Hi,
I'm new to InDesign CS4/CS5 plug-in development and been given the task of coming up with a plug-in equivalent to one done for QuarkXPress 8.
In the CS4 SDK there were two samples for the FlexUIStroke plug-in. One was a pure Flex/scripting sample and the other was a combination of Flex and C++. The latter was useful for showing how C++ source code could interface with Flex. In the CS5 SDK (build 335) the C++ sample has been removed.
The Flex/scripting sample has been rewritten for use with CS Extension Builder under Flash Builder 4. I've quickly tested this using CSEB and it is a really handy tool for creating, installing and debugging InDesign extensions using Flex panels.
In CS5, Adobe state the importance of model/UI separation as the former permits multiple threads. By this I assume that a separate thread in the model plug-in can manipulate a document. I like the idea purely as a means of developing code where the UI is separate from a backend which loads, saves and manipulates documents. The UI can be reinstalled without changing or reinstalling the backend.
My project requires:
- A panel-based user interface (using Flex).
- Sockets code to listen for messages from a browser to load and save documents etc - therefore a multi-thread solution.
- Code to add text and images to the document via the plug-in user interface and report back any problems to the user interface - two-way communications.
It sounds straightforward - as it was in QXP. But here's the crunch, is it possible to have a UI plug-in developed using CSEB and a model-compliant (not using WidgetBin.lib) backend developed using C++? At the moment I'm thinking I'm stuck using a "CS4" approach (single plug-in without CSEB) for the project.