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Adobe Linguistic Library Plug-ins SDK

Updated October, 2007

The "Adobe Linguistic Library plug-ins SDK" contains information and resources related to developing software components (plug-ins) for Linguistic Library. With the Linguistic Library SDK downloaded and installed, you can begin writing plug-in components to extend Linguistic Library functionality and provide additional linguistic services to multiple Adobe products.

Linguistic Library is a shared library that provides a uniform API to all Adobe applications that are utilizing linguistic services like spelling, hyphenation, user dictionaries, or thesauri. Today, these client applications include Adobe Acrobat® 8, LiveCycle® Form Designer, Adobe InDesign® CS3, Adobe Illustrator® CS3, and Adobe Photoshop® CS3. We expect this list to grow over time.

Linguistic Library behaves as an intermediary between Adobe applications and linguistic service providers. On the one side, its uniform API to Adobe applications preventy changes and additions to a linguistic service being propagated to the applications. On the other side, it provides an open architecture that allows third-party linguistic-service providers to supply linguistic services through Linguistic Library, so the services can be used by all Adobe applications.

Thus, through its extensible architecture, the advantage of implementing plug-ins through Linguistic Library is that these additional linguistic services are available to all Adobe products listed above automatically if they use Linguistic Library. Would you not use Linguistic Library, you would need to write programs against every particular product API.

In addition, the independence achieved by Linguistic Library makes it possible for third-party providers to add new linguistic services even after the Adobe applications are installed.

The main SDK document is "Adobe Linguistic Library Plug-ins Programming Guide", which is available from this page as a separate download. The programming guide will help you develop plug-ins for Adobe® Linguistic Library. It describes the Linguistic Library and walks you through creating your own plug-in and includes a reference section covering specific API methods.

• Download the Adobe Linguistic Library plugins programming guide (PDF, 2 MB)
• Download the Adobe Linguistic Library plugins SDK

The intended audience for this document is developers with a basic understanding of Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) technology and Apple's CFPlug-in API (since the Linguistic Library plug-in architecture is based on these technologies).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Developers need to be aware that, due to the fact that only Adobe InDesign® CS3 provides a dynamic user interface to switch between resources of different linguistic services providers, currently only Adobe InDesign® CS3 can take advantage of additional linguistic plug-ins. Other client applications either do not have a user interface to select between plug-ins since they are using a single provider by default, or they have a fixed list of plug-ins to choose from.

Adobe is working on having a linguistic resource selection mechanism available in all client applications of the Linguistic Library in the future. As they become available, updates and information can be obtained from this page.