Making custom Symbols available by default

[btempleton1982]

Since creating placed artwork from an external AI file has proved problematic, I decided to try using Symbols.

Does anyone know how to get symbols into Illustrator's default list, so that they are available to any document? I created my own symbol library, which I can load using the palette, but I can't seem to find a file that I can add my symbols so that they always just appear in the default list.

The "Unlisted" symbols feature also looks promising, since I don't really need the user to see these at all.

I'm not really sure how to go about this. Maybe someone has some experience adding and using custom symbols?

[A. Patterson · Accepted solution]

AIDocumentHandle handle = 0;

sPathStyle->ImportStyles(path, &handle);

ai::int32 count = 0;

sSymbol->CountSymbolPatternsFromDocument(&count, handle);

for (ai::int32 i = 0; i < count; i++) {

  AIPatternHandle symbol = 0;

  sSymbol->GetNthSymbolPatternFromDocument(i, &symbol, handle);

AIPatternHandle newStyle = 0;

  sSymbol->RetargetForCurrentDocument(symbol, &newStyle);

}

[btempleton1982]

Looks good. That's almost exactly what I came up with. Except I forgot about the "FromDocument" functions so I was flicking back and forth between them with Activate(..). And I open my source document with DocumentList->Open(...). Is there a reason you choose to create a new document with ImportStyles instead?

[btempleton1982]

Weird. It looks like ImportStyles opens the document "silently" so it doesn't show in recent documents or flicker the display as it opens and closes. Very interesting.

[A. Patterson]

Yeah, I was going to write and tell you that That's not the only 'silent' document function. When you place art, at least for rasters, it also semi-silently does the same thing. I say 'semi-silently' because you get document opened notifiers and I had re-jig my code to ignore them if they didn't exist in the document list. That was a while ago though, so they may have fixed that; it felt like a bug.

[Mario Arizmendi]

Hi

This looks like it is a script, but how exactly use this, trying to use in Mac Illustrator version 2019

[rcraighead]

Old thread, but this is something I'm trying to do. I take it this uses Scriptographer. Is it compatible with AI CC 2015 and how do I run it? Do I need to install Scriptographer or is it simply a .JSX? Sorry, I'm clueless.

[Monika Gause]

Scriptographer is a plugin. It's compatible to versions up to CS5.

Into Scriptographer you can then plug scripts. But they won't run without Scriptographer as their base.

[rcraighead]

So, for all practical purposes it is a "dead" program. I love CS5 but most customers/businesses do not even have it anymore. Thank you for clarifying.