Documentation for ExtendScript API

This repo contains the source code for building the documentation system. To see the built documentation, here.

Prerequisites

  • Python3
  • Node.js and npm
  • Adobe InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop/Bridge/Audition and ExtendScript Toolkit for XML source files
  • (for Mac users, if you want the InDesign/Audition/Premiere Pro OMs) Mac OS Mojave or lower - ESTK is not available for Catalina and the OMV has not been brought in to the VSCode solution yet.

Generating the documentation

Install node packages:

$ npm install

Build automatically (only works on OS X and Windows 10, 64bit):

$ npm run build

The docs will be compiled to public/. OMV XML files will automatically be found.

Development guide

Building the documentation requires the following steps:

  1. Locate the source OMV XML files, copy them to ./xml/source. The script ./src/findxml will do this for you on OSX, ./src/findxml.baton Windows
  2. Parse the XML files, output as JSON with ./src/xml2json.py.
  3. Map the output JSON files to the public directory with ./src/json2public.py. The file ./xml/map.json defines what files to copy.
  4. Build the web interface.

gulp and npm are setup to run these for you.

To build all the documentation from scratch:

$ npm run build

To watch src/ and compile automatically to public/:

$ npm run watch

To clean the dist files:

$ npm run clean

The easiest way to view the docs locally is to use zapp.

$ npm install -g zapp
$ zapp public/

Now open your browser here.

XML file locations

The XML source files can be found in the following locations on Mac OS X:

  • /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Scripting Dictionaries CC/CommonFiles
  • /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Scripting Dictionaries CC/photoshop
  • /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Scripting Dictionaries CC/Illustrator 2020
  • /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Scripting Dictionaries CC/Adobe Bridge 2020
  • ~/Library/Preferences/ExtendScript Toolkit/4.0

On Windows 10, 64bit:

  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Scripting Dictionaries CC\CommonFiles
  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Scripting Dictionaries CC\illustrator 2020
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Scripting Dictionaries CC\photoshop
  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Scripting Dictionaries CC\Adobe Bridge 2020
  • C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\ExtendScript Toolkit\4.0

Troubleshooting

  • If there is no warning about missing XML files for InDesign / Audition / Premiere Pro but the json/HTML is not generated, it may be that the major/minor version number has increased. Compare what is searched for in xml/map.json and the XML files found in xml/source.

License

All source code for generating the documentation is under the MIT license. The XML source files (not included) remain property of Adobe.