EDOBE XDOM TPC Technical Information download pdf (Page 56)

CHAPTER 6: Scripting with VBScript Accessing and referencing objects 56

Adding features to “Hello World”

Next, we create a new script that makes changes to the Illustrator document you created with your first

script. The second script demonstrates how to:

X Get the active document.

X Get the width of the active document.

X Resize the text frame item to match the document’s width.

If you closed the Illustrator document without saving it, run your first script again to create a new

document.

Follow these steps:

1. Copy the following script into your text editor, and save the file.

Set appRef = CreateObject("Illustrator.Application")

'Get the active document

Set documentRef = appRef.ActiveDocument

Set sampleText = documentRef.TextFrames(1)

' Resize the TextFrame item to match the document width

sampleText.Width = documentRef.Width

sampleText.Left = 0

2. Run the script.

Accessing and referencing objects

When you write a script, you must first decide which file, or Document, the script should act on. Through

the

Application object, the script can create a new document, open an existing document, or act on a

document that is already open.

The script can create new objects in the document, operate on objects that the user selected, or operate

on objects in one of the object collections. The following sections illustrate techniques for accessing,

referencing, and manipulating Illustrator objects.

Obtaining objects from collections

Generally, to obtain a reference to a specific object, you can navigate the containment hierarchy. For

example, to use the

myPath variable to store a reference to the first PathItem in the second layer of the

active document:

Set myPath = appRef.ActiveDocument.Layers(2).PathItems(1)

The following scripts demonstrate how to reference an object as part of a document:

Set documentRef = appRef.ActiveDocument

Set pageItemRef = documentRef.PageItems(1)

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EDOBE XDOM TPC Technical Information Page 56