purposes in accessing the menu.The item I wanna access is Select > Same > Stroke Color. Seems simple enough.
I am writing a script using javascript and the ESTK. I am able to access text frames in my document by name and/or id without a problem. However if the text frame is inside an envelope I can not access it using my script.
how to get the page count of a multi page PDF file? I know you can then open each page using the PDFFileOptions (pagetoopen). But I need to know up front how many pages there are to loop thru to open each page and process each page.
When writting scripts to Photoshop I can use the app.runMenuItem() method to acess commands in the menus. For example: app.runMenuItem (charIDToTypeID("ZoomIn")) will run the Zoom In command.
Does Illustrator have any such method (or accepts anything like action description) to enable us to acess it´s menu items? For example acess Expand comnand, or Object > Live Paint > Make..
All I am trying to do is move an anchor from one location to another using vbscript. I have searched everywhere and scoured the scripting references but I have not been able to figure this out as of yet.
I am able to select anchor points without an issue....moving those points seems to be a problem.
I have written a small application in .NET that gives color to Illustrator files.I have a layer with 100 color items (paths with a fillcolor). Each one has a unique name. Through that name my program looks them up, takes the fill color and applies that color to another path.Recently there was a change in Design, the drawings that I had to provide of a Fillcolor were no no longer pathitems but rasteritems (imported from photoshop). I thought ok no problem instead of setting the Fillcolor property I'll use the Colorize method on the rasteritems. It worked fine but now and then I came across a situation where raster-item didn't get the color. After digging in to it I saw that it was because some colors are Pantone colors and the colorize method on rasteritems only takes RGBColor or CMYKcolor objects. How to do it with the pantone colors?
I have a number of art items on a document, some of them are filled with spot colors and some of them are with process color.Is there any method by which I can find out which color type(spot or process) is applied to the selected art item?
illustrator scripting but have some knowledge in indesign scripting using javascript.In Indesign we can disable menu item thru menuActions.. Is there any object available like that to disable a existing menu (eg. File>Save).
It is possible to apply the Convert to Grayscale(Edit->Edit Colors->Convert to Grayscale) for the selected items in illustrator cs3 in script (javascript)?
I use my script to embeding a placed graphic (MyImage.embed();). Then I always get a group with the correct paths and two clipping paths in a grouped grouped groupItem.
My question is: I want to delete the two clipping paths to get only the correct paths of the graphic.
I'm trying to change the colors of a pathItem corresponding to the string value of several text fields in my document. I've been successful in changing the fill and stroke color of the pathItem, but I can not find any reference in the Illustrator Javascript Guide for accessing additional strokes and/or fills that have been applied to the object in the Appearance panel.
This has been an issue since at least CS4. If you add a script to your actions via "Insert Menu Iitem" (not sure if it's for all items or just scripts) and close Illustrator, those actions disappear. Apparently, in CS6, Adobe has completely ignored improving including scripts to Actions, which really makes automation powerful. As awesome as CS6 is, that part is pretty lame.
I can't seem to figure out a simple/direct method to identify the index of the selected item in a list box.
I feel like I'm missing something, but I can't seem to figure which (if any) property returns an index number if you use it with the .onChange callback for a ListBox.
The following code accomplishes what I need but isn't particularly efficient or elegant and can get muddled if you introduce multiple lists to check.
Any way to duplicate this same behavior with better code
I have a PDF file with 25 pages that I need to get into the form of an Illustrator file with 25 layers. I found the example of opening a particular page of a PDF file (using CS6), and that works. And I can create layers. But I can't figure out how to place a particular page of a PDF file into the new layer. Where/how do I provide the page info?
(I have a PostScript program that generates artwork for signs that are to be laser etched at the TechShop. The laser interface uses Illustrator and a special Print driver. I notice that opening a page from a PDF file positions the contents slightly differently than placing that page, when I do it manually, so I figured I'd create the multilayered Illustrator file by opening one page (which works) then placing all the pages in their own layers, then deleting the first page. Then the positioning will be consistent. But I'm stuck at placing a PDF page...)
tell application "Adobe Illustrator" to activate
-- This function opens the file passed as -- a file reference parameter, at page myPage. -- fileToOpen is a reference to a multi-page PDF file -- and needs to be set up before calling this function.
on openMultipageFile(fileToOpen, myPage) tell application "Adobe Illustrator" set user interaction level to never interact
I'm trying to remove all hidden page items regardless of how many sublayers they are burried in. I wrote a snippet here that seems to only partly work. It removes all hidden page items unless two hidden items exist right after each other in the stacking order.
for (i=0; i<doc.pageItems.length; i++){ if (doc.pageItems[i].hidden == true){ doc.pageItems[i].remove(); } }
in an open PDF File i press 'Ctrl+A' to select all Items in the document, then i choose Edit/Transform/rotate ... 90 degree.now i'd like to do the same with an vbscript.
the best thing i could find is:
rotate(90) Sub rotate (degree) Dim appRef, argument, element Dim changePositions, changeFillPatterns, changeFillGradients, changeStrokePattern, rotateAbout Set appRef = CreateObject("Illustrator.Application")
[code]....
not all, but all elements i am interested in are rotated - it would be better if really all elements would be rotated the elements are rotated around 'aiTransformDocumentOrigin' ... i would prefer if they are rotated around 'middle of document'.
Is there a way or a script that will make all the text on a page Dynamic? At the moment we have to select each text box and press 'make text dynamic', which can get tiresome with a lot of text boxes. If we select all the text boxes and do the same we get a lot of variables with the same name which gives an error.
So we need a script that can make it all dynamic with different named variables.
What is the Javascript equivalent to this AppleScript?
set xxx to every page item whose note = "John"
After looking at some of the tutorials, I pieced this together. Is there a better way of doing this? With 30,000 path items it took over a minute to execute...
docRef = app.activeDocument; var pathLength = docRef.pathItems.length; docRef.pathItems[0].note;
I have been trying to mess with and target "tints" via javascript but either I am not understanding something or it cant be targeted as I had hoped, so I am looking for direction and guidance. I have a spot color assigned in the color swatches palette, and have drawn a few boxes on the page using this spot swatch. I then try to alter the tint using JS code.
sel[i].tint = // whatever number alert(sel[i].tint) // This alerts fine
The alert shows a change taking place but it never gets applied to the item, the actual item never gets changed. I know things are properly targeted as I can change other attributes fine. When I look in the JS documentation it just shows for when creating a new spot, not for ones that already exist on items, I cant seem to find an example otherwise.
Can tint be adjusted for items on the page that have a spot color applied?
I'm trying to write a script that applies a single swatch to a single path item and repeat for every swatch that is currently contained in the swatch library. This script that I have written is only applying the last swatch in the swatch library to every path item on the page. Currently I'm more concered with getting each swatch that is currently in the swatch library to be applied at least once before worrying about applying the same patch to any extra number of patch items compared to the swatches.length.
// Apply every swatch library color to path items on a page if ( app.documents.length > 0 && app.activeDocument.pathItems.length > 0 ) { doc = app.activeDocument;
I'm new to scripting What I want to do and don't know how to go about it is to run a script that collects the saved file name and the full path where the file is saved on the network and displays it on my document.
but when i do it like that, the bject's name comes out as undefined when accessed like this dlg.btnPnl.cancelBtn.name or like this: dlg.btnPnl.children['name']
but adding the object then naming like this works-
dlg.btnPnl.cancelBtn.name = "Cancel";
I'm using illustrator cc and the extendscript guide for cs6 (couldn't find a newer one). Did the syntax change?
Stats first... 2010 iMac quad core i5, 16 gigs RAM, OS X 10.6.8
I can only hope that there is some simple setting that I'm just not aware of.
I've been trying very hard to understand why CS6 (now 64bit) is acting more sluggish than CS5. If I start an intensive task like a detailed Image Trace for instance, I will monitor both CPU usage and memory usage. Apparently Illustrator cannot mult-thread as it only uses one core out of a quad core processor at any given time. So use of modern CPUs is not yet an Illustrator feature it seems?
When I monitor memory usage (with Apple's own Activity Monitor and also iStat menus) as I'm watching a slow progress bar, Illustrator is calling on only between 1 and 2 gigs of RAM, never more than that, and leaving somewhere in the area of 11-12 gigs of RAM free. Why is that?
Bottom line I've seen no change from 32bit to 64bit except that CS6 seems a tad more sluggish. Even to the point of seeing a short progress bar during most saves on files that I'm quite sure weren't calling up progress bars in CS5.
Accidntly hit view hidden files. Tried view all files. Can not access my files. Got message "this file and other files are locked. How do I get my files back? Are the pemamently gone?
