Okay, but that is not really a droplet. In Photoshop you can create droplets out of your actions and it generates an miniature program that you save to your hard drive. From then on, all files dropped on that mini-program are submitted to the step outlined in the action (hence the name droplet). I've also looked for a way to do this in Illustrator CS4 and have not found a way.

Yes, that's true, and in that sense it is useful, just not as useful as a droplet would be. The beauty of droplet is that it is set up once, and then it is available to you anytime you want to perform that action on a file (whether on a single file or a folder full of files). It's drag and drop, the way it should be.

not sure what you mean with "action droplet" ... an applescript droplet doing that should be something like this:

on open fLs
    repeat with file_ in fLs
        tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
            set file_ to POSIX path of file_
            open file_
            convert to paths (every text frame of document 1)
            embed (every placed item of document 1)
            save current document in file newFilePath as pdf with options {class:PDF save options, compatibility:Acrobat 5, preserve editability:true}
            close document 1 saving no
        end tell
    end repeat
end open

hope it helps;

cheers;

thanks for the clarification ... i normally program/script my own stuff so i was not aware of the dropplet option for photoshop. However this script should do what it was asked above on a mac:

on open fLs
    repeat with file_ in fLs
        tell application "Adobe Illustrator"
            set file_ to POSIX path of file_
            open file_
            convert to paths (every text frame of document 1)
            embed (every placed item of document 1)
            save current document in file (dirname(file_) & "/export.pdf")  as pdf with options {class:PDF save options, compatibility:Acrobat 5, preserve editability:true}
            close document 1 saving no
        end tell
    end repeat
end open

on dirname(thePath)
      set thePath to quoted form of POSIX path of thePath
      do shell script “dirname ” & thePath
end basename

hope it helps;

cheers;

It would be nice for a lot of things in scripting to be more standardised across the applications but it ain't goin to happen.

Here is my take on Sonic's AppleScript Droplet (I've gone none POSIX and used plain old HFS paths)

on open FileList

repeat with ThisFile in FileList

tell application "Adobe Illustrator"

open ThisFile

set docRef to the current document

tell docRef

set docName to name of docRef

set docPath to file path

set docParent to my getParentFolder(docPath)

set docBaseName to my getBaseName(docName)

convert to paths every text frame

embed every placed item

set newFileName to docParent & docBaseName & ".pdf"

save in file newFileName as pdf with options ¬

{class:PDF save options, compatibility:Acrobat 5, preserve editability:true}

close saving no

end tell

end tell

end repeat

end open

-- Returns a file paths parent directory as string

on getParentFolder(fPath)

tell application "Finder"

set parentFolder to container of fPath as string

end tell

return parentFolder

end getParentFolder

-- Returns the document name without extension (if present)

on getBaseName(fName)

set basename to fName

repeat with idx from 1 to (length of fName)

if (item idx of fName = ".") then

set basename to (items 1 thru (idx - 1) of fName) as string

exit repeat

end if

end repeat

return basename

end getBaseName

Sweet Action!

Does exactly what Sonic says it does.

Creates a PDF with outlined fonts and embedded graphics, while leaving the original AI file "unharmed."

No disrespect intended to Mark. I just couldn't figure out how to get his to work. When I pasted it into AppleScript, it came up with errors.

Re: leaving the file "unharmed," I just rechecked, and it does. I created a new AI file, created some text, placed a graphic, saved the file, and dropped it on the App. It created a PDF with outlined text and embedded graphics. When it completed it's process, I opened up the AI file, and checked. Fonts are live, not outlined. Graphics are still linked to their location on the drive (external file server in this case). If I open the exported PDF in Illustrator, it shows fonts are outlined, and graphics are embedded. But the AI file is intact.

When I tried yours again Muppet, it worked fine. I must have done something wrong the first time.

Sonic, what was in my script was an out of Adobe's AppleScript guide handler for the base name its always worked so I've never tried fix it. Although I will take a look at your mod. I've various alternatives to this. You know how things are always bogged down with the things that you can't get to work or good examples are thin on the ground leaves little time to go back over covered ground.

I've been making notes on some of your examples of JavaScript with this App.

Im glad to see that this forums activity has picked up as of late gives me more to learn from.

Or is it that now Im trying to learn JS that I look at more posts here now.

Glad that mine worked too (always very frustrating when things work for me but then not for others that be bad coding)

Thanks for the hint.