Associating text annotations with shapes?

Acorn
1

I would like to write a plugin to export bezier curves and lines segments from an Acorn image. I have some user-defined properties that I would really like to “attach” to each bezier curve or line segment and have them saved in the .acorn file.

Is there a way to attach such otherwise-opaque-to-Acorn, user-defined properties to a shape (layer?) in Acorn? I would prefer explicit attachment vs something implicit. e.g. a ‘comment’ explicitly attached to the shape/layer vs a hidden text layer that is geographically near the annotated shape. Alternatively, are there stable ids on shapes that I could use to externally associate properties?

For example, in the attached image, I would like to associate some user-defined text with the green and yellow line segments, the blue circle, and each of the curves.

curves
curves1000×1000 56.9 KB

Are there techniques for doing this?

Thanks!

2

There’s no API for anything like this. If I was to add it, I suppose the API for a shape could be something along the lines of:

- (NSString*)uuid;
-(void)setUserObject:(id)obj forKey:(NSString*)key;
-(id)getUserObjectForKey:(NSString*)key;

The objects stored would have to be generally serializable- things like dictionaries, arrays, numbers, and strings.

Do you need anything beyond that?

3

I am not very familiar with the plugin system in Acorn so I don’t know if there are other issues, but that’s the API I was thinking / looking for. My use-case is strings.

Thanks.

4

Cool. I’ll see what I can do in a future release. VoodooPad had something like this, and exposed a “user defined meta” palette where you could put things in there.