vectorcraft/docs/mcp.md

VectorCraft MCP server

vectorcraft-cli mcp runs a Model Context Protocol server on stdio (newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0, protocol 2025-06-18; 2025-03-26 and 2024-11-05 also accepted). Agents use it to draw, inspect and look at VectorCraft documents.

It has two backends:

Mode	How	What works
Remote	vectorcraft-cli mcp --connect 127.0.0.1:7979 (the app must run with vectorcraft --control 7979)	Everything. Tool calls are forwarded over the control protocol, so you watch the app change live.
Headless	vectorcraft-cli mcp --headless	An in-process engine session with a CPU renderer. Everything except the UI-only tools (inspect_ui, type_text, open_panel, screenshot {window:true}).

With no flag, the server tries 127.0.0.1:7979 and falls back to headless. Logs go to stderr; stdout carries only protocol messages.

Build and register

cargo build --release -p vectorcraft-cli
claude mcp add vectorcraft -- "$PWD/target/release/vectorcraft-cli" mcp
# or pin a mode:
claude mcp add vectorcraft-headless -- "$PWD/target/release/vectorcraft-cli" mcp --headless
claude mcp add vectorcraft-app -- "$PWD/target/release/vectorcraft-cli" mcp --connect 127.0.0.1:7979

Other clients use the same command in their JSON config:

{"mcpServers": {"vectorcraft": {"command": "/abs/path/target/release/vectorcraft-cli", "args": ["mcp"]}}}

For a live session, start the app first: cargo run --release -p vectorcraft -- --control 7979.

Protocol

Newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0 on stdio. The revision is 2025-06-18; 2025-03-26 and 2024-11-05 are accepted too, and initialize answers with whichever of those the client asked for. The specs' own resultType fields and the 2026-07-28 revision are not implemented — see Not implemented.

initialize advertises:

Capability	What it covers
tools	The 25 tools below
resources	Two fixed documents and four templates
prompts	Five ready-made workflows
completions	completion/complete for prompt arguments and template variables
logging	logging/setLevel and notifications/message

Prompts

prompts/list offers five workflows; prompts/get returns one templated user message with its arguments filled in. A missing required argument is -32602.

Prompt	Arguments (required first)
poster	brief, palette, text
icon-set	subject, count, detail
recolor	palette, method
trace-and-style	path, preset, effect
export-set	formats, directory, scale

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"prompts/get","params":{"name":"poster","arguments":{"brief":"a jazz festival"}}}' \
  | vectorcraft-cli mcp --headless

Resource templates

vectorcraft://document (summary) and vectorcraft://document/json (the whole model) are the fixed resources. The templates read one thing at a time, which matters on a real document: the full model is thousands of lines an agent pays for again on every change.

uriTemplate	Reads
vectorcraft://object/{id}	One layer or object with its children, bounds and paint: document.node {id, summary: true}, the node as document.inspect lists it. A large container can be sliced with run_command document.node {id, summary: true, depth?, childLimit?} (a level that shows fewer children reports childCount)
vectorcraft://command/{id}	One command: label, menu path, shortcut, parameter description, enablement
vectorcraft://effect/{id}	One live effect with its parameters and defaults
vectorcraft://swatch/{name}	One swatch, colour, gradient or pattern swatch (percent-encode spaces)

An unknown URI is -32002; a template with no value, or a value that names nothing, is -32602.

The same reads work as query commands through run_command: document.node {id} returns the object's full model JSON (geometry, appearance, every attribute) and document.node {id, summary: true} the compact summary document.inspect gives for it (id, name, kind, bounds, paint labels, children), without summarizing the whole document. A summary read slices a large container: depth is how many child levels it includes (0: the node alone) and childLimit how many children each node shows, top of the stack first (both default to all). A level that shows fewer children than it has reports their total as childCount, so truncation is never silent; with nothing truncated the reply is the plain summary. Both must be non-negative integers and need summary: true (the full object JSON is never truncated); anything else is an error.

On a large document, drill instead of dumping: inspect_document {depth: 0} (or run_command document.inspect {depth?, childLimit?}, same rules) is the skeleton (artboards with top layers and counts), run_command document.find {name?, kind?, text?, limit?} locates nodes across the whole tree, and document.node reads the interesting ones sliced. document.find needs at least one filter and all given filters must match; matching ignores case, name is a substring of the Layers panel name, text a substring of type content and kind the exact panel label (Layer, Group, Clip Group, Path, Compound Path, Type, Image, Rectangle, ...). It answers {matches: [{id, name, kind, path}], total} top of the stack first, where path is the ancestor chain (layer first) and limit caps matches (default 100; 0 only counts). document.json stays whole: it is the fidelity path, not the way to look around.

Completions

completion/complete answers for a prompt argument (ref/prompt) or a template variable (ref/resource), ranked by prefix and then by substring, capped at 100 values with total and hasMore. The values are read from the live catalogues, so they follow the app: formats suggests what the engine writes, preset the Image Trace presets, effect the effect ids, {id} the layer and object ids in the document, {name} its swatch names. An unknown reference comes back empty rather than as an error, since a completion is asked for mid-typing.

Logging

logging/setLevel accepts any RFC 5424 severity — debug, info, notice, warning, error, critical, alert, emergency — and an unknown one is -32602 with the previous level left in place. From then on the engine's own log records arrive as notifications/message with level, logger and data. A null level turns it back off. Nothing is sent before the client asks, and records queued at the old level are dropped rather than replayed at the new one.

Installing the logger that receives those records is vectorcraft-cli's job, not the library's: a crate that installed one would override whatever logger an embedder had already set up. Embedding vectorcraft-mcp directly means calling vectorcraft_mcp::logging::install() yourself if you want log records to reach your client.

Not implemented

Everything below needs the same thing first: the server reads one line at a time and answers it with one reply, so while a tools/call is running it neither reads an incoming line nor writes an outgoing one. Progress and cancellation are therefore both meaningless as they stand, and a subscription could only ever be checked between calls — which is not what a client asking to be told about a change expects.

• resources/subscribe / notifications/resources/updated. It would also have to be honest about whose edits it sees: comparing the undo history's length misses edits made in the app window, which is the main reason to run against a live document. document.inspect's revision is the right signal — it is monotonic and already bumped when a document is replaced — but noticing an edit still means someone asking.
• notifications/progress. It would have to be written before the reply it belongs to, since a progress token stops meaning anything once the request has completed.
• notifications/cancelled. It would have to be read during the call it cancels.
• sampling/createMessage and elicitation/create. Both are server→client requests, blocked by the same one-line-one-reply loop. Supporting them means being able to suspend a tool call mid-flight, which is what the 2026-07-28 revision's input-requests mechanism exists for.
• Streamable HTTP / SSE. stdio only.

completion/complete covers the "what could I pass here" half of the same problem, which is why it is here and subscriptions are not. The fix for the rest is a reader thread (or an event loop) around the transport — a design change rather than a feature, so it is not in this crate yet.

Tools

Coordinates are points in document space: y points down, the origin is the first artboard's top-left, and a new document is 612 × 792 (US Letter). New objects become the selection. Most commands act on the selection or on explicit ids.

Paint values (fill, stroke) accept "#rrggbb", "none", [r,g,b] (0..1), {"c","m","y","k"}, {"gray"}, or a full paint.setFill params object ({"gradient": …}, {"swatch": "name"}). The Fill/Stroke proxy commands run through run_command: paint.invert and paint.complement recolour the active proxy keeping each colour's model, paint.lastColor / paint.lastGradient re-apply the last solid colour or gradient, and paint.recent returns the recent colours that every paint command (and the eyedropper) feeds. paint.proxies returns what the proxies show: the fill and stroke, which one is active, and whether the selected objects' fills or strokes differ (fillMixed / strokeMixed, drawn as a "?" proxy).

Tool	Arguments	Notes
list_commands	{filter?, enabledOnly?}	The command catalogue: id, label, menu, shortcut, params doc, enablement.
run_command	{command, params?}	Runs any command. Use it for everything without a dedicated tool.
inspect_document	{depth?, childLimit?}	Artboards, layer tree (ids, kinds, bounds, paint), selection, history, tool. A type node's fill, stroke and strokeWidth are the paint its characters show (its first run's); fills and strokes of the type object itself come as objectFill, objectStroke and objectStrokeWidth. Paint comes as a label ("#ff0000", "None", "G1 40% (#ff9999)" for a swatch at a tint); paint.proxies gives it as an object.
inspect_ui	{}	UI state. Remote mode only.
select_tool	{tool}	selection, directSelection, pen, rectangle, ellipse, polygon, star, lineSegment, …
pointer_gesture	{events:[{kind,x,y,mods?}], tool?, mods?}	kind is one of down, drag, up, move, doubleclick. Events go through the same path as the mouse.
draw_path	{points | d, closed?, fill?, stroke?, strokeWidth?}	points is [[x,y],…] or [{x,y,in?,out?,smooth?},…]. d is SVG path data.
draw_shape	{shape, …geometry, fill?, stroke?, strokeWidth?}	rectangle/ellipse: x,y,width,height (plus radius for corners). polygon: cx,cy,radius,sides. star: cx,cy,radius1,radius2,points. line: x1,y1,x2,y2.
set_paint	{fill?, stroke?, strokeWidth?, ids?}	Applies to the selection (or ids) and becomes the default for new art.
press_key	{key, mods?}	Remote: a real key event. Headless: runs the command or tool bound to that shortcut, or sends the key to the busy tool (digits too: 5 while dragging with the Perspective Selection tool).
type_text	{text}	Remote only.
invoke_menu	{command, params?}	Invokes a menu item by command id. Includes UI commands such as view.* and window.* in remote mode.
open_panel	{panel}	Remote only. panel is a panel id (layers, swatches, colorGuide, …, as window.panel takes) or its display label ("Color Guide"), in any case.
screenshot	{path?, scale?, artboard?, window?}	Returns MCP image content (image/png, base64) plus a text block. Renders the artboard; window:true captures the app window (remote only).
open_file	{path}	Opens any readable file as a new active document: .vectorcraft/.drawcraft, .vctemplate, .svg/.svgz, .pdf/.ai, .ait, .eps, .dxf, .emf, .wmf, PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, TIFF, BMP (an image opens as a document of its pixel size). Templates (.vctemplate, .ait) open as a new untitled document. PDF, .ai and SVG files saved with Preserve Editing reopen as the document they carry. run_command document.formats lists the formats.
save_file	{path?}	Runs document.save: the document's own file in its own format (native .vectorcraft unless it was opened from or saved as SVG, PDF or a restorable .ai; then warnings say what that format loses). A path's extension picks the format (.vectorcraft, .vctemplate, .pdf, .svg, .svgz, .ai: a PDF carrying the native document, which reopens editable).
export	{path?, format?, scale?, artboard?, range?, selection?, outlineText?, options?}	svg, svgz, pdf, eps, dxf, emf, wmf, png, jpg, webp, gif, png8 (an indexed .png), tiff, bmp, tga, psd (layered), txt (the document's text), vectorcraft or template (a native template). The tool's format enum and document.formats list them, generated from the engine's format table. When format is omitted, it comes from the path's extension. PDF writes one page per artboard: all of them, or artboard (0-based) / range ("1-3, 5", 1-based); the other formats write one artboard. options carries more format options (e.g. {"quality": 80} for JPEG). selection: true exports the selected objects cropped to their bounds (the reply adds their bounds, and reports format and the encoder's warnings as a whole-document export does); outlineText: true writes SVG text as paths. Template layers are left out, live effects are kept, and exporting vectorcraft never changes the document's path. Without path the bytes come back as dataBase64. Both backends run the same document.export call.
add_text	{text, x?, y?, width?, height?, path?, mode?, pathEffect?, size?, font?, color?}	Point type at (x, y); area type with width/height; or path + mode (area/onPath) to flow text in or along a path, with pathEffect (rainbow, skew, 3dRibbon, stairStep, gravity).
apply_effect	{effect?, params?, ids?}	Appends a live effect. Without effect, returns the effect catalogue with parameters and defaults.
pathfinder	{operation, ids?}	unite, minusFront, intersect, exclude, divide, trim, merge, crop, outline, minusBack. For a live version, apply the pathfinder.* effect to a group (effect.apply groups several loose selected objects first).
transform	{ids?, dx?, dy?, rotate?, scale?, scaleX?, scaleY?, reflect?, shear?, origin?, copy?}	Runs move, rotate, scale, reflect, shear in that order. With copy, the first step duplicates.
create_graph	{type?, x, y, width, height, csv? | series?, categories?, rows?}	The nine Illustrator graph types: column, stacked column, bar, stacked bar, line, area, scatter, pie and radar. Edit later with graph.setData / graph.setType via run_command.
text_wrap	{ids?, offset?, invert?, release?}	Area type below the objects (same layer) flows around them.
undo / redo	{}

Appearance stacks: an object can carry several fills and strokes (appearance.addFill, appearance.addStroke), indexed in paint order (0 is painted first, the bottom row of the Appearance panel). paint.setFill, paint.setStroke, stroke.set, stroke.setAdvanced, paint.editGradient, paint.setGradientGeom and transparency.set take item to edit one of them; run_command appearance.setActiveItem {"index": n} makes that row the target of later calls that omit item (as clicking the row in the Appearance panel does) until the selection changes; the proxy of its kind (paint.proxies) and the Gradient tool's annotator then show that row. inspect_document reports it as paint.appearanceItem. Live effects take the same item to apply to one fill or stroke instead of the whole object: run_command effect.apply {"effect": "path.offsetPath", "item": 0}, and effect.remove, effect.setParams (visible toggles one) and effect.duplicate address that item's effects; apply_effect uses the active item. effect.list reports each object's item effects under applied[].items.

Errors (unknown tool, bad arguments, a disabled or failing command) come back as a normal result with isError: true and a message. The model can read the message and retry.

Swatches go through run_command: swatch.list lists every swatch with its colour group, kind and colour; swatch.edit {name, newName?, color?, mode?, global?, spot?} edits one (fills, strokes and text linked to a global or spot swatch follow its colour and name, as one undo step); swatch.delete {names, unlink?} deletes swatches and colour groups in one undo step (art using a deleted global swatch keeps its colour, unlinked). swatch.new {color?, mode?, spot?, global?, group?} saves a colour (into a colour group with group), gradient or pattern; swatch.newGroup {fromArtwork: true, toGlobal?, includeTints?} makes a colour group of the selected art's colours (by default as global swatches the art links to). swatch.move {names, to?, group?} reorders swatches or moves them into or out of a colour group (as dragging them in the Swatches panel does); give colour group names instead to reorder the groups. Dropping a swatch on art in the app runs paint.setFill (or paint.setStroke, the active proxy) with ids: [the object under the pointer]. The Swatches panel menu's commands: swatch.addUsedColors {selection?, global?}, swatch.unused (a query: the names Select All Unused selects), swatch.merge {names} (the first is kept), swatch.ungroup {name} and swatch.sortByKind. Document colour mode: file.new {colorMode: "cmyk"} starts a CMYK document with CMYK default swatches, and RGB colours applied to it (paint.setFill/setStroke colours and gradient stops, swatch.new) are stored as CMYK; Gray stays Gray, and keepModel: true keeps a colour as given. RGB documents keep colours as given. Harmonies, Edit Colors blends, inversions and Recolor Artwork keep each colour's model (a blend between models takes the document's). swatch.new {colors: [...]} saves several colours as swatches in one undo step. color.harmony {color, rule, steps?, variation?, amount?} answers what the Color Guide panel shows: the harmony rule's colours, base first, and per colour its row of 2·steps+1 variations (shades, cool or muted on the left, tints, warm or vivid on the right). With limitTo (a swatch library id or name, or "document" for the document's swatches) every colour snaps to the library's nearest colour (ΔE 2000), as the panel's Limit to Library does (ui.colorGuideLimit); Recolor Artwork's limitTo takes the same values.

Color Themes (local only: no online service) keeps five-colour themes in the preferences. colorTheme.save {colors: [...]} saves up to five colours as they are, colorTheme.save {color, rule} saves the five-colour theme a harmony rule makes from a base colour (base first; name? defaults to "Theme N", replace: "<name>" overwrites that theme in place). colorTheme.list answers {themes: [{name, colors: [hex], keys: [colour keys], rule?}]}, colorTheme.delete {name} removes one and colorTheme.addToSwatches {name} adds one to the Swatches panel as a colour group (one undo step).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"colorTheme.save","params":{"color":"#2266aa","rule":"splitComplementary","name":"Harbor"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"colorTheme.addToSwatches","params":{"name":"Harbor"}}}

SVG Options: export to SVG takes them in options, flat or as {"svg": {…}}: styling (presentation, style, entities, css), outlineText, images (embed, or link: embedded images are written next to the SVG, or returned as linked), objectIds (layerNames, minimal, unique), decimals (1–7), minify, responsive, useArtboards, range: "all" (one SVG per artboard, listed in files), preserveEditing (the SVG reopens as the full document), metadata and fewerTspans (one <tspan> per line of type). Unknown keys inside svg are rejected; run_command document.formats lists every option with its default. encoding is utf8, utf16 (big-endian after a byte order mark) or latin1 (ISO 8859-1, other characters as &#x…; references); document.serialize still answers text, plus dataBase64 (the file) when it isn't UTF-8, and such files open again. profile: "tiny12" writes a simplified SVG Tiny 1.2 (presentation attributes only; filters, masks, blend modes and embedded fonts left out, symbols as art, each with a warning). embedFonts: true embeds the fonts type uses as @font-face rules subset to the characters used; a font whose licence (OS/2 fsType) forbids subsetting is embedded whole, one that forbids embedding is left out with a warning. Type names its faces by numeric font-weight (600 for Semibold, 300 for Light, bold for 700), embedded or not. svgz takes the same options and writes the SVG gzipped (.svgz files also open, place and paste). run_command document.save {path: "x.svg", svg: {…}} saves as SVG (or .svgz).

Symbols export as one <symbol> with a <use> per instance. An instance the def can't stand for is written as its own art: one stained by its fill; one scaled while the symbol has strokes (their weight doesn't scale), or rotated or scaled while it has effects, brushes or live objects; and every instance of a symbol with pattern paints or unlinked opacity masks (those stay on the page). hiddenLayers: true keeps hidden layers as groups that aren't displayed (display:none); document.save keeps them unless told otherwise, exports leave them out, and they reopen as hidden layers. A preserveEditing SVG carries the native document (CDATA in <metadata>) and a hash of the markup around it: if another app changed the SVG since, document.open reads it as plain SVG and says so in warnings.

Saving beyond save_file goes through run_command: file.saveAs {path?, format?, options?, svg?} (the document takes on the new file and format), file.saveCopy (the document keeps its path, title and modified state), file.saveAsTemplate (a .vctemplate that opens untitled; the suggested name and the Templates folder come back without a path), file.newFromTemplate {path}, file.revert and file.formatOptions {format?} (a format's options with the values a save would use). Without a path the save commands return {dataBase64, name, folder?, warnings}. A document saved as SVG or PDF remembers its options, so the next save reuses them. A PDF opened with pages, cropTo or password is only part of the file, so Save asks for a new name instead of writing it back. file.documentColorMode {mode, convert?, intent?, grays?} switches the document colour mode, converting the colours of the art, symbols, pattern tiles and swatches through the colour settings (object.convertDocumentColorMode is an alias kept for older scripts). Gray colours stay Gray and print on the black plate only. RGB greys are colours like any other: to CMYK they separate through the profile into four-colour greys and a rich black, as Illustrator converts them. grays: "black" puts RGB greys with R = G = B on the black plate instead, K = their grey value (the inks Edit Colors › Convert to Grayscale before the switch would give); other colours convert as usual.

SVG import keeps what the canvas edits live. <pattern> becomes a pattern swatch. A <symbol> with <use> becomes a symbol (named after its data-name, else its id) with an instance per <use>; a <use> that shows it differently (paint inherited from the <use>, a viewport that cuts the art) or that the canvas would draw otherwise (a scaled symbol with strokes) stays art. feGaussianBlur, feDropShadow and the usual shadow chains (offset, blur, flood or colour matrix, composite, merge) become Gaussian Blur, Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow and Feather effects; other filters are listed in warnings. Undisplayed objects (display:none) come back hidden, nested clip paths intersect, and reflected or repeated gradients (spreadMethod) are expanded into stops. <image> files (relative links are found in the SVG's folder) stay linked images (see Linked images); SVG files and data: SVGs become art; a file that can't be read becomes a placeholder in its box, named in warnings and missingLinks.

Native files: run_command document.save {compress: true} writes a gzip-compressed .vectorcraft (the useCompression preference makes that the default for saves; compressed files open like any other, told apart by their content). version: 2 or 1 writes a file older VectorCraft versions open (format name drawcraft, never compressed), and preview: true embeds a PNG of the first artboard, at most 256 px on its longer side. A save writes a temporary file and renames it over the old one, so a failed save never damages the file; only the images the document uses are written, and document keys written by a newer version are kept.

Resources

URI	Content
vectorcraft://document	document.inspect summary (JSON)
vectorcraft://document/json	The complete document model (JSON)

Examples

Draw, look, export:

{"name":"draw_shape","arguments":{"shape":"rectangle","x":72,"y":72,"width":200,"height":120,"radius":12,"fill":"#1e88e5","stroke":"none"}}
{"name":"draw_shape","arguments":{"shape":"star","cx":400,"cy":300,"radius1":90,"radius2":40,"points":5,"fill":"#ffc107","stroke":"#000000","strokeWidth":2}}
{"name":"draw_path","arguments":{"d":"M72 400 C 150 300 250 500 330 400","stroke":"#e53935","strokeWidth":4,"fill":"none"}}
{"name":"screenshot","arguments":{"scale":0.5}}
{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/art.svg"}}
{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/art.png","options":{"ppi":144,"background":"white","antiAlias":"type"}}}
{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/icon.png","range":"1-3","options":{"useArtboards":true}}}

Export As goes through options too: for PNG, JPEG and WebP useArtboards: true writes one file per artboard (all, or range), named <file>-<artboard>.<ext>, and returns {path, files} (a PDF keeps them as pages of one file; an SVG writes one file per artboard of a range); useArtboards: false exports the bounds of the visible art.

Raster exports take more options in options: ppi (72, 150, 300…; stored in the file), background (transparent, white, black or "#rrggbb"), antiAlias (none, art, type: text snapped to pixels) and, for PNG, interlaced.

Long-tail commands:

{"name":"list_commands","arguments":{"filter":"align"}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"select.all"}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.align","params":{"align":"left"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.group"}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportPdf","params":{"path":"/tmp/art.pdf","range":"1, 3","compatibility":"1.5"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.pdfSettings","params":{"marks":{"trim":true},"includeDocument":true}}}

PDF files take the Save PDF dialog's options: preset, standard, compatibility, the General toggles and the compression, marks, bleed, output, advanced and security sections (list_commands with filter exportPdf documents every field). document.exportPdf and export (format pdf, the options in options) return warnings: options accepted but not applied yet, and features approximated or left out. A standard with a PDF version it doesn't allow is refused (PDF/A-2b at 1.3 or 2.0, PDF/X-4 above 1.6, PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 above 1.4); choosing a standard without giving compatibility sets its version (PDF 1.3 for PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3). A security password encrypts the file (RC4 40-bit at PDF 1.3, RC4 128-bit at 1.4–1.5, AES-128 at 1.6, AES-256 at 1.7 and 2.0) with its permissions; either password opens it (document.open {password}), and a password with PDF/A or PDF/X is refused. Pattern fills and strokes are written as their tiles clipped to the area they paint (a stroke's outline, with its dashes, caps, profile, arrowheads and alignment), and freeform gradients as an image of their colour field at the document's raster effects resolution, clipped the same way. createLayers writes each top-level layer (template layers are left out) as a PDF layer, an optional content group named as the layer: hidden layers are off, non-printing ones have /PrintState /OFF and locked ones are locked. It needs PDF 1.5 or later (at 1.4 it warns), and the file reopens with those layers. Images follow the compression settings of their kind (color, gray, or mono for black-and-white images): above abovePpi as placed they are resampled (downsample: average, subsample or bicubic) to ppi, and compressed with zip, jpeg (at quality; images with transparency stay lossless) or auto (JPEGs stay JPEG, the others lossless). none, jpeg2000, CCITT and runLength are written as ZIP, with a warning when an image needs them. CMYK images stay CMYK (DeviceCMYK, or ICC-based with the CMYK profile when colours are tagged, as in PDF/X-3 and PDF/X-4): a CMYK JPEG neither resampled nor recompressed is written unchanged, and the others' ink amounts are resampled and compressed again (CMYK JPEG or ZIP). output.conversion converts them like CMYK colours: destination to another CMYK profile or to RGB, preserveNumbers (and PDF/X-1a) keeps their numbers in a CMYK destination. document.pdfSettings lists the options that differ from the preset and the warnings without writing a file. thumbnails: true embeds each page drawn small (106 px on its long side, without the layers the page leaves out) as its /Thumb image. fastWebView: true writes a linearised file (the linearization dictionary first, then the first page with hint tables saying where every other page's objects are), which stays linearised when a password encrypts it. compatibility: "1.3" writes a PDF 1.3 file, which has no transparency: a copy of the document is flattened first with flattenerPreset (empty: High Resolution; high, medium, low or a saved preset, flattener.presets.list) and flattener options over it (as object.flattenTransparency takes them); images with see-through pixels count as transparency and rasterized areas are clipped to their regions. A file that would still have transparency fails the export. PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 files are PDF 1.3 files too.

Opening a PDF (or .ai) imports every page as an artboard and layer; document.open takes pages ("2-3, 5", 1-based), cropTo (bounding (the art's bounds), art, crop (default), trim, bleed, media: the box each artboard gets) and password for an encrypted file. document.pdfInfo reads a file without opening it: the page count, each page's size and boxes, needsPassword, and with thumbnail: n a PNG of page n. Imported colours keep their model: DeviceCMYK and CMYK ICC colours stay CMYK (a file painted mostly in CMYK opens as a CMYK document), DeviceGray is Gray, and Separation and DeviceN inks become spot swatches the art links to at its tint (gradient stops too). CMYK images (DeviceCMYK, or ICC-based with four components) keep their ink amounts: a CMYK JPEG as it is, any other as a CMYK TIFF (masked CMYK images, and ones with 1, 2 or 4 bits per sample, open in RGB with a warning). Placing a CMYK TIFF keeps it CMYK too. colorMode: "rgb" | "cmyk" opens any file in that mode instead, its colours converted as file.documentColorMode does (grays too):

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.pdfInfo","params":{"path":"/tmp/brochure.pdf","thumbnail":2,"cropTo":"trim"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.open","params":{"path":"/tmp/brochure.pdf","pages":"2-3","cropTo":"trim"}}}

PostScript files (.eps, and .ai files saved in older formats or without PDF compatibility) open through the EPS reader (see EPS and PostScript import); an .ai whose PDF part is only a placeholder page says it can't be opened.

What a PDF holds comes in as editable art: soft masks become opacity masks (an alpha mask as a white copy of its art; the backdrop colour gives Clip, an inverting transfer function Invert), transparency groups keep isolation and knockout, tiling patterns become pattern swatches, patch and triangle mesh shadings become gradient meshes, and gradients keep their stop opacity and stop where the shading doesn't extend. Text becomes point type, one object per run of a line in the file's font (by name; fonts that aren't available are listed in warnings and show in the fallback font, and every export that draws that type — PDF, EPS, EMF/WMF, raster images, SVG with outlined or embedded fonts — says in its warnings that it wrote the fallback font) — textAs: "outlines" keeps the glyph outlines the file draws instead (its embedded fonts, installed or not). Strokes stay live strokes (width, cap, join, miter limit, dash and paint), and an object written as a fill and then a stroke of the same outline is one path with both. Optional content groups (the layers of PDF and PDF-compatible .ai files) become layers with their name, visibility (the default configuration's, or a view state that is off), print state and lock, nested as sublayers the way the file's layer order nests them; art that is off comes in as a hidden layer. Art outside them goes to a layer per page (except the opaque white page a .ai paints under its layers, which isn't art). layers: false gives one layer per page of only what shows:

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.open","params":{"path":"/tmp/map.pdf","textAs":"outlines","layers":false}}}

Preserve Editing (preserveEditing, on in the VectorCraft Default preset) embeds the native document in the PDF as an embedded file (vectorcraft-editing.vectorcraft; files named drawcraft-editing.drawcraft are read too) with a hash of the pages it was written with. open_file / document.open of such a PDF, .ai or .ait (no pages picked) restores the document exactly (restored: true); when another app changed the pages, or the data can't be read, the artwork is imported instead and the first warning says why. Choosing a standard turns it off (PDF/A refuses it). Save to a .ai path (document.save {path: "art.ai"} or {format: "ai"}) writes a PDF-compatible file that always carries the document, takes the PDF options and keeps its path when reopened, so Save writes .ai again; a .ait opens untitled.

Drive a tool like a mouse:

{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"ellipse","events":[
  {"kind":"down","x":100,"y":100},{"kind":"drag","x":150,"y":140},{"kind":"up","x":200,"y":180}]}}

Edit a gradient with the Gradient tool's annotator (the bar runs along the vector; stop chips sit 10 px under it, midpoint diamonds 7 px above): a click on the bar adds a stop, dragging a chip moves it (drag it off the bar to delete it, hold Alt to copy it), dragging the end handle changes the vector. The selected stop (gradient.selectStop) takes Delete and ←/→:

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"paint.setFill","params":{"gradient":{"start":[100,150],"end":[200,150]}}}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"gradient","events":[{"kind":"down","x":130,"y":150},{"kind":"up","x":130,"y":150}]}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"events":[{"kind":"down","x":130,"y":160},{"kind":"drag","x":160,"y":160},{"kind":"up","x":160,"y":160}]}}
{"name":"press_key","arguments":{"key":"Delete"}}

A radial gradient's annotator also draws its extent: a dashed ellipse around the centre (the start, drawn as a ring) with a dot on it across the bar (drag it to change the aspect ratio); dragging the ellipse elsewhere rotates it. The dot inside the centre ring is the focal point, where the first stop sits: drag it for an off-centre radial, back onto the centre to centre it. paint.setGradientGeom sets the same things directly (aspect in %, focal in document coordinates or null; start/end may be left out), and they export as SVG fx/fy and PDF two-point radial shadings:

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"paint.setGradientGeom","params":{"aspect":60,"focal":[130,140]}}}

Freeform gradients: paint.editGradient {kind: "freeform"} places four or more colour points inside each selected object (coloured along the stops; mode: "points"|"lines" is the Draw toggle). paint.freeform.get lists the points (document coordinates), lines and the selected point; paint.freeform.addPoint {at, color?, opacity?, spread?, line?}, setPoint {index?, …}, deletePoint {index?}, addLine {points}, splitLine {line, segment, t?} and selectPoint {index|null} edit them (index defaults to the selected point; each edit is one undo step). With the Gradient tool on a freeform gradient a click on a point selects it (drag to move it), a click on a line adds a point on it, a click elsewhere on the art adds a point (in Lines mode joined to the selected one), and Delete removes the selected point:

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"paint.editGradient","params":{"kind":"freeform","mode":"lines"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"paint.freeform.addPoint","params":{"at":[150,150],"color":"#ff3366","spread":20}}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"gradient","events":[{"kind":"down","x":180,"y":170},{"kind":"up","x":180,"y":170}]}}

On the canvas the selected point also shows its spread as a dashed ring with a handle 16 px (or the spread, if larger) to its right: drag the ring or handle to change the spread. Dragging a point out of the object removes it, and double-clicking one opens its popover (dialog gradientStop, which on a freeform gradient edits the selected point: set color, opacity and spread and confirm). In Lines mode successive clicks on the art draw one smooth line through the points they add; a click on an existing point first continues the line from it, and press_key Escape (or a click off the art) ends it:

{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"gradient","events":[{"kind":"down","x":110,"y":190},{"kind":"up","x":110,"y":190},{"kind":"down","x":150,"y":170},{"kind":"up","x":150,"y":170}]}}
{"name":"press_key","arguments":{"key":"Escape"}}

Raw protocol (for debugging):

printf '%s\n' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"sh","version":"0"}}}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notifications/initialized"}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"draw_shape","arguments":{"shape":"ellipse","x":10,"y":10,"width":100,"height":80,"fill":"#ff0000"}}}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"inspect_document","arguments":{}}}' \
  | target/release/vectorcraft-cli mcp --headless

Headless batch CLI

vectorcraft-cli commands                          # command catalogue (JSON)
vectorcraft-cli run --in in.svg \
  --cmd select.all --cmd paint.setFill --params '{"color":"#ff0000"}' \
  --export out.svg --export out.png --scale 2
vectorcraft-cli run --cmd file.new --params '{"width":800,"height":600}' \
  --cmd shape.star --params '{"cx":400,"cy":300,"radius1":200,"radius2":90}' \
  --export star.vectorcraft

run prints one JSON line per step (open, cmd, export) and exits non-zero on the first failure. --params applies to the --cmd just before it. run also accepts the host commands file.open, file.save, file.export, file.exportForScreens and tool.select. run --in, convert and info read every format document.open reads (vectorcraft-cli --help lists them).

Transparency and opacity masks

Transparency and opacity-mask commands take ids (or id), so they need no selection. Opacity is a percentage (0..100) in every command (transparency.set, object.setProps, appearance.setItem). transparency.info returns the Transparency panel's values, with null where the objects differ. Making a mask from one object gives it an empty mask and enters mask editing: art drawn then becomes the mask, and the mask commands act on the masked object until transparency.stopEditingOpacityMask. Saves and exports never include the editing layer.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"transparency.set","params":{"ids":[12],"opacity":40,"blend":"Multiply"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"transparency.makeOpacityMask","params":{"ids":[12,15],"invert":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"transparency.setOpacityMask","params":{"id":12,"clip":false}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"transparency.info","params":{"ids":[12,20]}}}

Knockout Group has three states: transparency.set {knockout: "on"|"off"|"neutral"} (true = on, false = neutral, the default). In a knockout group each child hides what it covers of the children below it; neutral groups pass the enclosing group's setting to their children, off groups never knock out. knockoutShape: true makes the object's opacity and opacity mask scale how much it knocks out. transparency.togglePageKnockoutGroup and transparency.togglePageIsolatedBlending ({value?}) treat the whole page as a knockout or isolated group; they are saved with the document and undoable, and transparency.info reports them. PDF and SVG write knockout groups as soft-masked groups with the same look (the PDF export reports a warning).

Groups are not isolated unless Isolate Blending is on: a blend mode inside a group with opacity, a blend mode, an opacity mask, knockout or a clip reaches the art below the group, on screen and in PDF (a knockout group's elements then composite against the art below it). SVG has no non-isolated groups, so there such groups stay isolated.

transparency.viewOpacityMask {on?, id?} is Alt-clicking the mask thumbnail: the canvas shows only the mask of id (default: the mask being edited, else the first selected masked object) as greyscale coverage (white = opaque) and the mask is edited; called again it shows the artwork, still editing. It is view state of the open document: the canvas (and ui.screenshot) shows it, exports never do, and it ends when mask editing ends.

view.transparencyGrid {on?} (View → Show Transparency Grid; default: toggle) is view state of each open document, like the mask view: the grid shows behind the artboards of the documents that turn it on, on the canvas and in ui.screenshot, never in exports. It returns {on}, isn't undoable and doesn't mark the document changed.

Clipping masks

object.clippingMask.make clips the selected objects by the topmost one, which may be a path, a compound path or a text object (it loses its paint). Compound holes, even-odd fills, glyph outlines and the union of a group's members clip alike on screen, in raster export and in SVG and PDF. object.clippingMask.release turns the clip group into a plain group and keeps the clipping path with whatever paint it has.

A clipping path can be painted after Make (paint.setFill, paint.setStroke, stroke.set with its ids): its fill paints behind the clipped art and its stroke over it, not clipped, on screen and in SVG and PDF.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"select.set","params":{"ids":[12,15]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.clippingMask.make","params":{}}}

layer.clippingMask.toggle {id?} is the Layers panel's clipping mask button: the top object of the layer id (default: the one highlighted layer or group row, else the one selected group, else the current layer) becomes its clipping path (unpainted, moved to the bottom of the layer, so art added later is clipped too); called again it releases the mask. It returns {clip}, and the Layers panel underlines clipping-path names.

Saved selections

Select → Save Selection… keeps the selected objects under a name, in the document: select.save {name?} (default the first free "Selection N"; an existing name is replaced with the current selection; at most 25 per document, names up to 255 characters) → {name}, one undo step. select.savedList lists the names in menu order, and select.recall {name} selects those objects again (ones deleted since are left out) → {count}. Edit Selection… renames and deletes: select.editSaved {name, newName?, delete?}, or several at once as {edits: [{name, newName?, delete?}…]} in one undo step, where every name is the name before the edit and the names must stay unique. In the desktop app the saved selections are listed at the bottom of the Select menu (select.recall1 … select.recall25). A file's saved selections are checked when it opens: past 25, blank or repeated names, and ids the document doesn't have are dropped.

Ruler guides

Ruler guides are numbered in the order they were made. guide.add {vertical, pos, artboard?} makes one (the x of a vertical guide, the y of a horizontal one, in points) → {index}. With artboard (an artboard's index) it is an artboard guide: it runs across that artboard only, moves with it (artboard.move, a pure move in artboard.setProps, artboard.rearrange), is copied with it (artboard.duplicate, artboard.move {copy}) and is deleted with it (artboard.delete); without, a canvas guide runs across the whole canvas. guide.list → [{index, vertical, pos, selected, artboard?}…] (artboard only for artboard guides). guide.select {indexes: [index…], toggle?} selects guides on their own (the art is deselected; toggle adds or removes them) → {selected}. guide.move {index, pos} puts one guide somewhere, guide.move {dx?, dy?, copy?} moves the selected ones (vertical guides by dx, horizontal ones by dy; copy leaves them and selects the moved copies), and guide.remove {index?} deletes one guide or the selected ones → {count}; each is one undo step. With guides selected, edit.clear (Delete) deletes them and object.nudge (the arrow keys) nudges them. View › Guides › Lock Guides (view.guides.lock) deselects them and refuses these commands until unlocked.

The Selection, Direct Selection and Group Selection tools pick a guide within the selection tolerance, over the art (an anchor on it comes first with Direct Selection), and drag the selected guides: mods.alt copies them, mods.shift snaps the dragged guide to the ruler's ticks, and otherwise it snaps to whole pixels, the grid or, with Smart Guides, the edges, centres (so the sides' midpoints) and anchors of the art and of the artboards; with Smart Guides off, View › Snap to Point pulls it onto anchors. In the desktop app a guide dragged out of a ruler snaps the same way and is made where it is released over the canvas (with the Artboard tool, as an artboard guide of the active artboard), a guide dropped off the canvas onto its ruler is deleted, and hidden guides (View › Guides › Hide Guides) can't be picked. An artboard guide is picked, drawn and snapped to across its artboard only.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"guide.add","params":{"vertical":true,"pos":100}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"guide.add","params":{"vertical":false,"pos":200,"artboard":0}}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"selection","events":[{"kind":"down","x":100,"y":50},{"kind":"drag","x":140,"y":50},{"kind":"up","x":140,"y":50}]}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"guide.list","params":{}}}

Graphic styles

A graphic style holds an appearance (fills, strokes, effects) plus opacity, blend mode, isolate and knockout. graphicStyle.new {name?, id?} captures an object (a group without its own fills or strokes lends its topmost object's, type its characters'). graphicStyle.apply {name, ids?} gives the objects the style and links them; add: true adds the style on top of the existing appearance instead. Linked objects stay linked while they keep the style's look: editing their appearance or transparency breaks the link, and graphicStyle.redefine {name?, id?} updates only the objects still linked. graphicStyle.list returns each style with the ids linked to it and the style of the first selected object; select.same.graphicStyle selects an object's fellow users. Styles keep placed gradients relative to the bounds of the object they were made from, and each object a style is applied to gets them at the same place relative to its own bounds.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"graphicStyle.new","params":{"id":12,"name":"Glow"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"graphicStyle.apply","params":{"name":"Glow","ids":[15,20]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"graphicStyle.redefine","params":{"id":12}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"graphicStyle.list","params":{}}}

graphicStyle.merge {names, name?} adds a style stacking the fills, strokes and effects of two or more styles (each on top of the ones before it) with the first one's transparency; graphicStyle.move {name, to} reorders the list (what dragging a style in the panel does). Override Character Color (graphicStyle.setOptions {overrideCharColor}, the preference overrideCharColor, on by default) makes a style applied to type replace its characters' fill and stroke with the style's fills and strokes; off, the characters keep their colour under them.

Editing appearance stacks

effect.move {from, to, fromItem?, toItem?, copy?} reorders an effect or moves it between the object's effects (null) and a fill's or stroke's (an item index), as dragging its row in the Appearance panel does; copy: true copies it (Alt-drag). appearance.duplicateItem {index, to?} / {indices} and appearance.removeItem {index | indices} act on several fills/strokes at once, and appearance.showAllHidden makes every hidden fill, stroke and effect visible again. In remote mode, effect.dialog {effect, index, item} opens an applied effect's dialog prefilled (ui.dialog.confirm runs effect.setParams); see the control protocol for the "already applied" question.

Overprint

Each fill and stroke (and each character's fill and stroke) can overprint: its inks print over the inks below instead of knocking them out. object.setOverprint {fill?, stroke?, item?, ids?} sets it (groups set their contents, type its characters too; item aims at one appearance item) and attributes.info {ids?} reads it back (null where the objects differ). Overprint Preview (view.overprintPreview) and Separations Preview show it; rendering approximates it by multiplying. Older files that listed Overprint Black objects in the document get the flags on load. PDF export writes them with advanced.overprint: "preserve" (the default): each overprinting fill and stroke sets a graphics state with /OP true /op true /OPM 1 (/OPM 0 in PDF/A). With discardWhiteOverprint (document.setup, on by default) white ones knock out instead; "discard" writes none.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.setOverprint","params":{"ids":[12],"stroke":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"attributes.info","params":{"ids":[12]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"view.overprintPreview","params":{"on":true}}}

Edit Colors and Recolor Artwork

edit.colors.invert, edit.colors.toCMYK, edit.colors.toGrayscale, edit.colors.toRGB, edit.colors.saturate, edit.colors.adjustBalance and recolor.apply recolour everything inside the selection (or ids) in one undo step: fills, strokes, text, gradient stops, gradient-mesh points, embedded images (a recoloured copy of the image; linked images are left alone) and the tiles of pattern fills and strokes (a recoloured copy saved as a new pattern swatch, e.g. "Dots 2"; the original pattern is untouched). includeImages: false / includePatterns: false leave images or patterns out. The Blend commands also grade gradient meshes, which keep their shading.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"recolor.colors","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"recolor.apply","params":{"map":{"#ff0000":"#0055ff"},"includeImages":false}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"edit.colors.adjustBalance","params":{"mode":"cmyk","m":-20,"k":10}}}

Recolor Artwork keys colours by identity, not hex: recolor.colors lists each colour's key ("rgb 255 0 0", "cmyk 0 100 100 0", "gray 40", "lab 55 60 -40"; RGB in 0–255 levels, CMYK and Gray in percent), so CMYK, Lab and RGB colours that look alike stay apart, and every colour parameter also accepts a key. recolor.reduce {colors?, method?, preserve?, limitTo?} groups the selection's colours into rows of similar colours (k-means in Lab, weighted by use; tints of a global swatch share its row; White and Black are preserved by default) and returns a map of rows [{from: [keys], to: key}] to edit and pass to recolor.apply {map, method?, limitTo?, group?, groupColors?, rename?}. method says how a row's colours take its new colour: exact, preserveTints (tints of the row's darkest colour stay tints), scaleTints (every colour becomes a tint as light, relative to the darkest), tintsShades (lighter and darker than the row's average become tints and shades) or hueShift (the most saturated colour takes the new colour, the others turn by the same hue). limitTo snaps new colours to a swatch library's nearest colour; recolor.randomize {map, order?, saturationBrightness?, seed?} shuffles or varies new colours; a row with exclude: true keeps its colours. swatch.editGroup {group, colors, rename?} rewrites a colour group in one undo step (art linked to its global swatches follows), and recolor.apply with group recolours the art and rewrites the group together.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"recolor.reduce","params":{"colors":2,"preserve":{"grays":true}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"recolor.apply","params":{"map":[{"from":["cmyk 0 100 100 0","cmyk 0 40 40 0"],"to":"cmyk 100 50 0 0"}],"method":"scaleTints"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"swatch.editGroup","params":{"group":"Brights","colors":["#ff0000","cmyk 0 0 100 0"]}}}

Group, layer and type appearance

Groups and layers carry fills, strokes and effects of their own, as in the reference app: their fills and strokes paint every member's geometry, and their effects apply to the members as one piece (one combined drop shadow; a Transform or Warp moves or bends the whole group). Their Contents row (type: Characters) is a slot in the stack: fills and strokes above it paint over the members (characters), those below under them; new items go above it. appearance.moveItem {"from": "contents", "to": n} puts the row above the bottom n items, and an item move takes contents to say where the row ends up in the same undo step; document.node shows the slot as appearance.contents_index. The appearance.*, effect.* and graphicStyle.apply commands edit the selected objects themselves (a group's own stack; layers through ids) or, with target: "contents", the objects inside the groups and layers. appearance.targetContents selects a group's members (double-clicking the Contents row). SVG and PDF export bake a group's own fills, strokes and geometry effects into paths; its raster effects stay a filter on the whole group in SVG and become an image of the whole group in PDF.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"appearance.addFill","params":{"ids":[7]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"appearance.moveItem","params":{"ids":[7],"from":"contents","to":1}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"effect.apply","params":{"ids":[2],"effect":"stylize.dropShadow"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"appearance.addStroke","params":{"ids":[7],"target":"contents"}}}

Swatch libraries

Swatch libraries are read-only sets of swatches computed in code (Web Safe 216, Grays and Neutrals, Earth Tones, Skin Tone Ramps, Pastels, Brights, Metallic Gradients, Perceptual Scales, Harmony Sets). swatch.library.list lists them (id, name, category, count) and swatch.library.get {library} returns one's swatches and colour groups in the swatch.list shape (library is an id or a name). swatch.library.add {library, names?} copies swatches into the document as one undo step: a colour group's name brings the whole group, a swatch's name the swatch alone, no names the whole library; swatches the document already has (same name and paint) are reported under existing and not added again. apply: "fill"|"stroke" also applies the first one, in the same undo step (what clicking a swatch in the library panel does). swatch.resetDefaults {replace?} brings back the missing default swatches.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"swatch.library.get","params":{"library":"earth-tones"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"swatch.library.add","params":{"library":"earth-tones","names":["Clay"]}}}

swatch.library.save {path?, format?: "vcswatches"|"gpl"|"css", names?, name?, user?} writes the document's swatches as a library (.vcswatches keeps colour models, global, spot, gradients and colour groups; .gpl is 8-bit RGB; CSS writes custom properties); without path it returns {data}, and user: true saves into the user library folder of the desktop app (listed as category user, User Defined). swatch.library.load {path? | data? | dataBase64?, name?} loads a .vcswatches or .gpl file, or another document's swatches, as a library to add from.

Graphic style libraries

Graphic style libraries are read-only sets of graphic styles generated in code (Shadows and Glows, Outlines and Rules, Hand-Drawn, Gradient Finishes, Shape Effects, Blends and Transparency). graphicStyle.libraries lists them (id, name, category: builtIn, user or loaded, count) and graphicStyle.library {library} returns one's styles in the graphicStyle.list shape (library is an id or a name). graphicStyle.addFromLibrary {library, name? | names?} copies styles into the document's Graphic Styles as one undo step (no names: the whole library); styles the document already has (same name and look) are reported under existing, a name another look has gets a number, and the patterns the styles paint with come along. apply: true also applies the first one to ids or the selection (add: true adds its appearance on top instead), in the same undo step: what clicking a style in the library panel does. Library styles keep placed gradients in unit-box space, so each object gets them at the same place relative to its bounds.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"graphicStyle.library","params":{"library":"hand-drawn"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"graphicStyle.addFromLibrary","params":{"library":"hand-drawn","name":"Crosshatch","apply":true}}}

graphicStyle.saveLibrary {path?, names?, name?, user?} writes the document's styles as a .vcstyles library (JSON: the styles unlinked from swatches, with their opacity, blend mode, isolate and knockout, and the patterns they paint with); without path it returns {data}, and user: true saves into the user library folder of the desktop app (category user, User Defined). graphicStyle.loadLibrary {path? | data? | dataBase64?, name?} loads a .vcstyles file, or another document's graphic styles, as a library to add from.

Strokes on type

stroke.set without an item gives type its characters' stroke: weight, cap, join, miter limit and the dash options go to every run (the object keeps no stroke of its own); an item still edits an object-level stroke added with appearance.addStroke, which takes every stroke option (dashes, profile, opacity, blend) like a path's and paints under or over the characters as its place relative to the Characters row says. To stroke some characters, use text.setRangeStyle {id, start, end, strokeOptions: {weight?, cap?, join?, miterLimit?, dash?, dashOffset?, alignDashes?}}. inspect_document reports each object's stroke as strokeOptions (type: its first run's) in stroke.set terms. stroke.set on a group leaves the images and symbol instances in it alone.

Flatten Transparency

object.flattenTransparency {ids?, preset?, …options} turns transparent art into opaque art that looks the same, in one undo step. The targets split into groups of overlapping objects; groups without transparency stay as they are. Each other group becomes one group of atomic regions: paths filled with the flat colour the art showed there (over white; over nothing, keeping alpha, with preserveAlpha: true), plus one image where gradients, patterns, images, opacity masks or raster effects reach (clipped to those regions with clipComplexRegions, a rectangle without). preset is high, medium (the default) or low; option keys (balance 0–100, lineArtPpi, gradientPpi, textToOutlines, strokesToOutlines, clipComplexRegions, antiAlias, preserveAlpha, preserveOverprints) override it, at the top level or in options. balance: 0 rasterizes everything; lower balances rasterize groups that split into many regions. The result reports {ids, vector, rasterized, options}.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.flattenTransparency","params":{"ids":[12,15],"preset":"high"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.flattenTransparency","params":{"balance":0,"lineArtPpi":150}}}

Pattern editing display

In pattern editing mode the tile edge (pattern.options {showTileEdge}) and the swatch bounds (pattern.options {showSwatchBounds}: the part of the tiling the swatch repeats, dashed) are drawn in the preference patternTileEdgeColor.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"pattern.options","params":{"showSwatchBounds":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"prefs.set","params":{"key":"patternTileEdgeColor","value":"#ff4f4f"}}}

The Eyedropper: appearance.copyFrom {source} copies what the Eyedropper Options pick up and apply from source to the selection (ids); reverse: true copies the selection's attributes onto source (Alt-click) and append: true adds the source's fills and strokes on top of each target's stack (Shift+Alt-click). The options live in the preferences: eyedropper.setOptions {sampleSize?, pickUp?, apply?} (or prefs.get/prefs.set with key eyedropper) reads and sets them; a tree names flags under appearance (transparency, fill {color, transparency, overprint}, stroke {color, transparency, overprint, weight, cap, join, miter, dash}), character and paragraph, and a bool for a branch sets all of it. paint.sampleColor {color} puts a sampled colour (in its own model) into the active proxy.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"eyedropper.setOptions","params":{"pickUp":{"appearance":{"stroke":{"weight":false}}}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"appearance.copyFrom","params":{"source":12,"ids":[7,8]}}}

The Layers panel: rows, layers and sublayers

Every layer, sublayer, group and object is a row of the Layers panel. Sublayers are layers inside layers: they are not objects, so clicking or marquee-selecting art in a sublayer, Select All and the other Select commands take the art itself, and each sublayer has its own colour for the selection highlight. document.inspect lists the tree (layers report color, template, printable, preview, dimImages and clip), the currentLayer (where new art goes) and layerRows, the rows highlighted in the panel.

• Clicking rows (not undo steps): layer.setCurrent {id} is a plain click on any row: it alone is highlighted and its layer (the row itself when it is a layer or sublayer) becomes current. layer.highlight {ids, mode?: set|add|toggle} is Shift-click (a range) and Ctrl/Cmd-click (toggle). Selecting art makes its layer current. Without ids, the panel commands below act on the highlighted rows, else on the current layer.
• Selection column: layer.selectAll {id, add?} selects a row's visible, unlocked art (a layer's sublayers' too); add (Shift) adds it, or removes it when it's all selected.
• Eye and lock: layer.setProps {ids?, visible?, locked?, name?} for any rows, plus Layer Options for layers: template (also locks the layer and dims its images to 50% unless given), printable, preview (off: the layer draws and is clicked in outline, Ctrl/Cmd-click its eye), dimImages (0–100, or false) and color (an index 0–26, #rrggbb or a preset name). Several rows change in one undo step (a drag down the eye or lock column).
• Dragging rows: layer.move {ids, target, place?: above|below|inside, copy?} moves rows beside a row or into a layer or group (on top of its contents), keeping their stacking order; copy (Alt-drag) moves copies. Layers go only in layers or at the top level and objects in layers and groups (an object placed beside a top-level layer goes inside it); a row never goes into itself or a row inside it, and a locked layer or group takes nothing. Dragging the selected-art square is layer.move with the selected objects. node.move {id, parent?, index} is the low-level form with the same rules.
• Buttons: layer.new {name?, top?, …options} (above the current layer at its level; top with Ctrl/Cmd), layer.newSublayer {parent?, name?, …options} (on top of the parent's contents), layer.delete {ids?} (rows with what they hold; the last layer stays), layer.locate {id?} (highlights the selected object's row; the panel opens the rows around it) and layer.clippingMask.toggle.
• Panel menu: layer.duplicate {ids?}, layer.merge {ids?} (into the layer highlighted last, keeping the stacking order), layer.flatten {id?} (every other visible layer's art into one layer; hidden layers are deleted, templates stay), layer.collectInNew {ids?}, layer.releaseToLayers {id?, build?} and layer.releaseToLayersBuild (each object of a layer or group in a sublayer of its own; Build adds up copies), layer.reverse {ids?}, layer.template {ids?, on?}, layer.hideOthers / layer.showAll, layer.outlineOthers / layer.previewAll, layer.lockOthers / layer.unlockAll (Alt-clicking an eye or a lock runs Hide or Lock Others for the row's layer, or Show or Unlock All when the others already are), layer.pasteRemembersLayers, object.isolate {id} / object.exitIsolation.
• Dialogs and panel state (control channel and the app's MCP): ui.layerOptions {ids?} and ui.newLayer {sublayer?} open Layer Options (dialog layerOptions: name, color, template, locked, visible, printable, preview, dimImages, dimPercent; OK is one undo step), ui.layersPanelOptions opens Panel Options (layersPanelOptions: layersOnly, rowSize small|medium|large|other, otherSize, thumbLayers, thumbGroups, thumbObjects), and ui.layersExpand {ids?, open?} opens or closes rows as their triangles do (Alt-click: everything inside).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"layer.newSublayer","params":{"name":"Shadows"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"layer.move","params":{"ids":[12,15],"target":7,"place":"inside"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"layer.setProps","params":{"ids":[7],"preview":false,"color":"Orange"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"layer.highlight","params":{"ids":[3,7]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"layer.merge","params":{}}}

Targeting layers and moving appearances

layer.target {id} is the Layers panel's target circle: a layer gets its visible, unlocked art (its sublayers' too) selected and is itself the target, so appearance.*, effect.*, transparency.* and the opacity-mask commands without ids act on the layer (its opacity, its own fills and effects, an opacity mask on the whole layer); a group or object is simply selected. document.inspect reports it as target, and any other selection change ends it. appearance.transfer {source, target, copy?} is dragging a target circle onto another: the target gets the source's fills, strokes, effects and transparency, and the source is cleared unless copy (Alt-drag). Dropping a circle on the panel's trash is appearance.clear {ids: [id]}. Masked objects' names have a dashed underline; while an opacity mask is edited the panel lists only an <Opacity Mask> entry and the document tab says (<Opacity Mask>/Opacity Mask).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"layer.target","params":{"id":2}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"transparency.set","params":{"opacity":50}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"appearance.transfer","params":{"source":12,"target":2,"copy":true}}}

Expand Appearance

effect.expandAppearance {ids?, target?} (Object → Expand Appearance, enabled when a selected or targeted object's appearance isn't basic) turns appearances into plain objects in one undo step: each visible fill becomes a copy of the path painted by that fill alone and each stroke its outline filled with its paint (a brushed stroke: its brush art), grouped in paint order under the object's id; each piece takes its fill's or stroke's opacity and blend mode, and the group keeps the object's transparency and opacity mask. Geometry effects are baked; raster effects become an embedded image at the document's raster effects resolution (shadows and outer glows under the art; a blur, feather or inner glow replaces the object with the image). Type with effects or fills and strokes of its own is outlined. A group's or layer's own fills and strokes become objects among its members, and its members are expanded too.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"effect.expandAppearance","params":{"ids":[12]}}}

Tints of global and spot colours

A colour linked to a global or spot swatch has a tint (the reference app's T slider): paint.setFill {swatch, tint?: 0..100} (and paint.setStroke) applies the swatch at that percentage, linked, so swatch.edit recolours it at its own tint. paint.proxies shows the paint as {type: "solid", color, swatch, tint} (tint 0..1, left out at 100 %); document.inspect reports it as a label, the swatch name, the tint below 100 % and the colour it gives ("G1 40% (#ff9999)", "G1 (#ff0000)"). swatch.new {tint?} with the current fill (or swatch) saves a tint swatch, "Name 40%": swatch.list reports it with tintOf and tint, applying it links to its base at that tint, and it follows edits of its base. A spot tint prints that percentage of its plate (Separations Preview, PDF Separation value). edit.colors.adjustBalance {tint: -100..100} (Global mode) shifts the tints of the selection's linked colours and leaves the rest alone.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"paint.setFill","params":{"swatch":"Ink","tint":40}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"edit.colors.adjustBalance","params":{"mode":"global","tint":-20}}}

Linked gradient stops

Applying a gradient swatch (paint.setFill {swatch}) records it as the gradient's swatch (the Swatches panel highlights it; new stops drop the link). A gradient stop can link to a global or spot swatch like a solid colour: give it swatch (and tint %, default 100 or a tint swatch's own) instead of color in paint.editGradient {stops} or a gradient paint's stops. Editing or deleting the swatch then recolours or unlinks the stop, in art and in gradient swatches. A spot stop separates on its plate; a gradient whose stops are all tints of one spot ink (or paper white, 0 %) exports to PDF as a Separation shading (the writer has no DeviceN, so a gradient mixing a spot ink with other colours is written in process colours, with a warning).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"paint.editGradient","params":{"stops":[{"offset":0,"swatch":"Ink"},{"offset":1,"swatch":"Ink","tint":20}]}}}

Transparency flattener presets

flattener.presets.list lists the built-in presets (High, Medium and Low Resolution, builtIn: true) and the saved ones, each with its options. flattener.presets.save {name?, newName?, preset?, …options} creates or changes a saved preset (a change starts from the preset's own options; newName renames it; built-in presets can't change); flattener.presets.delete {name} deletes one. flattener.presets.export {names?, path?} writes them as a .vcflattener JSON file (without path it returns data), and flattener.presets.import {path? | data? | dataBase64?, replace?} adds a file's presets (names in use get a number unless replace). Saved presets live with the preferences and work as preset in object.flattenTransparency (and anywhere else flattener options are taken).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"flattener.presets.save","params":{"name":"Press","preset":"high","balance":60}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.flattenTransparency","params":{"preset":"Press"}}}

Flattener Preview

flattener.preview {highlight?, overprints?, preset?, …options, ids?} reports what flattening the document (or ids) would do without changing it: counts of transparent objects, all affected objects, patterns, outlined strokes and type, rasterized complex regions (areas the raster/vector balance rasterizes whole), all rasterized areas and flat-colour regions, plus regions (bounds, and id for objects) for the highlight asked for. overprints: "discard" or "simulate" flatten without preserving overprints.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"flattener.preview","params":{"highlight":"allRasterized","preset":"low"}}}

Width profiles

The Profile list holds the built-in variable-width profiles (uniform, lens, taperStart, taperEnd, pinch, teardrop, wave) and profiles saved from strokes; saved ones are kept with the preferences, not in the document (no undo step). stroke.widthProfile.list returns every row (id, label, builtIn, points as [t, left, right]) and current, the selected stroke's profile ("custom" when it isn't listed). stroke.widthProfile.add {name?} saves the selected stroke's variable width (default name "Width Profile N"), stroke.widthProfile.delete {name?} removes a saved one (default: the selected stroke's; built-ins can't be deleted) and stroke.widthProfile.reset removes every saved one. stroke.set {profile} takes a built-in id or a saved name.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"stroke.widthProfile.add","params":{"name":"Ribbon"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"stroke.set","params":{"ids":[9],"profile":"Ribbon"}}}

Arrowheads

stroke.set {startArrow, endArrow} takes any of 40 generated heads by name (the params doc lists them; null for none): arrows (Arrow, Barbed, Concave, DoubleArrow, HalfArrowLeft/Right, Chevron, Feather, Swallowtail…), filled and open shapes (Triangle, Circle, Oval, Target, Tag, Diamond, Hexagon, Star, the …Open rings…) and marks (Bar, DoubleBar, DotOnBar, Slash, DoubleSlash, Bracket, Fork, Cross, Plus). Each head fits a box about four times its weight (stroke weight × arrowScale) long and wide.

Stroke bounds and clicks

Visual bounds (Fit to Selected Art, Rasterize, exporting all art) and clicks on the canvas take in the whole stroke as drawn: arrowheads, inside/outside alignment (an outside stroke is hit outside the path, an inside one inside it), the width profile's width where you click, projecting caps and miter spikes up to the miter limit. A rectangle's right-angle miters stay within half the weight of its edges.

Expand

object.expand {object?, fill?, stroke?, gradient?, steps?} (Object → Expand…) turns the selection into plain art in one undo step. object (on by default) outlines type, turns live shapes into paths and bakes effects; stroke (on) outlines strokes into filled paths; fill (on) expands gradient fills: with gradient: "objects" (the default) into steps (1–1000, default 255) solid objects (rectangles across a linear gradient, each from its band to the far end so no seams show; concentric ellipses for a radial one, largest first; just the bands when stops are translucent), with gradient: "mesh" into a gradient mesh that paints the gradient (columns or rings where its colour changes, sharp at coincident stops), each inside a clip group shaped like the object. A freeform gradient becomes a mesh shaped like the object either way. Expanded colours keep the colour model their stops share. With fill: false gradient fills stay live. object.expand.info answers which options have something to expand in the selection ({object, fill, stroke}), and object.mesh.create on a gradient-filled object colours the mesh points as the gradient paints them.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.expand","params":{"stroke":false,"gradient":"mesh"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.expand","params":{"steps":16}}}

Lab spot colours

Colours can be CIE Lab (D50): give {"l": 55, "a": 60, "b": 40} (L 0–100, a and b about −128–127) wherever a colour is taken; documents store them as {"model": "lab", …}. swatch.new {color, spot: true} or swatch.edit {name, mode: "lab"} defines a spot colour in Lab (Swatch Options' Lab mode). swatch.spotOptions {useLab} sets the document's Spot Colors options: with true (the default) Lab spot colours show and print from their Lab values and PDF export writes their Separation spaces with a Lab alternate; with false art linked to them takes their working-CMYK equivalents and PDF uses a DeviceCMYK alternate. Without useLab it answers the current setting.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"swatch.new","params":{"name":"Lab Ink","color":{"l":55,"a":60,"b":40},"spot":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"swatch.spotOptions","params":{"useLab":false}}}

Attributes, URLs and image maps

The Attributes panel (window.panel {panel: "attributes"}, Cmd+F11) reads attributes.info {ids?}: overprintFill, overprintStroke, showCenter, imageMap, url, note, fillRule and reversed (null where the objects differ) and recentUrls. attributes.set {overprintFill?, overprintStroke?, showCenter?, imageMap?, url?, note?, ids?} sets them in one undo step; path.setFillRule {rule: "nonZero"|"evenOdd"} sets the fill rule of the paths and compound paths, and path.reverse {reversed?} makes subpaths run counter-clockwise (true) or clockwise (false). SVG export wraps an object with a URL in <a xlink:href>, and SVG import reads <a href> links back.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"attributes.set","params":{"ids":[12],"url":"https://example.com","imageMap":"rectangle"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"path.setFillRule","params":{"rule":"evenOdd"}}}

Removing anchor points

path.removeAnchors {} (Object › Path › Remove Anchor Points) removes the direct-selected anchors (select.anchors {id, anchors: [[subpath, anchor]…], mode?}) without opening their paths, in one undo step, and answers {removedObjects} (paths left with no segment go). Each removed point's neighbours keep their handle directions and their facing handles are refitted so one cubic follows the two old segments; two straight sides become one. path.removeAnchor {id, subpath?, anchor} (the Delete Anchor Point tool) removes one anchor the same way, and path.deleteAnchors {} (the Delete key) deletes the selected anchors with their segments, opening closed paths there.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"select.anchors","params":{"id":12,"anchors":[[0,1],[0,3]]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"path.removeAnchors","params":{}}}

Registration and trim marks

Every document has the built-in [Registration] swatch (listed after None by swatch.list): a colour that prints on every plate, process and spot. paint.setStroke {swatch: "[Registration]"} applies it; it can't be edited, moved, duplicated, merged or deleted. Separations Preview shows it on each plate and PDF export writes it as /Separation /All. object.createTrimMarks {style?, allArtboards?} draws trim marks in Registration around the selection, or around every artboard when nothing is selected; effect.apply {effect: "cropMarks"} adds live crop marks that follow the object. Both use Japanese marks (double lines at the trim and bleed edges, centre marks) when the preference japaneseCropMarks is on or style: "japanese" is given.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"prefs.set","params":{"key":"japaneseCropMarks","value":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.createTrimMarks","params":{}}}

PDF export draws printer's marks and bleed itself (the Save PDF dialog's Marks and Bleeds section): document.exportPdf {marks: {trim, registration, colorBars, pageInfo, kind, weight, offset}, bleed: {useDocument, top, bottom, left, right}}. Each page's TrimBox is its artboard, its BleedBox the artboard grown by the bleed (the document's with useDocument, set by document.setup {bleed}; the art there is kept) and its MediaBox the bleed box grown to hold the marks (the art is clipped to the bleed box). Trim marks, registration targets and the page information (title, artboard, export date in UTC) are drawn in Registration (/Separation /All) outside the bleed; the colour bars are process, spot and black-tint patches. Layers whose Print option is off (layer.setProps {printable: false}) are left out unless includeNonPrinting (or createLayers) is on.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportPdf","params":{"path":"/tmp/press.pdf","preset":"Press Quality","marks":{"trim":true,"registration":true,"colorBars":true,"pageInfo":true}}}}

The Output and Advanced sections convert colours and write real text. output: {conversion, destination} converts every colour into the destination profile's model (destination; CMYK of another profile too) or only the colours of the other model (preserveNumbers: colours already in it keep their numbers); grey stays grey, images are converted too and printer's marks are not. The destination is any profile edit.colorSettings lists (default: the document's for its colour mode). profiles (all, destination, or taggedSource for a document assigned profiles with edit.assignProfile) writes colours in ICC-based spaces with their profiles embedded: CMYK with the destination's or the document's CMYK profile, RGB as sRGB, grey with the sRGB tone curve. outputIntent embeds a profile as the file's /GTS_PDFX output intent with outputCondition, outputConditionId and registry, and trapped sets /Trapped (PDF/A files keep their own output intent). advanced: {outlineText: false} writes type as selectable, searchable text in embedded subset fonts with a ToUnicode map; fonts whose licence forbids embedding stay outlines, with a warning.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportPdf","params":{"path":"/tmp/press.pdf","output":{"conversion":"preserveNumbers","destination":"VectorCraft Generic CMYK (SWOP-like)","profiles":"destination","outputIntent":"VectorCraft Generic CMYK (SWOP-like)","trapped":true},"advanced":{"outlineText":false}}}}

Scale Strokes & Effects

object.scale, object.transform and object.transformEach take strokes?: bool (Scale Strokes & Effects) and corners?: bool (Scale Corners); without them the preferences scaleStrokes and scaleCorners (both off by default) apply (prefs.set {key, value}). With strokes on, a scale by k (the square root of the transform's determinant) multiplies stroke weights, dash lengths and dash offsets, and every distance parameter of the object's, its fills' and its strokes' effects (drop shadow offsets and blur, offsets, radii…; effect.list gives each effect's lengths; relative Roughen, Tweak and Zig Zag sizes stay percentages), in groups and layers too. With it off, nothing painted changes size, and type keeps its character strokes' weight. With Scale Corners off, live corner radii keep their size. The journal entry of a scaling command records the strokes and corners it used, so actions replay alike.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.scale","params":{"sx":200,"strokes":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.transformEach","params":{"scaleH":50,"scaleV":50,"strokes":false}}}

Live Corners

object.setLiveShape {id?, ids?, radius?, kind?, corners?} sets the corners of live rectangles (one undo step): radius (pt) and kind (round, invertedRound or chamfer) go to the corners given (0 top-left, 1 top-right, 2 bottom-right, 3 bottom-left), else to the corners holding a Direct-Selected anchor (select.anchors), else to all four. Each corner keeps its own radius and kind (the shape's live in queries has radii and, when a corner isn't round, kinds); a corner with no radius is one anchor, a cut one two, and Direct-Selected corners stay selected as that changes. Every corner is a circular arc, whatever the rectangle's proportions: a radius past half the shorter side draws at half of it (the same limit for every corner), and a rectangle from a file that kept an uneven scale in its transform (elliptical corners) gets circular ones in document units when its corners are next set. With the Selection or Direct Selection tool, dragging a corner widget rounds the corners whose widgets show (all four, or the Direct-Selected ones), outlining them in red once they reach that limit; Alt-clicking one cycles their kind and double-clicking one opens Corners (ui.corners {id?, corners?}, dialog corners: kind, radius; OK runs object.setLiveShape).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.setLiveShape","params":{"id":12,"corners":[1],"radius":16}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.setLiveShape","params":{"id":12,"corners":[0,3],"radius":8,"kind":"chamfer"}}}

Use Preview Bounds

With the preference usePreviewBounds on (prefs.set {key: "usePreviewBounds", value: true}; also the Align panel flyout's Use Preview Bounds), the Transform panel's and Control bar's X, Y, W and H, the bounding box, and object.align, object.distribute and object.distributeSpacing measure visual bounds, which take in the whole stroke (see Stroke bounds and clicks); off, they measure the paths. The three Align commands also take bounds: "preview"|"geometric" for one call. object.setBounds then sets the visual box: with Scale Strokes & Effects off a 100 pt wide rectangle with a 10 pt stroke set to width: 220 gets a 210 pt path.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.align","params":{"horizontal":"left","bounds":"preview"}}}

Selection preferences

The Selection & Anchor Display and General preferences apply to pointer_gesture as they do to the mouse:

• selectionTolerance (1–8 px, 3 by default): how near a click must be to a path to pick it, and to an anchor or handle for Direct Selection.
• objectSelectionByPathOnly: a click inside a filled path or compound path doesn't select it, one on its path does.
• ctrlClickSelectsBehind (on by default): a Selection tool click with mods: {cmd: true} (Command on macOS, Ctrl elsewhere) selects the object under the selected one there, the next such click the one under that, then the topmost again. Cmd held to borrow the selection tool from another tool clicks as usual.
• doubleClickToIsolate (on by default): off, a doubleclick on a group with the Selection tool no longer isolates it.
• usePreciseCursors: the Pen, Eyedropper, Slice and Blend tools' pointers are a crosshair.
• snapToPointTolerance (1–8 px, 2 by default): with View › Snap to Point on and Smart Guides off (desktop app), the point a selection is dragged by, a drawn point and a transform tool's reference point land on an anchor or a ruler guide that near.
• moveLockedWithArtboard: artboard.move {moveArt: true}, the Artboard tool and artboard.rearrange move locked and hidden art with the artboard too; off (the default) it stays where it is.
• penRubberBand, curvatureRubberBand (on by default): off, the Pen and Curvature tools draw no preview segment to the pointer.
• showHandlesMultipleAnchors (on by default): off, Direct Selection shows and drags direction handles only while a single anchor is selected. handleStyle (solid, hollow, large) draws their ends (desktop app).
• hideCornerWidgetAbove (177° by default): corners wider than this show no Live Corners widget (a rectangle's right angles hide below 90°).
• transformPatternTiles (off by default): the default of the transforms' patterns param (object.transform, object.move, object.rotate, object.scale, object.reflect, object.shear, object.transformEach, the Selection and transform tools, the dialogs' Transform Patterns): pattern fills and strokes move with the art.
• selectSameTintPercent (off by default): select.same.fillColor, strokeColor and fillAndStroke take every tint of a global or spot swatch; on, only the same tint.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"prefs.set","params":{"key":"objectSelectionByPathOnly","value":true}}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"selection","mods":{"cmd":true},"events":[{"kind":"down","x":175,"y":125},{"kind":"up","x":175,"y":125}]}}

The preferences for the view need the desktop app (vectorcraft-cli mcp --connect): zoomWithMouseWheel (the wheel zooms about the pointer, Shift-wheel scrolls up and down, Cmd/Ctrl-wheel sideways; the control channel's ui.wheel turns the wheel), zoomToSelection (on: Zoom In and Zoom Out centre the selection), showToolTips, anchorSize (1–7), gridColor, gridStyle, gridsInBack, guideColor, guideStyle, recentFontsCount and scrubNumericFields (on: a horizontal drag on a numeric field's label steps the field, one undo step per drag; the control channel's ui.drag scrubs).

The Smart Guides preferences (Preferences › Smart Guides) apply to pointer_gesture with Smart Guides on (the default view) and to the mouse; they change what the tools show and how far a target pulls, never where a snapped point lands:

• smartGuideColor (#ff3dfc by default): the colour of the smart guides' lines and labels.
• alignmentGuides (on by default): off, no line is drawn along the edge or centre the art lines up with; the art still snaps into line.
• anchorPathLabels (on by default): off, no "anchor", "center", "path" or "align" label.
• measurementLabels (on by default): off, no size or offset readout while drawing, moving, dragging a ruler guide or drawing and resizing an artboard.
• transformToolsGuides (on by default): off, no readout while scaling or rotating with the Selection tool, the Free Transform tool or the Rotate, Scale, Shear and Reflect tools.
• objectHighlighting (on by default; desktop app): off, the Selection tools no longer outline the object under the pointer. The outline also needs View › Smart Guides on.
• snappingTolerance (0–40 px, 4 by default): how near an anchor, edge, centre or artboard edge pulls a drawn point, a dragged selection, a bounding-box handle, a ruler guide or an artboard. With Smart Guides off, Snap to Point uses snapToPointTolerance instead.

Not read yet: Construction Guides and their Angles, and Spacing Guides (the tools draw neither).

Type preferences

• placeholderText (on by default): type the Type tools place (pointer_gesture with type, areaType…) starts with placeholder text, selected, so type_text replaces it; text.create and text.createInPath take placeholder: true.
• typeSizeIncrement, trackingIncrement, baselineShiftIncrement: what type.step {attribute: "size" | "leading" | "tracking" | "kerning" | "baselineShift", by?} steps by, on the text range given, the Type tool's selected text or the selected type objects. type.size.increase / type.size.decrease (Cmd+Shift+. and Cmd+Shift+,) step the size; the Type tool's Alt+arrows (press_key {key: "Right", mods: {alt: true}}) step kerning at a caret or tracking of the selection (←/→), leading (↑/↓) and baseline shift (Shift+↑/↓), five steps with Cmd/Ctrl too.
• missingGlyphProtection (on by default): text.setStyle and text.setRangeStyle changing the font leave the characters the new font has no glyph for in the font that had one.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"prefs.set","params":{"values":{"typeSizeIncrement":4,"trackingIncrement":50}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"type.step","params":{"attribute":"tracking","by":-2}}}

Width points

stroke.widthPoint.set {id, t, left, right, index?, adjustAdjoining?} adds a width point (side widths in points) or, with index, edits or moves one; adjustAdjoining changes the nearest points either side in proportion. Moving a point onto another one's t (or stroke.widthPoint.copy {id, index, t} landing there) makes a discontinuous point: two points at the same t (the width before it, then after it), and the stroke's width steps there. document.inspect reports a path's strokeOptions.widthPoints ([t, left, right], factors of half the weight; null for a uniform stroke). stroke.widthPoint.remove {id, index | indices} deletes points; stroke.widthProfile.set {ids, points} replaces them all, as dragging several Shift-selected points with the Width tool does in one undo step. With the Width tool, press_key Delete or Backspace removes the selected width points (handledBy: "tool"); with none selected the key clears the selected objects as usual (edit.clear). The Puppet Warp tool's selected pins go the same way. A compound path's stroke is the compound's: width point commands given one of its members edit the compound's profile, which runs along every subpath (the Width tool shows each subpath's points).

object.puppetWarp {ids?, pins, moved, angles?, expand?} warps art as rigidly as possible so that each pin (a point on the art) lands on its moved point. angles (degrees, or null for a free pin; as long as pins) holds the turn the art takes around a pin, as Alt-dragging near a selected pin with the Puppet Warp tool does: one pin with angles: [90] turns the art a quarter turn around it.

The Puppet Warp tool's pins live in the document while the same art stays selected (never saved; Undo and Redo take them back with the art). object.puppetWarp.pins {ids?} reads them: pins (where each sits on the shape the pins started from), moved (where it is now), angles, and auto: true while none was placed (the tool's automatic pins: the centre and the end of each limb). Edit moved, angles or the lists and pass the result back to object.puppetWarp: with rest: true the warp always starts from that rest shape, so warps don't stack and putting a pin back restores the original; every pin must be on the art's mesh, and empty lists remove the pins.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.puppetWarp.pins","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.puppetWarp","params":{"rest":true,"pins":[[250,150],[110,150],[390,150]],"moved":[[250,150],[110,150],[390,90]],"angles":[null,null,null]}}}

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"stroke.widthPoint.set","params":{"id":9,"t":0.5,"left":4,"right":4}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"stroke.widthPoint.set","params":{"id":9,"t":0.8,"left":12,"right":12}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"stroke.widthPoint.set","params":{"id":9,"index":1,"t":0.8,"left":4,"right":4}}}

New art

New objects take the fill and stroke proxies (paint.setFill / paint.setStroke and the weight, whatever is selected) on top of a template. With nothing selected, stroke.set / stroke.setAdvanced (cap, join, dashes, arrowheads, profile…) and graphicStyle.apply (every fill, stroke and effect, opacity, blend mode and the link to the style; add: true stacks it) set that template instead of editing art. With the Appearance panel's New Art Has Basic Appearance off (appearance.setNewArtBasic {on: false}, the preference newArtBasic) new art takes the whole appearance of the last selected object. appearance.newArt reports what the next object gets; paint.default resets it.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"select.none","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"stroke.set","params":{"cap":"round","dash":[6,3]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"appearance.newArt","params":{}}}

Gradients on strokes

A linear or radial gradient on a stroke lies within it (placed on the page like a fill's gradient: the default), along it (from the start of each subpath to its end) or across it (from the stroke's left edge to its right edge, left of the path's direction; an inside or outside stroke spans the side it shows on). paint.editGradient {stroke: true, strokeMode: "within"|"along"|"across"} sets it (the Gradient panel's Stroke buttons), and document.inspect reports it as strokeOptions.gradientMode. Width profiles, dashes and arrowheads keep working: the gradient runs on through gaps and into the heads. Outline Stroke and Expand turn such a stroke into gradient meshes clipped to its outline; SVG and PDF write it as slices of linear gradients clipped to the outline (vectorcraft_svg::export_with_report and the PDF report warn about it).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"paint.editGradient","params":{"stroke":true,"strokeMode":"along"}}}

Units

Commands take and return lengths in points (the distances of object.path.offsetPath, object.path.simplify, object.path.splitIntoGrid and text.setStyle size/leading also take a string with a unit, "5 mm"). The units only change what the UI shows and how it reads typed numbers. Preferences ▸ Units has three: General (rulers, positions and sizes, the Info panel, dialog distances, canvas measurement labels), Stroke (weights, dashes) and Type (font size, leading, baseline shift). General is the active document's units (document.inspect → units): document.setUnits {units} (Document Setup) sets it for that document, and prefs.set {key: "unitsGeneral", value} sets it for the active document too (one undo step) and is the units file.new starts in when it gets no units. Stroke and Type are the preferences unitsStroke and unitsType. prefs.list marks the length preferences (keyboardIncrement, cornerRadius, pasteOffset, gridlineEvery, typeSizeIncrement, baselineShiftIncrement) with measure: "general"|"type"; they are kept in points and also take a string with a unit. Unit names: Points, Picas, Inches, Millimeters, Centimeters, Pixels, Feet & Inches, Meters, Yards, Feet (the preferences use points, picas, … feetInches, meters, yards, feet).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"prefs.set","params":{"key":"unitsGeneral","value":"millimeters"}}}

Document Setup

document.setup with no params reports the document setup: units, the bleed ([top, bottom, left, right] in pt, drawn as a red outline around each artboard), the transparency grid (size and two colours; the first is also the simulated paper colour), the flattener preset and Discard White Overprint (Overprint Preview keeps white overprints visible while it is on), the type options (language and its quotes, Use Typographer's Quotes for typed quotes, superscript, subscript and small caps proportions, SVG text export) and the background contents (white: raster exports are white behind the art). Pass any of these keys to change them in one undo step; document.setUnits stays as an alias for units.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.setup","params":{"gridColors":"Blue","gridSize":"large","language":"German","bleed":9}}}

New Document

file.new takes everything New Document sets: preset (a name from file.newPresets), name, width/height (points, or lengths such as "210 mm"), units, orientation, artboards with artboardLayout {layout, columns, spacing, rightToLeft}, bleed, backgroundContents, colorMode, rasterEffectsPpi and previewMode. file.newPresets {category?} lists the categories and presets (Recent: the last sizes used; Saved: the user's presets, kept in the preferences by file.newPresets.save and removed by file.newPresets.delete). A listed preset can be passed straight back to file.new. Print presets and sizes without units start in unitsGeneral; screen presets (mobile, web, video, social) in Pixels.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.new","params":{"preset":"A4","orientation":"landscape","artboards":4,"artboardLayout":{"columns":2},"bleed":9}}}

Place

file.place puts another file's art into the active document as one undo step without touching the clipboard: a raster image at 100% of its physical size (the resolution its file declares, else 72 ppi; linked to its path unless link: false), an SVG as one group, a PDF/.ai page or a native document's artboard (page, crop) as one clipped group, with the images, symbols, patterns and swatches it uses. at centres it, rect fits it, replace swaps the selected object (keeping its place and transform), template puts it on a new template layer. file.place.info describes a file without placing it and image.info reports a placed image's link, colour mode and effective ppi. file.place.queue loads the place cursor (the place tool) with several files: headless, drive it with pointer_gesture (a click places at 100% with the top-left corner there, a drag at the dragged size) and press_key (Left/Right/Up/Down cycle, Escape discards the current file).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.place","params":{"path":"/tmp/photo.jpg","at":[300,200]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.place","params":{"name":"logo.svg","dataBase64":"PHN2Zy…","rect":[0,0,100,100]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.place.queue","params":{"paths":["/tmp/a.png","/tmp/b.pdf"]}}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"events":[{"kind":"down","x":40,"y":40},{"kind":"up","x":40,"y":40}]}}

Copy and paste between documents

edit.copy keeps the copied objects with the document resources they use: image blobs, symbols, patterns, global and spot swatches (with the tint swatches of the tints used; never the built-in [Registration] swatch), the gradient swatches their gradients came from, graphic styles the objects are linked to, character and paragraph styles and brushes. Width profiles live in the preferences, so they need no copying. Every edit.paste* command (also edit.pasteWithoutFormatting, which leaves text styles behind) brings them into the active document in the same undo step: an identical resource is reused, a missing one added, and one of the same name that differs is added renamed ("Mark 2"; a copy an earlier paste added is reused), which the pasted objects follow. Linked colours show the document's swatch at their tint (a Lab spot colour as its Spot Colors option says). The result reports {ids, added, merged, renamed: [{kind, from, to}]}.

A global or spot swatch whose name the document gives another colour is a conflict: clipboard.conflicts lists them, and swatchConflict answers: "merge" (the default: the objects take the document's swatch), "add" (the pasted swatch comes in renamed) or one answer per name. Pasting back into the document the objects came from uses its resources as they are now and raises no conflict.

Placement: edit.paste {center} centres the objects on a point (the app passes the view centre), else offsets them by dx/dy (the Paste Offset preference). With nothing selected, edit.pasteInFront / edit.pasteInBack put them on top / at the bottom of the current layer. edit.pasteOnAllArtboards keeps their offset to the artboard they were copied from. layer.pasteRemembersLayers {on?} (a document option, document.inspect → pasteRemembersLayers) pastes objects back into the layers they came from, by name, making missing ones.

Artboards copy with their art. artboard.copy {index?, art?} puts an artboard on the clipboard together with the art fully inside it (art defaults to the Artboard tool's moveArt option, Move/Copy Artwork with Artboard; locked and hidden art only with prefs moveLockedWithArtboard); with the Artboard tool chosen, edit.copy does this for the tool's artboard and edit.cut runs artboard.cut, which also deletes them (never the only artboard). Then edit.paste adds a copy of the artboard right of the last one, with its art in the layers it came from, in one undo step (edit.pasteInPlace, edit.pasteInFront and edit.pasteInBack put it where it was; edit.pasteOnAllArtboards pastes only the art), in this document or another; the result's artboard is the new artboard's index. artboard.duplicate {index?, art?} (Window › Artboards › Duplicate Artboards, or a row dragged onto New Artboard) does the same in one step → {index, ids}, and artboard.move {copy: true, moveArt: true} is the Artboard tool's Alt-drag.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"artboard.copy","params":{"index":0}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"edit.paste","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"artboard.duplicate","params":{"index":0,"art":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"clipboard.conflicts","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"edit.paste","params":{"center":[300,200],"swatchConflict":{"Brand":"add"}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"layer.pasteRemembersLayers","params":{"on":true}}}

File Info

file.info with no params reports the document's File Info: title, author, authorTitle, description, keywords, rating (0–5), copyrightStatus (unknown, copyrighted, publicDomain), copyrightNotice, copyrightUrl, and the read-only created (set by file.new) and modified (set by every save to a file) dates as ISO 8601 UTC. Pass any of the editable keys to change them in one undo step (null clears one; keywords takes a list or a comma-separated string and keeps each word once); bad values are refused. PDF export writes the title, author, description and keywords to the document info and XMP, PNG export writes them (with the copyright and creation date) as text chunks, and SVG export writes the description as <desc> and, with the metadata option, all of it as Dublin Core. file.new {created} and a save to a file (document.save or file.saveAs with {path, modified}) use the given date (Unix seconds, or null for none) instead of now. Their journal entries always record the date they used, so replaying the journal makes the same document whenever it runs (an action recorded in the Actions panel leaves the date out: playing it later dates the document then). As a step of command.batch, a command records the date it used (and any value it takes from the preferences) in its step of the batch's journal entry. A batch may open, switch, close or revert documents: each document it edits gets one undo step, the batch is journaled whichever document it ends in, and an error rolls every document back (the ones it opened close, the ones it closed or reverted come back).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.info","params":{"author":"Ada","keywords":"poster, fair","rating":4,"copyrightStatus":"copyrighted","copyrightNotice":"© 2026 Ada"}}}

Document Raster Effects Settings

document.rasterEffectsSettings holds how raster effects (shadows, glows, blurs, feathers) become images when PDF export or Expand Appearance renders them: resolution (ppi, also New Document's rasterEffectsPpi), colorModel (the document's rgb/cmyk, grayscale or bitmap), background (white makes the images opaque), antiAlias (off: hard edges), clippingMask (the white stays under the art only), addAround (points of room around the art) and preserveSpotColors (stored). They are also the defaults of object.rasterize, whose params override them (its clippingMask puts the image in a clip group with the art's outline). No params reports them; any of them changes them in one undo step. PDF export renders the raster effects of every kind of object this way (paths, groups, layers, type, images, symbol instances, live objects, and those in opacity masks, symbols and pattern tiles): shadows and outer glows go in an image under the untouched vector art, other effects replace the object with its image, and a path whose fills or strokes carry effects is written as one piece per fill and stroke, so only the affected ones become images.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.rasterEffectsSettings","params":{"resolution":"high","background":"white","addAround":36}}}

Linked images

A placed image linked to its file (file.place {path}, Link on) records the file's absolute path, its size, modification time and hash, and keeps a low-resolution preview (at most 256 px a side): a .vectorcraft save writes the preview instead of the pixels, plus the path relative to the saved file. document.open reads the linked files again, looking for each at its path, then at its relative path and by name in the document's folder (so a folder moved with its links still opens): the result lists missingLinks (their images show the preview), modifiedLinks (left as they were; read again only with the preference updateLinks: "automatically", then they are in updatedLinks), each as {name, path, ids}. links.check reports every link's status (ok, modified, missing), links.update {ids?} reads modified files again and links.relink {ids?, path | folder} points images at another file (or each at the file of its name in a folder); images keep their bounds, one undo step each. Without a file system (the web), linked images show their previews.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"links.check","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"links.relink","params":{"ids":[12],"path":"/new/photo.png"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"links.update","params":{}}}

Placing a text file (.txt) sets it as area type: file.place {path | name+dataBase64, text?: {characterSet?: "unicode" | "ansi", platform?: "windows" | "mac", removeLineReturns?, removeParagraphReturns?, replaceSpaces?: n}} (Text Import Options). Unicode reads UTF-8, or UTF-16 with a byte-order mark; ANSI reads Windows-1252 (Mac Roman on mac). removeLineReturns joins the lines of each block into one paragraph, removeParagraphReturns drops blank lines, replaceSpaces: 3 turns runs of 3 or more spaces into tabs. The frame fills rect, the replaced object's bounds, or the artboard less a 36 pt margin.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.place","params":{"path":"/tmp/notes.txt","text":{"removeLineReturns":true,"removeParagraphReturns":true}}}}

PDF presets

pdf.preset.list lists the built-in presets (VectorCraft Default, which preserves editing, then High Quality Print, Press Quality, Smallest File Size and the PDF/X presets, builtIn: true; supported says the writer produces the preset's standard) and the saved ones, each with its description and settings. pdf.preset.save {name?, newName?, description?, preset?, …document.exportPdf options} creates or changes a saved preset (a change starts from the preset's own settings; newName renames it; built-in presets are read-only; passwords are never stored); pdf.preset.delete {name} deletes one. pdf.preset.export {names?, path?} writes them as a .vcpdfpresets JSON file (without path it returns data), and pdf.preset.import {path? | data? | dataBase64?, replace?} adds a file's presets (names in use get a number unless replace). Saved presets live with the preferences and work as preset in document.exportPdf, document.pdfSettings, document.export/serialize with format pdf and .ai saves.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"pdf.preset.save","params":{"name":"Web","preset":"Smallest File Size","compatibility":"1.5"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportPdf","params":{"preset":"Web","path":"/tmp/web.pdf"}}}

Clipboard formats

Besides SVG, Copy offers other apps PNG and PDF of the copied objects, and their text when they are all type. clipboard.flavours lists what Copy offers for the current clipboard, best first, by the Clipboard Handling preferences: text/plain (the text of a type-only copy, else the SVG markup with copyAsSvg), image/svg+xml (copyAsSvg), application/pdf (copyAsPdf) and image/png (always; PDF and PNG need objects with an area). Each one has a query command: clipboard.exportSvg, clipboard.exportText (null unless every copied object is type), clipboard.exportPdf (a one-page PDF, the page the objects' visual bounds) and clipboard.exportPng {scale?} (cropped to the objects, transparent around them).

What other apps copied goes into the clipboard with clipboard.importSvg, clipboard.importPdf {dataBase64, page?, password?} (the page's objects), clipboard.importImage {dataBase64, mime?} (an embedded image at 100% of its physical size) or clipboard.importText {text} (point text in the default type style), each centred on center (default: the first artboard); then any edit.paste* command pastes it. The desktop app does this itself: Copy and Cut publish the formats to the system clipboard, and a Paste outside text editing first reads what another app copied (SVG, then PDF, then text, then a bitmap; SVG markup in text counts as SVG). Pasting what VectorCraft copied keeps the lossless internal clipboard. Windows carries every format both ways; macOS and Linux carry one format (the text, else the PNG) and paste text and bitmaps. On the web only SVG text goes through the system clipboard.

The pasteTextFormatting preference (keep or plain): with plain, text the Type tool copied pastes into type without its formatting, taking the style at the caret.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"clipboard.flavours","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"clipboard.exportPng","params":{"scale":2}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"clipboard.importImage","params":{"dataBase64":"iVBORw0KGgo…","center":[300,200]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"edit.paste","params":{"center":[300,200]}}}

DXF export

document.exportDxf (also document.export / export with format dxf) writes a CAD drawing, ASCII DXF R12 to 2018 (version: R12, R13, R14, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2018; default 2018). Each layer becomes a DXF layer (hidden layers switched off, locked ones locked, non-printing ones not plotted; template layers left out), straight paths become polylines, curved ones cubic splines through every anchor, fills solid hatches (R12 has none: their outlines), strokes lines with their lineweight and a linetype per dash pattern, and placed images image entities linked to PNG or JPEG files (rasterFormat) written next to the drawing (linked in the result). Coordinates are y up from the bottom-left corner of the first artboard (or artboard), in drawing units: scale units per unit (default 1 mm = 1 unit, which sets $INSUNITS); scaleLineweights scales the lineweights with them. colors is 8, 16 or 256 indexed colours, or true (default; true colour with the nearest index, DXF 2004 and later). preserve: "appearance" (default) writes type as glyph outlines and the strokes a CAD line can't draw (inside or outside, width profiles, arrowheads) as filled outlines; "editability" keeps type as text and every stroke a line. alterPaths writes every stroke as its filled outline, outlineText outlines type, selectedOnly writes only the selected objects in their layers (every export takes it), and useArtboards: true writes one drawing per chosen artboard holding the art over it. What DXF can't hold (gradients and patterns as one colour, blending, opacity masks, raster effects, clipping) comes back in warnings.

DWG can't be written (no openly licensed writer exists): document.formats lists it under unsupported with that hint, and exporting to it answers with the hint to export DXF. PICT files are not supported either and say so when opened.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportDxf","params":{"path":"/tmp/plan.dxf","version":"2013","unit":"mm","scale":10,"preserve":"editability"}}}
{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/plan.dxf","options":{"useArtboards":true,"colors":256}}}

DXF import

document.open reads ASCII DXF drawings of any version (by content or the .dxf extension), and file.place places one as a group. Both take dxf: {layout, unit, scale, fit, fitTo, scaleLineweights, center, mergeLayers} (all optional). document.dxfInfo reads a drawing without opening it: its version, drawing units, layouts (Model first, then the paper layouts), layers, and the default ratio (unit, scale: the drawing at 1:1 in its own unit; unitless metric drawings read millimetres, imperial ones inches). A ratio is 1 unit of the art = scale drawing units; fit: true instead scales the art to fit fitTo (a letter page when opening; when placing, the artboard under at). center: false puts the drawing's origin (fitted art: its bottom-left corner) on the artboard's bottom-left corner; mergeLayers puts all art on one layer. Each DXF layer holding art becomes a layer (off and frozen layers hidden, locked ones locked, non-plotting ones non-printing). Lines, polylines (arc segments from bulges), circles, arcs, ellipses, splines (NURBS, within a millionth of their size), solids and hatches become paths (solid hatches filled, pattern hatches as their boundaries), text and multiline text point type, named blocks symbols (one per look when their art takes colour "by block"), anonymous blocks such as dimensions groups. Indexed colours (7 is black on paper), true colour, lineweights (scaleLineweights scales them with the art), linetypes and transparency resolve through layers and blocks. What is left out (viewports, images, meshes, unknown entities) is listed in warnings. Binary DXF and DWG files answer an error saying to save them as ASCII DXF.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.dxfInfo","params":{"path":"/tmp/plan.dxf"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.open","params":{"path":"/tmp/plan.dxf","dxf":{"layout":"Layout1","fit":true,"mergeLayers":true}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.place","params":{"path":"/tmp/detail.dxf","dxf":{"unit":"mm","scale":10,"center":false}}}}

Links panel

links.list {show?: all|missing|modified|embedded, sort?: name|kind|status} lists every image in the layers, top first, as the Links panel does: {id, name, linked, status: ok|modified|missing|embedded, format, pixelWidth, pixelHeight, path?, found?, page?, preview?}. links.info {id?} is the Link Info: image.info's fields plus status, format, the file's ppi and the effectivePpi, scale (% of 100%), rotation (degrees, counter-clockwise), placement and, for a linked file, fileName, location, fileSize, created, modified. links.goTo {id} selects an image; links.embed {ids?} keeps linked files' pixels in the document (an image whose file is missing stays linked: relink it first); links.unembed {id, path} writes an embedded image to a file (another extension converts it) and links to it, and without path returns {name, dataBase64}. links.placementOptions {ids?, preserve?: transforms|bounds|fileDimensions|fit|fill, align?: topLeft…bottomRight, clip?} decides how a relinked or updated file takes an image's place (default bounds: stretched into the old bounds; clip puts it in a clip group of the old bounds when it is larger). The UI commands links.editOriginal and links.reveal open the linked file in its app or show it in its folder (desktop).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"links.list","params":{"show":"missing"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"links.placementOptions","params":{"ids":[12],"preserve":"fit","align":"top"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"links.unembed","params":{"id":14,"path":"/tmp/logo.png"}}}

Package and Document Info

file.package {folder?, name?, copyLinks?, linksFolder?, relink?, copyFonts?, report?} copies a saved document (an unsaved one is an error) into folder/name (default name <document> Folder): <document>.vectorcraft, its linked files in Links/ (relinked: the packaged document points at the copies; the open one doesn't change), the fonts its type uses in Fonts/ (fonts whose licence doesn't allow embedding are listed in skippedFonts instead) and <document> Report.txt. Every option defaults to true. Without folder (the web, or an agent that wants the bytes) the result carries the same files as a zip ({name: "<name>.zip", dataBase64}, entries under <name>/).

document.info {selectionOnly?, category?, format?: "text"} adds sections ([{id, title, rows: [[label, value]]}]: document, objects, graphicStyles, spotColors, patterns, gradients, symbols, fonts, fontDetails, linkedImages, embeddedImages); format: "text" returns the plain-text report Document Info › Save… (docInfo.save {path?}) and the package report write.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.package","params":{"folder":"/tmp/handoff","copyFonts":false}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.info","params":{"format":"text","category":"fontDetails"}}}

Slices

Object → Slice cuts the art into the pieces web output saves. User slices are rectangles of their own (document.slices, ids from the object id counter); object.slice.make turns the selected objects into object slices, whose slice follows the object's bounds; auto slices fill what no other slice covers (the artboards with Clip to Artboard on, the default, else the art and the slices). slice.list returns every slice as laid out, numbered left to right and top to bottom: {number, id (null for auto slices), source: user|object|auto, name, x, y, width, height, options, selected}, plus clipToArtboard, hidden and locked.

The Object → Slice commands act on the selected slices: the ones select.object.slices (Select → Object → Slices) selects, and the selected objects that are object slices. object.slice.release (an object slice leaves its object, a user slice becomes an unpainted rectangle), object.slice.fromGuides (the grid the ruler guides cut the artboards into), object.slice.fromSelection, object.slice.duplicate {dx?, dy?}, object.slice.combine, object.slice.divide {rows? | rowHeight?, columns? | columnWidth?}, object.slice.deleteAll, object.slice.options {kind?: image|noImage|htmlText, name?, url?, target?, message?, alt?, text?, background?: ""|matte|#rrggbb, hAlign?, vAlign?} and object.slice.clipToArtboard {on?} are each one undo step. view.slices.hide {hidden?} and view.slices.lock {locked?} are session view state; the canvas draws the slices in the sliceLineColor preference, numbered while showSliceNumbers is on.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.slice.make","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.slice.options","params":{"name":"logo","url":"https://example.com","alt":"Logo"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"slice.list","params":{}}}

The Slice tool (slice, Shift+K) and the Slice Selection tool (sliceSelection) reduce to commands: object.slice.create {x, y, width, height} (the Slice tool's drag; it snaps to ruler guides), object.slice.select {slices?, toggle?}, object.slice.move {slices?, dx, dy} (an object slice moves its object), object.slice.setRect {id, x, y, width, height} (user slices) and object.slice.delete {slices?}. Slice ids are user slice ids and the ids of objects with an object slice.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.slice.create","params":{"x":0,"y":0,"width":200,"height":80}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.slice.move","params":{"dx":10,"dy":0}}}

Export for Screens

document.exportForScreens writes every chosen artboard (range, artboards; default all) in every format row into folder, or returns the files as dataBase64 without one; zip: true packs them into one store-only .zip. A row is {format, scale?} where scale is a factor (2, "2x"), a pixel width ("100w" or width: 100), a height ("100h") or a resolution ("72ppi"); raster rows name their files @2x, @100w… unless suffix says otherwise. fullDocument writes one file per row instead (a PDF of every artboard, other formats the bounds of all art), includeBleed grows each artboard by the document's bleed, subfolders puts each row's files in a sub-folder (its size or format, or its own folder), preset: "mobile" or "density" (Android-style ldpi…xxxhdpi sub-folders) replaces the rows, and settings: {png: {…}, jpg: {…}, svg: {…}, pdf: {preset}} gives every row of a format its options. The document remembers the last params: document.exportSettings.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportForScreens","params":{"preset":"density","zip":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportForScreens","params":{"range":"1-2","formats":[{"format":"png","scale":"512w"},{"format":"jpg","quality":80,"scale":"2x"},{"format":"svg"}],"settings":{"png":{"background":"white"}}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportSettings","params":{}}}

EPS export

document.exportEps (also document.export / export with format eps) writes Encapsulated PostScript: a DSC header (%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0, %%BoundingBox, %%HiResBoundingBox, %%LanguageLevel, spot colours as %%DocumentCustomColors), then the page. Without useArtboards the file covers the visible art, its bounding box y up from the first artboard's bottom-left corner; useArtboards: true (or range, artboards, artboard) writes one file per artboard, {stem}_{artboard}.eps, each bounded by its artboard. level: 3 (default) writes gradients as smooth shadings and masks transparent image pixels out; level: 2 writes gradients as bands of colour (as does compatibleGradients) and transparent pixels white. Type is always glyph outlines, so no fonts are needed (embedFonts is accepted); spot colours are Separation colour spaces, and overprinting fills and strokes overprint unless overprints: "discard". RGB documents are written in CMYK unless cmykPostScript: false.

PostScript has no transparency: it is flattened first with flattenerPreset (high, medium (default), low or a saved preset, see flattener.presets.list) and flattener: {…} options over it (those of object.flattenTransparency); a warning says so. previewFormat adds a TIFF preview behind a binary header (tiffColor (default), transparent unless transparentPreview: false, or 1-bit tiffBw; none writes plain PostScript), thumbnails a PNG thumbnail in comments, and the native document always rides along in the trailer's comments (with linked images whole when includeLinkedFiles), so a later EPS import can reopen the file as it was. Export for Screens doesn't write EPS.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportEps","params":{"path":"/tmp/logo.eps","level":2,"previewFormat":"tiffBw","flattenerPreset":"high"}}}
{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/art.eps","options":{"useArtboards":true,"cmykPostScript":false}}}

Print

File → Print writes the job as a print-ready PDF (there is no printer driver): each page is a sheet of the chosen paper. file.print {settings?, path?} → {pages, path | dataBase64, bytes, warnings}; print.preview {settings?} answers what it would print without writing it: {pages (copies included), sheets: [{artboard, tile?, ink?, width, height, orientation, scale}] (one copy, in order), tiles: [{artboard, columns, rows, printed, tiles}] (document space), inks: [{name, spot, print, frequency, angle}], warnings, settings}. print.setup {settings?} saves the settings with the document (one undo step, kept in the native file as print_setup); both other commands start from the saved settings, with settings over them (null keeps a value). list_commands with filter print.setup documents every field:

• General: copies (1–999), collate, reverse; artboards: all|range|ignore with range: "1-3, 5" (ignore: all the art as one page), skipBlank; media: letter|legal|tabloid|a3|a4|a5|b4|b5|custom (width, height in pt), orientation, autoRotate (on by default: the paper turns to each artboard), transverse; printLayers: visiblePrintable|visible|all (template layers never print); placement: {origin, x, y} places the printed area (artboard, bleed and marks) on the imageable area (the paper inside margin); scaling: none|fit|custom|tileFull| tileImageable with scale: {width, height} (%), overlap and tileRange (tiles numbered across then down).
• marks and bleed as document.exportPdf takes them (the bleed is the document's unless useDocument: false), drawn around the artboard at the paper's scale; the page information adds the tile and the ink with its screen.
• output: {mode: composite|separations, emulsion: up|down, image: positive|negative, spotsToProcess, inks: [{name, print, frequency, angle}]}: separations print one page per ink in the grey of its coverage (images too; overprinting fills and strokes don't knock out), Registration on every plate; emulsion down mirrors the page and a negative inverts it.
• graphics: {autoFlatness, flatness, fonts} and color: {intent, preserveNumbers} (the intent colours separate with; without preserveNumbers CMYK colours are separated again).

Halftone screens and a fixed flatness are not written to the PDF (the output device's apply): the warnings say so, as they do for art larger than the imageable area.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"print.setup","params":{"settings":{"media":"a4","scaling":"fit","marks":{"trim":true}}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"print.preview","params":{"settings":{"output":{"mode":"separations"}}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.print","params":{"path":"/tmp/job.pdf","settings":{"copies":2}}}}

Print to a PostScript file: file.print {format: "postscript"} (the default for a .ps path) writes the same job as PostScript, level: 3 (default) or 2, answering format: "postscript" ("pdf" otherwise; in the app the job is saved, not sent to a printer). The file follows the DSC: %%Pages is the page count (copies included), each %%Page sets its paper size, separations name their ink (%%PlateColor) and set its halftone screen (frequency, angle, a round dot), a fixed flatness is written (setflat), negatives invert the transfer, and the marks print in Registration. PostScript has no transparency: it is flattened first with flattenerPreset (medium by default; high, low or a saved one), with a warning.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.print","params":{"path":"/tmp/job.ps","level":2,"settings":{"output":{"mode":"separations"}}}}}

Data Recovery

Modified documents get recovery copies (file.recovery.save; the app runs it every autosaveInterval minutes while autosaveRecovery is on, skipping documents of more than 20,000 objects while recoveryOffForComplex is on). A copy goes when its document is saved, reverted or closed, so copies still there after the app quits were left by a crash. The copies live in the recoveryFolder preference's folder (default: Data Recovery beside the app's preferences; none when the app runs with VECTORCRAFT_NO_PREFS) or, on the web, in browser storage.

Each running app (each browser tab) keeps its copies in an area of its own (<area>/<name>): a sub-folder whose .lock file it keeps locked while it runs, or on the web an area with a heartbeat it refreshes every minute and a Web Lock the browser holds until the tab is gone (where the browser has Web Locks: secure pages). Only areas nobody holds are offered: their lock is free, or no tab holds their Web Lock and their heartbeat is older than three intervals (at least three minutes). A background tab whose timers are paused therefore keeps its copies. Without Web Locks another tab can take such a tab for gone; when it resumes, its next heartbeat or recovery save writes its missing copies again. Several apps running at once (agents' instances included) never see each other's copies as crash leftovers, and an area being restored or discarded is held, so two apps launched together never both take it.

file.recovery.list → {copies: [{file, title, path, format, saved, open, running}], location} (open: the copy of a document open here; running: kept by another VectorCraft that is running). file.recovery.restore {file?} opens copies left behind (default: all) as "<name> [Recovered]": modified, and Save asks where to save them (suggesting their original file); the copy moves into this app's area. file.recovery.discard {file?} deletes them. Without a folder or browser storage the commands are disabled and say how to set one.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"prefs.set","params":{"key":"recoveryFolder","value":"/tmp/vc-recovery"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.recovery.save","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.recovery.restore","params":{"file":"1759650000-1/Poster-1"}}}

Native save options

document.save / file.saveAs / file.saveCopy to a native (.vectorcraft, .vctemplate) or .ai file take, flat or in options (file.formatOptions {format} lists them with their values):

• separateArtboards: true also writes each artboard of range ("1-3, 5", default "all") to <name>-<artboard>.<ext> beside the file: that artboard and the art touching it. The result's files lists every file written, the master file first (without a path: files: [{name, dataBase64}]). 3 artboards give 4 files.
• includeLinked: true keeps linked images' own pixels in the file (they stay linked), not just the previews.
• embedProfiles (default true) carries the ICC profiles the document is tagged with that were loaded from files; opening the file installs them where they are missing (a warning names one that can't be used).
• pdfCompatible: native files (default false) also carry a PDF of every artboard (pdf in the file); .ai files (default true) with false write blank pages around the native document (smaller; other apps show empty pages).
• .ai only: compress (default true) is the PDF option compression.compressText.

File → Save As asks for these in the save options dialog (VectorCraft Options) after the save panel; Save, Save a Copy and Save as Template reuse the options as last saved (or Use Compression).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.saveAs","params":{"path":"/tmp/set.vectorcraft","separateArtboards":true,"range":"2-3","includeLinked":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.saveAs","params":{"path":"/tmp/set.ai","pdfCompatible":false}}}

EMF and WMF

document.export (and export) with format emf or wmf writes a Windows metafile of the first artboard (or artboard); useArtboards: true writes one file per chosen artboard ({stem}-{artboard}.emf), false the bounds of the visible art. EMF keeps Bézier curves, solid fills (brushes), strokes as geometric pens with their width, caps, joins, miter limit and dashes, clipping masks (path clips), images with their transparency (AlphaBlend) and type as outlines; gradients become images clipped to their shape, pattern fills their tiles clipped to the shape, and raster effects images rendered at the document's raster effects resolution. The header's frame is the artboard in 0.01 mm. WMF flattens curves into polygons in 16-bit units behind a placeable header (1440 units an inch, fewer for pictures over about 22 inches); it has no clipping, transparency or gradients, so clipped art is written whole, images over white and gradients and patterns as one colour. What a format leaves out comes back in warnings.

document.open and file.place read .emf and .wmf (placeable or not) into one artboard, the picture's frame, and one layer: paths with their fills and strokes (pens become strokes with caps, joins and dashes), clipping groups, images and point type in the font the file names. Records VectorCraft doesn't read (EMF+ drawing among them) are skipped with one warning. clipboard.importEmf {dataBase64, center?} loads an EMF or WMF picture into the clipboard for edit.paste; the app pastes image/emf from the system clipboard ahead of text and bitmaps when the platform's clipboard service offers it (the Windows desktop service doesn't read metafiles yet).

{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/logo.emf"}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.export","params":{"format":"wmf","useArtboards":true,"path":"/tmp/icons.wmf"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.place","params":{"path":"/tmp/chart.emf","at":[300,200]}}}

TIFF, BMP and Targa export

document.export (and export) writes them like the other raster formats: one artboard (or useArtboards, one file each), at ppi, over background, with antiAlias. TIFF takes colorModel (rgb keeps transparency as an unassociated alpha channel, cmyk writes ink amounts in the working CMYK space with CMYK colours keeping their inks, gray is flattened on white), lzw (default true), byteOrder (little, the II files PCs write, or big, MM) and embedIcc (sRGB, the working CMYK profile or grey). BMP takes depth (1 is black and white; 4 and 8 use a palette chosen by reduction and dither; 16, 24, or 32, which keeps transparency), colorModel (rgb or gray), fileFormat (windows or os2: 1, 4, 8 or 24 bits only), rle (RLE4/RLE8 for 4- and 8-bit Windows bitmaps) and flipRows (rows top-down, a negative height; not with rle or os2); impossible combinations are refused. Targa takes depth: 16 (a one-bit alpha), 24 (default) or 32 (with alpha). Formats and depths without alpha are flattened on white. TIFF and BMP files open again; document.formats lists every option.

{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/print.tif","options":{"ppi":300,"colorModel":"cmyk","byteOrder":"big"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.export","params":{"format":"bmp","depth":8,"rle":true}}}
{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/sprite.tga","options":{"depth":32}}}

Save for Web

File → Export → Save for Web (Legacy) writes optimised web images: document.exportForWeb {format: gif|jpg|png8|png24, …} renders the artboard (clipToArtboard, the default; artboard picks one) or the visible art and the slices, at width, height or percent, and encodes it with the format's settings: for GIF and PNG-8 reduction, colors, dither, ditherAmount, transparency, matte, interlaced, webSnap, lossy (GIF) and colorTable {locked, transparent, webShift, sort}; for JPEG quality, progressive, optimized, embedProfile and matte; for PNG-24 transparency, matte and interlaced. metadata (none, copyright, contact, all) writes File Info as PNG text or a GIF/JPEG comment; convertToSrgb marks PNGs as sRGB. With slices (slice.list) each image slice becomes images/<slice name>.<ext> (slices: selected writes the selected ones, none one image); output: html adds <stem>.html placing them, with each slice's URL, target, alt text and status message, and No Image / HTML Text cells. Without path the files come back as {name, dataBase64}.

document.exportForWeb.preview returns what Save writes for the same settings without writing it: bytes (the exact file size), seconds to download at kbps (default 56.6), the size, and for palette formats the colour table (colors: [{color, source, transparent, locked, webShifted, webSafe}]). The colour table's lists name colours by source (the colour the reduction made), so a colour keeps its edits when it is web-shifted or snapped. slice: n previews one slice; image: true adds the file.

Presets: webExport.presets.list (built-in ones, then saved ones), webExport.presets.save {name, newName?, …settings}, webExport.presets.delete {name}; any name works as preset in the other commands (its settings, then the keys given). webExport.settings {…} remembers the settings the dialog opens on ({} reads them, reset: true restores the defaults); presets and remembered settings are preferences.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportForWeb.preview","params":{"format":"gif","colors":32,"dither":"none"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportForWeb","params":{"path":"/tmp/web/page.html","format":"png8","output":"html"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"webExport.presets.save","params":{"name":"Banner","format":"jpg","quality":70}}}

Asset Export

Assets are pieces of art collected for export on their own (Window › Asset Export, Object › Collect for Export, File › Export Selection…). assets.add {ids?, multiple?} collects the selected objects (or ids): one asset per object, or with multiple: false one asset of them all, named after the object or Asset 1, Asset 2…; art already collected keeps its asset. Assets name their objects, so they follow edits: moving the art moves the crop, and deleting it removes it from its asset (an asset left with nothing goes). assets.list gives each asset's id, name, objects and crop (bounds); assets.rename {asset, name} and assets.remove {assets} are undo steps.

assets.export {assets?, folder?, zip?} writes each asset's art alone, cropped to it and named after it, in every format row of the document's export settings, the ones Export for Screens remembers (document.exportSettings); any formats, preset, settings, prefix or subfolders given win for that export. assets.settings.set changes those shared settings (not an undo step). document.exportForScreens {assets: [id…]} does the same with its own params (the dialog's Assets tab).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"assets.add","params":{"multiple":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"assets.settings.set","params":{"formats":[{"format":"png","scale":"1x"},{"format":"png","scale":"2x"},{"format":"svg"}]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"assets.export","params":{"zip":true}}}

CSS Properties

css.selection {ids?, units?, position?, dimensions?, unnamed?, rasterize?} returns the CSS web pages style the selected objects (or ids) with, one rule per object, as Window › CSS Properties shows it: a rectangle's or ellipse's fill as background-color or a linear-gradient()/radial-gradient(), its stroke as border, its corners as border-radius; type's font, color, spacing and alignment; opacity, blend mode, shadows and glows (box-shadow, text-shadow) and blur (filter). Layers and plain groups stand for what they hold. Properties SVG export writes too (font, spacing, opacity, blend mode, colours, gradient stops) read exactly as in its style sheets. Each rule in rules says when CSS can't describe the art exactly (unsupported: other shapes, images, patterns, live effects…); it is then written as its box, or with rasterize: true as background-image: url(<class>.png). units is px (1 px per point, as in SVG export), pt, mm, cm or in; unnamed: false leaves out unnamed objects (counted in skipped). css.generate does the same for the whole document, and css.export {path?, scope?: selection|all} writes the .css file with the PNGs of rasterized art next to it (no path: data and images as base64). In the app, css.copy copies the CSS and css.exportFile writes it through a save panel (the web downloads it).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"css.selection","params":{"units":"px","position":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"css.export","params":{"path":"/tmp/site/styles.css","scope":"all","rasterize":true}}}

PSD export

document.export (and export) writes layered bitmaps (.psd, 8 bits per channel) like the other raster formats: one artboard (or useArtboards, one file each), at ppi, with antiAlias, in colorModel rgb, cmyk (ink amounts in the working CMYK space) or gray, with embedIcc. With layers (default true) each top-level layer is a pixel layer of its own, drawn alone and cropped to what it paints, with its name, opacity and blend mode; a background colour becomes a Background layer under them, and the merged image (what readers that skip layers show) is the flat render. maxEditability: true turns layers and sublayers into groups and every object into a layer named as the Layers panel names it (text objects by their text); layers with a clipping mask, an opacity mask, an appearance of their own or knockout stay one pixel layer. Hidden layers and objects are left out unless hiddenLayers: true writes them as hidden layers. layers: false writes one flat image, on white where nothing is drawn. Files are at most 30000 pixels a side; PSD files don't open in VectorCraft.

{"name":"export","arguments":{"path":"/tmp/poster.psd","options":{"ppi":300,"maxEditability":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.export","params":{"format":"psd","layers":false,"colorModel":"cmyk"}}}

Printing

print.setup {settings?} keeps print settings with the document (one undo step; without settings it answers the current ones): the copies, artboards, paper, orientation, placement, scaling and tiling, marks and bleed, composite or separations output, graphics and colour management options of File › Print. print.preview {settings?} lays the job out without printing: pages, then one copy's sheets, each with its page size, scale, the transform from the document onto the page (pt, y down), the document area it prints and its trim box on the page, plus tiles, the inks of a separation and warnings. file.print {settings?, path?} writes the job as a print-ready PDF (one page per sheet, tile, ink and copy); headless it answers dataBase64. In the app, file.print with no params opens the Print dialog, and with params it prints through the system (printer: a name from print.printers, default the system's default printer) or, with toFile, a path or no printing available, saves the PDF.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"print.setup","params":{"settings":{"media":"a4","scaling":"fit","marks":{"trim":true}}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"print.preview","params":{"settings":{"copies":2,"output":{"mode":"separations"}}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.print","params":{"path":"/tmp/job.pdf"}}}

Print presets

print.presets.list lists [Default] (the default print settings, builtIn: true, protected) and the saved presets, each with its settings and how they differ from [Default] (changed). print.presets.save {name?, newName?, preset?, settings?} creates or changes a saved preset (starting from its own settings, or from preset, with settings over them) and print.presets.delete {name} deletes one; [Default] can be neither changed nor deleted. print.presets.export {names?, path?} writes them as a .vcprintpresets JSON file (without path it returns data), and print.presets.import {path? | data? | dataBase64?, replace?} adds a file's presets (a name in use gets a number unless replace). Saved presets live with the preferences. To print with a preset, pass its settings to print.setup, print.preview or file.print.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"print.presets.save","params":{"name":"Posters","settings":{"scaling":"tileImageable","overlap":18,"marks":{"trim":true}}}}}

EPS and PostScript import

document.open and file.place read .eps files, and PostScript by any name (an .ai saved without PDF compatibility opens as artwork; an .ait one as a new untitled document). An EPS file VectorCraft wrote restores the document it carries (restored: true, as Preserve Editing does for PDF and SVG); when that document can't be read the PostScript is read instead and the first warning says why.

Other files are run through a small PostScript interpreter (Level 3, first page only): paths, fills and strokes with their width, caps, joins, miter limit and dashes (a fill and a stroke of the same path become one object), grey, RGB, CMYK, indexed and spot colours (a Separation ink becomes a spot swatch, painted at its tint), clips (clipping groups; clipsave/cliprestore), gsave/grestore, save/restore, transforms, procedures with bind def, loops, dictionaries (the standard ones are values in systemdict; dictstack, internaldict), arrays and strings whose intervals share storage, resources (categories made from Generic, resourceforall), executable filters (cvx exec runs their data; flushfile skips it), axial and radial shadings and shading patterns (gradients), images and image masks (data in the file through ASCII85, hex, run-length, Flate, LZW or DCT filters, or from procedures), and type as point type in the font the file names (embedded font programs are skipped). The artboard is the %%HiResBoundingBox (else %%BoundingBox; a letter page without one). A program the interpreter can't run (an operator it doesn't know, an error, a runaway loop) or that draws nothing comes in as its TIFF preview (palette previews with an alpha channel too) with a warning; without a preview, the art drawn up to the error is kept with a warning, and a file with none is refused with a message saying why.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.open","params":{"path":"/tmp/logo.eps"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.place","params":{"path":"/tmp/logo.eps","at":[300,300]}}}

PDF/X

document.exportPdf {standard: "pdfX1a" | "pdfX3" | "pdfX4"} (or the built-in PDF/X presets) writes print exchange files as their standards say. Every PDF/X file gets a /GTS_PDFX output intent (output.outputIntent; blank, the CMYK profile in effect: the destination when converting to CMYK, else the working one, embedded; in PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 a name that isn't a profile needs output.registry, a registered printing condition named without a profile; PDF/X-4 always embeds one), a TrimBox on every page (the artboard), /Trapped True or False, /GTS_PDFXVersion, a title (Untitled when the document has none) and dates; type is outlined or embedded; editing data, passwords and, in PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3, PDF layers are refused.

• pdfX1a (PDF/X-1a:2001, written as PDF 1.3): CMYK, grey and spot colours only. Every colour and image is converted to output.destination (blank: the output intent's CMYK profile, else the working CMYK profile), untagged; an RGB destination or output intent is refused. Transparency is flattened before writing.
• pdfX3 (PDF/X-3:2002, written as PDF 1.3): colours are tagged with ICC profiles; transparency is flattened.
• pdfX4 (PDF/X-4:2010, PDF 1.6 at most): transparency and layers are kept, colours are tagged, and the XMP metadata names the standard.

Flattening uses flattenerPreset (default High Resolution, see PDF 1.3 above) on a copy (the document is untouched; a warning says so), and images with see-through pixels count as transparency. The written file is checked against its standard: what it still breaks (transparency, RGB in PDF/X-1a, a font not embedded) fails the export instead of writing a file that only claims the standard.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"document.exportPdf","params":{"path":"/tmp/press.pdf","preset":"PDF/X-1a:2001","output":{"outputIntent":"VectorCraft Generic CMYK (SWOP-like)","outputCondition":"Coated","trapped":false}}}}

Print tiling

View → Show Print Tiling (view.printTiling {on?}, per document, not undoable) draws the pages of the document's print settings on the canvas: each page's paper edge, its imageable area dashed, numbered (tiles across then down; tiles outside tileRange dimmer). The Print Tiling tool (printTiling) shows them too. print.tiling {settings?} answers what is drawn, from the layout print.preview and both writers (PDF and PostScript) use, so the canvas and the printed job agree: {tileOrigin, pages: [{artboard, number, printed, page, imageable}]} ([x0, y0, x1, y1] in document space; every tile when tiling, else each page once, not once per ink).

Dragging with the tool puts the top-left corner of the first page's imageable area where the pointer is (snapping to the artboard's edges): print.tiling.set {origin: [x, y], artboard?} saves it with the print settings as tileOrigin: {placed: true, x, y}, measured from the artboard's top-left corner (one undo step). It replaces the placement, and tiles start there (going on left and up as far as the art does). A double click on the canvas, or on the tool's button, runs print.tiling.set {reset: true}: the placement places the pages again. In the Print dialog the placement then shows as placed by the tool, with a Reset button; dragging the preview moves the origin.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"view.printTiling","params":{"on":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"print.tiling.set","params":{"origin":[-36,-36]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"print.tiling","params":{"settings":{"scaling":"tileImageable","scale":{"width":300,"height":300}}}}}

Print advanced options

The Print dialog's Advanced section and the printer profile are print settings too (print.setup, print.preview, file.print): advanced: {printAsBitmap, overprints: preserve|discard|simulate, flattenerPreset} and color: {profile}. In composite output, preserve writes overprinting fills and strokes with an overprinting graphics state (/OP, as PDF export does), discard makes overprinting fills and strokes knock out and simulate prints them as Overprint Preview shows them (multiplied); either way the file has no overprint left. Separations always keep overprints. flattenerPreset (High Resolution, Medium Resolution, Low Resolution or a saved preset, flattener.presets.list) flattens transparency before printing, as Object → Flatten Transparency does; empty, a PDF keeps it live (PostScript, which has none, uses file.print's flattenerPreset, else this one, else medium). printAsBitmap prints each composite page as one image of the art at the document's raster effects resolution. color.profile names an RGB or CMYK profile: composite PDF colours are converted to it with color.intent (CMYK colours keep their numbers with preserveNumbers), so a CMYK profile writes device CMYK; separations separate with a CMYK one. Settings saved before these options load with their defaults.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"file.print","params":{"path":"/tmp/proof.pdf","settings":{"advanced":{"overprints":"simulate","flattenerPreset":"High Resolution"},"color":{"profile":"VectorCraft Generic CMYK (SWOP-like)","intent":"perceptual"}}}}}

Rotated bounding boxes

Every object keeps the angle of its own axes (counter-clockwise degrees; document.inspect reports it as a node's rotation, and the selection's shared angle as selectionRotation, 0 when the selected objects differ). Transforms turn it with the object while its path geometry is still baked, so after a rotation the bounding box and its handles stay square to it, as in the reference app. object.rotate {angle, absolute: true} turns the selection to an angle (the Transform and Properties panels' Rotate field), and object.setBounds measures width, height and the reference point along the turned box (x, y stay page coordinates). Objects turned together share the box. A new group starts square to the page. object.resetBoundingBox squares the box again without moving the art.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.rotate","params":{"angle":45,"absolute":true}}}

Select All while editing type

While the Type tool edits text (a click into type, pointer_gesture with "tool":"type"), select.all (Cmd+A, press_key {key: "A", mods: {cmd: true}}) selects all of that text instead of the art, as in the reference app, and returns {editing, start, end} (the text's id and the selected byte range, which text.getRange and text.setRangeStyle take); the art selection stays as it is. Without text being edited it selects every object and returns {count}. Text in threaded frames is selected one frame at a time.

{"name":"press_key","arguments":{"key":"A","mods":{"cmd":true}}}

Empty point type

Point type the Type tool places with a click and leaves empty is discarded when editing ends: Escape, another tool, a click elsewhere, switching documents, or a command that takes the text out of the selection (select.none, a select.set of other objects). The steps since the click go with it (text.discardEmpty {id}), so the document and its undo history are as if the click never happened. Commands on the edited text (the Character panel's text.setRangeStyle {id}) keep it in editing. Area type dragged as a frame and type in or on a path keep their frame (Object → Path → Clean Up removes empty text).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"text.discardEmpty","params":{"id":42}}}

Resizing area type

As in the reference app, dragging a bounding-box handle of area type resizes its type area instead of scaling the type: the Selection tool sends object.transform {matrix, typeAreas: true}, which reshapes the frame of each area type object it transforms (other objects, type inside groups and point type transform as usual) and reflows the text at its size, through its thread too. text.reshapeArea {id, anchors: [[subpath, anchor]…], dx, dy} moves frame anchors with their handles (Direct Selection dragging a corner, or an edge's two ends), and text.areaOptions {width?, height?} sizes the area from its top-left corner (the query returns both). Each is one undo step. Object › Transform › Scale, the Scale tool and the Transform panel still scale the type.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"text.reshapeArea","params":{"id":42,"anchors":[[0,2]],"dx":40,"dy":60}}}

Moving and flipping type on a path

Type on a path flows between a start and an end bracket, stored as fractions of its path's length. type.pathOptions {start?, end?, flip?, effect?, alignToPath?, spacing?, ids?} sets them and the rest of Type on a Path Options: end: null puts the end bracket back at the end of the path (or once round a closed one); flip then turns the type to the other side of its path, the path running the other way and the brackets swapping ends so the type keeps its stretch of the path; alignToPath runs the ascender, descender, center or baseline (the default) along the path; spacing (points) closes glyphs up round the outside of curves and opens them up round the inside. With none of them it queries the first selected type on a path: {start, end, flip: false, effect, alignToPath, spacing}. The Options dialog shows Effect, Flip, Align to Path and Spacing and leaves the brackets where they are. As in the reference app, the Selection and Direct Selection tools show selected type on a path's brackets: dragging the start or end bracket (pointer_gesture) sets where the type begins or ends, dragging the centre bracket slides the type along its path and, dragged across the path, flips it (with Cmd/Ctrl held it only slides). Each is one undo step.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"type.pathOptions","params":{"start":0.25,"end":0.75,"flip":true}}}

Constrain proportions

The link between W and H in the Transform panel, the Properties panel and the Control bar is the constrainProportions preference (prefs.get / prefs.set). With it on, those fields send proportional: true to object.setBounds, which scales the other dimension by the same factor; agents pass proportional themselves.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"prefs.set","params":{"key":"constrainProportions","value":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.setBounds","params":{"width":200,"proportional":true}}}

Plug-ins

WebAssembly plug-ins (plugins.md) are installed per process and reached through commands: plugin.install {path | dataBase64} installs one, plugin.list / plugin.info {id} describe them (parameters, schema, defaults). An object filter runs on the selected paths and compound paths with plugin.run {id, params} (one undo step; it may change, delete or add objects, and the result is selected). A live-effect plug-in is an effect with id plugin.<id>: effect.apply, effect.setParams and effect.expandAppearance work as for built-in effects, and effect.list lists it. A failing plug-in returns an error and leaves the document as it was.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"plugin.install","params":{"path":"/plugins/desaturate.wasm"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"plugin.run","params":{"id":"org.vectorcraft.example.desaturate","params":{"amount":60}}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"effect.apply","params":{"effect":"plugin.org.example.wobble","params":{"size":4}}}}

Colour adjustments

Effect → Color Adjustments holds live effects that recolour what an object paints with (fills and strokes, gradient stops, type, gradient meshes, embedded images; on a group or layer every member), each colour keeping its colour model: adjust.brightnessContrast, adjust.curves (points as "x,y x,y …" or [[x, y], …], 0–255), adjust.levels, adjust.hueSaturation, adjust.shiftToColor and adjust.temperatureTint (effect.list documents their parameters). Apply them with effect.apply like any effect, or with item to recolour one fill or stroke; they stay editable (effect.setParams), export with the adjusted colours (an adjusted image as a recoloured copy) and become permanent with effect.expandAppearance. Patterns and the shadows and glows of raster effects keep their colours.

Vector halftone

object.vectorHalftone turns the selection into vector dots, lines or shapes sized by its tone (mono, or CMYK screens multiplied over each other), clipped to the art's outline by default:

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.vectorHalftone","params":{"shape":"circle","frequency":25,"angle":45,"mode":"cmyk"}}}

Fonts

Type can use the bundled fonts, fonts added to the session and the fonts installed on the system (none on the web): the system's and the user's font folders (Windows: Fonts and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts, plus fonts registered outside them, such as fonts installed as shortcuts; macOS: /System/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts, /Network/Library/Fonts, ~/Library/Fonts and downloaded system fonts; Linux and BSD: /usr/share/fonts, /usr/local/share/fonts, ~/.fonts and the XDG data folders' fonts, ~/.local/share/fonts among them, and in a Flatpak sandbox the host's fonts). The installed fonts are cataloged once per session (in the background when the app starts, else on the first lookup by family name), so opening, placing, pasting and importing files find them whatever ran before. text.fontList lists every family available, the installed ones included, as the font menus do: without the system's hidden families, whose names start with "." (macOS's ".SF NS", ".LastResort"), which still resolve when a document names them. With family it gives that family's styles (upright by weight, then italics) and fails when the family isn't available. text.rescanFonts (Character panel menu › Refresh Font List) scans the font folders again, for fonts installed or removed since the app started: type set in a font that became available redraws in it, without editing the document. The app does so by itself when its window comes to the front and a font folder changed meanwhile.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"text.fontList","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"text.fontList","params":{"family":"Source Serif 4"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"text.rescanFonts","params":{}}}

Tool options

tool.setOption reads and sets a tool's options, headless too: {key, value} or {values: {…}} sets them on the active tool, tool names another one, and {} just reads them; the result is the tool's options. The options a tool keeps last across tool switches (and documents) and are saved with the preferences (toolSettings in prefs.get's full object), as the reference app keeps them: the Liquify tools' brush and tool options, Mirror & Cut's axis and side, Puppet Warp's mesh, the Symbolism brush, the line, grid, pencil, brush and eraser tools' options, polygon sides and star points. The Liquify tools share one set of Global Brush Dimensions (width, height, angle, intensity), and the Symbolism tools one brush. Interaction state (pins, a reference point) starts afresh.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"tool.setOption","params":{"tool":"twirl","values":{"width":60,"rate":90}}}}

Perspective grid

The grid is document data (perspective.grid.set edits the model directly). perspective.grid.get reads it: grid (the model), define (the Define Grid fields), station (the viewer: x the centre of vision on the horizon y, distance from the picture plane, in points) and defined (false while the document uses the default grid). perspective.grid.define sets the grid from the Define Grid fields: kind, units, scale ([artboard, real world]), gridline, angle (the viewing angle, 0–90°), distance (the viewing distance), horizonHeight, thirdVp ([x right, y up] from the centre of vision), leftColor, rightColor, groundColor ("#rrggbb") and opacity (0–100). Lengths are real-world lengths in units drawn at scale; missing fields keep the grid's. Only what differs changes (an unchanged OK is no undo step): a new type, angle or distance moves the vanishing points around the station point, which stays put. In two- and three-point grids the viewer looks at the left plane at the viewing angle, so the vanishing points sit at x − distance/tan(angle) and x + distance·tan(angle).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.grid.get","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.grid.define","params":{"units":"inches","gridline":0.5,"angle":30,"distance":6,"horizonHeight":3}}}

Perspective grid presets: perspective.presets.list lists the built-in views ([1P-Normal View], [1P-Low View], [1P-High View], [2P-Normal View], [2P-Low View], [2P-High View], [3P-Normal View], [3P-Low View]; builtIn: true, fitted to the first artboard, protected), then the saved ones, each with its Define Grid fields. perspective.grid.preset {name} (or {kind}, that type's normal view) resets the grid to one, fitted to the first artboard. perspective.presets.save {name?, newName?, preset?, …fields} saves a preset: just {name} saves the document's grid (View → Perspective Grid → Save Grid as Preset). perspective.presets.delete {name}, perspective.presets.export {names?, path?} (a .vcperspective JSON file; without path it returns data) and perspective.presets.import {path? | data? | dataBase64?, replace?} manage them. Saved presets are kept with the preferences, and a grid whose fields are a preset's is named after it (name).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.grid.preset","params":{"name":"[2P-Low View]"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.presets.save","params":{"name":"Street","units":"feet","scale":[1,48],"gridline":1}}}

Perspective grid view options (View → Perspective Grid; view state saved with the document, no undo step, each {on?: bool}, no param toggles, → {on}): perspective.grid.lock (Lock Grid: the grid's widgets can't be dragged), perspective.grid.lockStation (Lock Station Point: dragging one vanishing point turns the view around the station point, so the other one moves), perspective.grid.snap (Snap to Grid, on by default: perspective.draw lands the drawn corners, and perspective.move the nearer edge, on gridlines within a quarter cell; both take snap: false) and perspective.grid.rulers (Show Rulers: a ruler up the line where the planes meet, in the grid's units at its scale). Gridlines draw in the Define Grid colours at its opacity.

Perspective grid widgets: with the Perspective Grid tool (pointer_gesture), the vanishing points (Shift keeps the horizon; with Lock Station Point the other one swings), the horizon, the third vanishing point, the origin, the left and right ground-level points (24 px from the origin along each wall's ground line: they move the whole grid; Shift keeps one axis), the left and right extents (separate: extent and extentRight; Alt drags both, Shift goes by whole cells), the vertical extent and the cell size widget (on the line where the planes meet, a cell up, or more cells while they're small) reshape the grid; Lock Grid stops them. The Plane Switching Widget stays put in a corner of the document window (headless: the first artboard's top-left corner); a press on it picks the plane with any tool while the grid shows (choosing a perspective tool shows it, and perspective.grid.show hides it again with the tool still chosen), and the keys 1–4 (key with "1"…"4") pick the left, horizontal, right and no plane. perspective.widget.options {show?, position?} (Perspective Grid Options, double-click the tool) hides it or moves it to topLeft, topRight, bottomLeft or bottomRight, kept with the preferences (prefs.get/prefs.set key perspectiveWidget).

Envelopes

Object → Envelope Distort wraps the selection in a live envelope: object.envelope.makeWithWarp (style: arc, arcLower, arcUpper, arch, bulge, shellLower, shellUpper, flag, wave, fish, rise, fisheye, inflate, squeeze or twist; bend, h and v in % from -100 to 100; horizontal or orientation), object.envelope.makeWithMesh (rows, cols: 1–50) and object.envelope.makeWithTopObject (the topmost selected path becomes the envelope). object.envelope.info reads the selected envelope's settings (type, the warp's or mesh's values, fidelity and the options, editing), or with no envelope selected the options new envelopes get. With an envelope selected, object.envelope.resetWithWarp and object.envelope.resetWithMesh (rows, cols, maintainShape: true keeps the current shape) switch its kind and keep its content. object.envelope.options sets fidelity and the options (antiAlias, preserveShape: clippingMask or transparency, distortAppearance, distortLinearGradients, distortPatternFills; the last two need distortAppearance); with no envelope selected it sets them for new envelopes. New envelopes start with Distort Appearance on, as in the reference app; envelopes saved before these options existed keep their old look (appearance applied after the distortion).

object.envelope.release gives back the content and the envelope's shape (a grey gradient mesh for warp and mesh envelopes, the path for a top-object envelope); the content keeps the envelope's opacity, blend mode and opacity mask (a group around it carries them when there are several objects). object.envelope.expand, and object.expand with object on, replace envelopes by groups of their distorted content that keep the name, transparency, knockout and opacity mask. Type inside an envelope distorts as its glyph outlines, run by run in each run's paint, on the canvas and in every export (SVG, PDF, EPS, EMF/WMF, DXF). Everything inside bends with the envelope: images as a raster mesh warp (cut into pieces by Fidelity, each a clipped image under its own affine map; SVG shares the pixels between the pieces), symbol instances as their symbol's art, and with Distort Appearance strokes (as their filled outlines) and geometry effects; with it, Distort Linear Gradients bends linear gradients and Distort Pattern Fills the pattern tiles. A transformed envelope keeps its warp in its own frame (kind.frame in document.inspect; rotating a warp envelope turns the warp with it), and move and scale keep it square to the page.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.envelope.makeWithWarp","params":{"style":"arch","bend":40}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.envelope.resetWithMesh","params":{"rows":3,"cols":3,"maintainShape":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.envelope.options","params":{"fidelity":80,"distortAppearance":true,"distortLinearGradients":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.envelope.info","params":{}}}

Liquify tools

The Liquify tools (warp, twirl, pucker, bloat, scallop, crystallize, wrinkle) drag a brush over paths: the selected ones, or with nothing selected every path the brush passes over. A stroke is one undo step and one object.liquify journal entry, which an agent can also run directly. Their options (tool.setOption) are the Global Brush Dimensions shared by the seven tools (width, height in pt, angle, intensity 0..1, usePressure, showBrush) and the tool's own: detail (1..10); simplify (0..100) with simplifyOn (Warp, Twirl, Pucker, Bloat); rate (Twirl, -180..180°); complexity (0..15) and affectAnchors, affectIn, affectOut (Scallop, Crystallize, Wrinkle: what the brush moves); horizontal, vertical (Wrinkle, 0..1). Alt-drag sizes the brush from its current size (with Shift too it keeps its proportions). With Use Pressure Pen on, each pointer_gesture event's pressure (0..1) is the intensity there, and object.liquify takes points as [x, y, pressure].

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"tool.setOption","params":{"tool":"bloat","values":{"width":80,"height":80,"usePressure":true}}}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"bloat","events":[{"kind":"down","x":280,"y":150,"pressure":0.3},{"kind":"drag","x":280,"y":200,"pressure":0.8},{"kind":"up","x":280,"y":250}]}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.liquify","params":{"tool":"scallop","points":[[300,150],[300,250]],"complexity":3,"affectAnchors":false}}}

Holding the brush still keeps Twirl, Pucker and Bloat working, scaled by the time held: every tenth of a second the stroke's last point repeats in object.liquify's points, one more dab there (other tools ignore repeated points). Give a pointer_gesture event holdMs (0..60000) to hold the pointer that long after it, button down; the same time gives the same result. Liquify reshapes paths only: type, symbols, images, graphs, meshes, and envelopes, repeats and blends with their contents stay as they are, and guides are never touched. object.liquify returns those under the brush in skipped with a warning, which the gesture's requests carry as {"status": …} (the status bar in the app). A drag applies only the dabs each new sample adds; the result equals applying the whole stroke at once, so the journal entry replays it exactly.

{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"twirl","events":[{"kind":"down","x":300,"y":200,"holdMs":800},{"kind":"up","x":300,"y":200}]}}

Perspective Selection

Objects in perspective keep their attachment themselves (perspective on the object: plane and depth, the distance along the plane's normal), so copies, duplicates and pastes stay attached. With the perspectiveSelection tool, a drag moves the selection within its plane (perspective.move; Alt copies), the bounding-box handles scale it in plane space (perspective.transform; Shift keeps proportions, Alt scales about the centre), and press_key 5 during a drag switches the move to perpendicular to the plane (press again to switch back). The arrow keys nudge a selection in perspective by the keyboard increment (perspective.nudge; Shift ×10, Alt copies). Object › Transform › Transform Again repeats the last perspective move or scale in plane space.

{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"tool":"perspectiveSelection","events":[{"kind":"down","x":480,"y":410},{"kind":"drag","x":470,"y":405}]}}
{"name":"press_key","arguments":{"key":"5"}}
{"name":"pointer_gesture","arguments":{"events":[{"kind":"up","x":470,"y":405}]}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.transform","params":{"matrix":[1.5,0,0,1.5,0,0],"copy":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.transformAgain","params":{}}}

Planes move along their normals: perspective.plane.move {plane, offset | by, objects} (leftOffset, rightOffset, groundOffset in the grid). The plane widgets (a diamond on each plane, drawn while the grid shows) do it with the Perspective Grid and Perspective Selection tools: a plain drag moves the plane alone, Shift-drag moves the objects on it too, Alt-drag copies them; double-clicking a widget (or ui.perspectivePlane {plane}) opens the perspectivePlane dialog (location in points, objects: none, move or copy). Objects keep their place when the grid's definition changes, as in the reference app; perspective.grid.set with reproject: true moves them with it instead. perspective.plane.matchObject (Object › Perspective › Move Plane to Match Object) moves the plane of the selected object onto it.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.plane.move","params":{"plane":"right","offset":40,"objects":"move"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.plane.matchObject","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"ui.perspectivePlane","params":{"plane":"ground"}}}

Type and symbol instances attached to a plane stay type and symbol instances: their perspective record keeps a projection (a 3 × 3 matrix) the canvas and every export (SVG, PDF, EPS, EMF/WMF, DXF, PNG) draw their outlines through, so they are really foreshortened and still editable. perspective.editText (Object › Perspective › Edit Text, or double-clicking the type with the Perspective Selection tool) shows the type flat where it is drawn, in isolation mode, for the Type tool and text.* commands; object.exitIsolation projects it again. Release with Perspective keeps their look. Shape, spiral, polar grid and flare drags draw on the active plane while the grid shows, and so do the click-to-size dialogs (perspective.draw with at: the click; sizes are plane units).

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.editText","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"text.setText","params":{"text":"OPEN"}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.exitIsolation","params":{}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"perspective.draw","params":{"command":"shape.rectangle","params":{"x":470,"y":300,"width":50,"height":30},"at":[470,300]}}}

Blends

object.blend.make blends the selected objects (or ids) into a live blend. Spacing and orientation default to what object.blend.options set with no blend selected (object.blend.info reads them: target: "defaults"), else Smooth Color and Align to Page. starts gives, per object, the anchor of its first subpath the blend starts from (as the Blend tool's clicks on anchor points do; an open path's last anchor runs it the other way). A blend among the objects takes the others in as more key objects, keeping its options, name and transparency:

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.blend.make","params":{"ids":[12,15],"starts":[0,2],"steps":8}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.blend.make","params":{"ids":[20,31]}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.blend.info","params":{}}}

A blend's spine is the straight lines between its key centres until it is edited. object.blend.info lists it (spine.anchors, keyAnchors: the point each key sits on). object.blend.spine.addAnchor {x, y} adds a point where the spine passes nearest, object.blend.spine.moveAnchor {anchor, x, y} moves a point (a key on it moves along; with handle: "in" | "out" it places that handle) and object.blend.spine.removeAnchor {anchor} deletes a point no key sits on; the first edit turns the spine into a path. Moving a key moves its end of the spine. Release (object.blend.release) leaves the spine as a path that paints nothing (spines in the result):

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.blend.spine.addAnchor","params":{"id":40,"x":150,"y":100}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.blend.spine.moveAnchor","params":{"id":40,"anchor":1,"x":150,"y":20}}}

How blends interpolate: closed shapes start where they twist least unless starts picks the anchors; strokes interpolate weight, dashes (a solid stroke counts as the dashed one with its gaps closed), miter limit, arrowhead scale and width profiles, while caps, joins, alignment, arrowheads and brushes switch halfway; gradients of one kind with different stop counts resample to a common set of stops. Groups pair their members in stacking order (members only one group has grow out of the other's centre), compound paths stay compound paths, and type, symbol instances and images interpolate their transforms (type also its colours, stroke weight and size run by run; the words and the symbol switch halfway). New blends are knockout groups (object.setProps {knockout} changes it), drawn on the canvas as they export. object.blend.expand and object.blend.release keep the blend's name, transparency, opacity mask and appearance (Release on a group around the keys and spine when the blend has any), and object.expand with object: true expands the blends in the selection.

Editing envelopes

object.envelope.editContents {editing} switches between editing the envelope and its contents (the menu item reads Edit Envelope while the contents are edited; it has no default shortcut, since the reference app's is Paste in Place here). While the contents are edited, clicks hit the content where it sits undistorted and the Selection tool selects it. A mesh envelope's points have bezier handles (kind.handles, offsets right/left/down/up; none stored means the smooth mesh through the points, as older files have): object.envelope.setMeshPoint {id, index, x, y, handle?} and object.mesh.movePoint, object.mesh.addLine and object.mesh.deletePoint edit them like a gradient mesh's (one undo step each). On the canvas a selected envelope shows its mesh; the Mesh tool and Direct Selection drag its points and the clicked point's handles, and the Mesh tool adds a row and a column where it clicks inside. The Control bar shows Edit Envelope / Edit Contents, the warp's style, orientation, bend and distortions (or the mesh's rows and columns), Reset (an unbent warp, a flat mesh) and Envelope Options.

{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.envelope.editContents","params":{"editing":true}}}
{"name":"run_command","arguments":{"command":"object.mesh.movePoint","params":{"id":12,"index":4,"x":220,"y":140,"handle":0}}}