InDesign Plug-in Editor
From Adobe Labs
The Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor for InDesign CS3
What is the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor?
The Adobe® InDesign® Plug-in Editor is a suite of tools for developing InDesign plug-ins, made available on the Eclipse platform. It provides functionality for:
- Graphical editing of InDesign plug-in FR UI resources. You can add, remove, resize and completely edit your widgets in an entirely graphical environment.
- Context-sensitive, error-aware, text editing of InDesign FR files. This provides you with a powerful system for fine-tuning your FR resources.
- Creating new plug-ins - functionality provided by the DollyXS tool has been seamlessly integrated into the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor.
- Importing existing plug-ins and SDK samples, with all of the features that would be available to a newly generated project.
- Building, through your platform default build system. If you have XCode 2.4.1 or Visual Studio 2005, the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor can call their build process. This allows you to edit and update your compiled plug-in without ever having to leave the Eclipse workbench. For more information, see 'Building plug-ins with the InDesign Plug-in Editor' on page 28 of the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor Getting Started Guide
- Generate widget documentation for your plug-in, with full descriptions of each available widget, including their attributes.
For an indication of available functionality please see the Overview demo.
The Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor is made available under the InDesign CS3 SDK License Agreement.
What is required for the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor?
To use the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor you must have either Windows XP SP2 or Mac OS 10.4 (or later). You must also have:
- The InDesign CS3 SDK - This is available from the InDesign Developer Center.
- Eclipse 3.2.2 - Available from Eclipse.org.
Mac OS 10.4 (or later) specific requirements
- Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5 or later - This should be installed with updates from Apple.
- XCode 2.4.1 - This is required if you want to build edited plug-ins.
Windows XP SP2 (or later) specific requirements
- Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5 or later - If you do not have this it can be obtained from Sun Microsystems.
- Visual Studio 2005 - This is required if you want to build edited plug-ins.
Downloading the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor as an Eclipse distribution
The recommended, and easiest, way to obtain the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor is as a full Eclipse distribution, removing any need on your part to handle the setup of Eclipse. When you download this, you only need to unzip it and set the location of your SDK and then your setup is complete. This is available for Mac OSX here, and for Windows XP here.
Downloading the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor plug-ins
The Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor plug-ins can be downloaded here. The files are platform-independent, though the Eclipse environment and libraries that you must download for them (see below) are not. By downloading these files you agree to the terms of the InDesign CS3 SDK License Agreement.
Installing the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor plug-ins
To install the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor you must have Eclipse, and a number of additional plug-ins for it. These are all freely available, and instructions for their download and installation are available in the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor Getting Started Guide.
How to Get Started with the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor
Further information on installing the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor, and on its operation and features, can be found in the Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor Getting Started Guide.
Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor Tutorial Videos
Graphically Editing a UI Plug-in
Known Issues
Help and CheatSheets are not currently available. The information they contain can also be found in the Getting Started Guide
Help and Feedback
If you would like further help with the InDesign Plug-in Editor, or to suggest feature enhancements, please join us in the InDesign SDK forums.
Acknowledgments
The Adobe InDesign Plug-in Editor makes use, and is grateful for the support of;
Eclipse (available from http://www.eclipse.org)
ANTLR (available from http://www.antlr.org)
GEF (available from http://www.eclipse.org/gef)
The SAXON XSLT Processor from Michael Kay (available from http://saxon.sourceforge.net)
Xerces (available from http://xerces.apache.org/)
