The first public alpha versions of Creative Developer Tools for the Adobe eco-system are now becoming available.
UXP and UXPScript are great, but for software solutions that are running in a ‘clean room’, having to fight the UXP security sandboxes can make a developer’s life miserable.
Also, handling activation/licensing for commercial software can be a pain. Creative Developer Tools can handle that for you.
Creative Developer Tools for UXP currently works with Photoshop and InDesign and provides a growing set of APIs, including APIs for reading/writing binary files and text files without artificial limitations imposed by the UXP sandbox.
See
https://github.com/zwettemaan/CRDT_UXP/blob/main/docs.md
for more info.
The crdtuxp module contains a mix of synchronous and asynchronous functions.
Some functionality is written in JavaScript as part of crdtuxp.js, and is synchronous.
Other functions are delegated to a daemon process which is able to operate outside of the UXP sandbox, but still within the confines of the logged-in user. These functions are always asynchronous.
Important note: crdtuxp steps out of the UXP security sandbox – which means that, as a developer, you need to be judicious how and when to use this.
The reality is that every software system operates in a unique context.
UXP security measures have their place and can be helpful in keeping things secure when it comes to UXP development.
However, for many software systems, these measures are too strict and overbearing and don’t account for the actual operating environment. It’s an all-or-nothing approach.
In my opinion, it should be up to the user/developer/IT department to decide how to handle security.
Sometimes a particular workflow system will be living inside a walled garden, on a disconnected network, without any contact with the outside world and will not be allowed to run any unvetted software. Or othertimes the OS security is safe enough for the particular workflow at hand.
In those cases, the UXP security measures are counter-productive: they represent unnecessary hurdles to the software development, and often make the user interface clunky and user-unfriendly.
Using UXP sandboxing should be a developer-selectable option, not an enforced ‘always-on’ requirement, and it should be up to the developer and/or the IT department to decide what is appropriate and what not.
Creative Developer Tools puts the power back into the hands of the developer, the end-user and the I.T. department, and leaves it up to them to opt-in or opt-out of the UXP security sandbox.