The biggested pain point when implementing scripting support for plugins is that if you want to add objects that interact with built-in Illustrator script objects (LiveObjects) like Layers, Documents or PageItems. While it's possible to correctly parse whether you're being passed the correct scripting object (e.g. a Layer and not something else) you can't actually determine the handle for the specified object; that lives inside the ScriptingSupport.aip and has no public API.

Perhaps a small suite could be added that provides methods like this:

AIAPI AIErr (GetDocumenttHandle) (long hObject, AIDocumentHandle& outHandle);
AIAPI AIErr (GetLayerHandle) (long hObject, AILayerHandle& outHandle);
AIAPI AIErr (GetPageItemHandle) (long hObject, AIArtHandle& outHandle);

These are the three most important objects, but more could be added in the future.

We are experiencing resizing issue in the latest CEP version. Our extension allows user to resize extension's window, however whenever any navigation occur, window size resets. Problem exists in Illustrator CC 2018 (22.0.1), everything is working fine in previous version (CC 2017).

We already tried different geometry settings and extension UI types, but problem persists and seems to be related to engine itself.

We successfully reproduced this issue with official git hub sample extension. Steps to reproduce:
1. Open sample extension with debug mode enabled
2. Resize window
3. Change window location in console to any other page
4. After navigation, extension window size will reset

For now, the only working workaround we've got is to save window size and resize it after each request. However, this solution isn't very elegant as window still moves it's position to default one.

REPOSTING FROM Illustrator Bugs AS 5 MONTHS WITHOUT ANSWER AND THIS CATEGORY MIGHT BE A BETTER FIT.

Allow for access to the selection geometricBounds as a whole. Also bounds for the clipped area only (ignore hidden areas).

In Illustrator, the Transform window displays the position, width and height for all objects selected and it does not display clipped areas. when you size an object by entering a dimension, you don't have to worry about clipped areas. in scripting you do.

The geometricBounds, visibleBounds, controlBounds, height and width properties give you the size of clipped objects. for a couple of items you can check if each is clipped and if it is, you can then retrieve the first pathItem of the clipped group and get its geometricBounds.

This gets very complicated with a group that is not clipped containing clipped items. So first testing if the selected group is clipped will return false. So you dig inside of it and check to see if any group inside the group is clipped. Then you drill inside those groups to see if any group inside them is clipped. When you have all the clipped areas then you have to compare their bounding boxes to get the overall bounding box without the clipped objects. point being, it is really difficult to get the visible bounds of the selection.

But why should we do all this work for information that Illustrator already has displayed on the Transform window?

So why not just give this information to us? Please allow access to the numbers in the Transform window! Illustrator already knows these numbers. just give them to us please I beg you!

Furthermore allow for transforming selections as a whole like you would in the transform window.

According to the documentation for kATEDocumentResourceChangedNotifier, it is supposed to be "Sent when ATE document resources, such as named style, have changed."

I have never found this to be true, in any version since the ATE was added. This has always been a serious pain point, because we build small previews of text styles and we have to rebuild them every time we open a UI that shows them, because we have no way of knowing if they have changed (or if they even still exist, or any have been added!).

Since it's never been sent before, there can't be much code expecting it -- so how much downside could there be to suddenly start sending them correctly?

Please provide unique identifiers for all page items and layers via script.

Right now it is not possible to save IDs of page items/layers in a variable or array and retrieve them at a later point in the script.

At first I could not believe it that there are no IDs. This is total basic and should be a no-brainer and default.
Thanks!

P.S. Current workaround: set custom tag on items. This works only as long as the user is not duplicating an items. Than you have two items with the same tag and it is not unique anymore.
Workaround here is my other feature request: receive events from AI in a CEP panel: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/908050-sdk-scripting-bugs-and-features/suggestions/36902764-cep-waaaay-more-events-from-ai-to-cep-panels-e-g

I've been reading through the new information about UXP and the announcement that it will be replacing CEP.

If this happens it will likely mean the end of our current CEP extension, since the support provided in UXP does not cover our use case. To be specific we have problems with the following areas:

1) Most critical UXP is "not a browser" and as such will only support a subset of HTML. Our extension relies on being able to run another web application within the browser control supplied by CEP, in an iframe window. While there is currently no list of supported HTML, it seems likely that iframe will not be a supported HTML element.

This will break our CEP extension.

2) No support for persistent panels. Currently there is only support for Modal Dialogs, which are expect to be invoked and then closed. Our CEP extension relies upon a persistent control, which the user logs into once.

3) In ability to access the user file system, in particular the Download directory. This will break a few features in our application which rely on being able to read information from this directory.