Using .ai (adobe illustrator) variables with Drupal variables

Question

As we know that we can assign the variables to Adobe illustrator file. Is it possible to access these variables by using Drupal 7 variables feature?

Answer 1

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: This is theoretically possible, but.

What you're referring to really amounts to rewriting some of the fundamental underpinnings of the internet. This would require, at minimum, extremely innovative development and entirely recreating several major software components. For example:

1) Users' browsers read and render hypertext. They would need to be rewritten to understand AI equivalents of links, pages, and other internet standards.

2) Javacript, Jquery, and other client-side components would need to be rebuilt from scratch. You would also need to invent a new CSS and DOM that their replacements can understand.

3) Apache .... would be mostly okay with some minor tweaks. One or two new extensions at most.

4) PHP (which stands for "PHP hypertext preprocessor" and not "PHP advanced graphical tool") would need to be entirely redone, along with all of it's extensions, integrations, and fundamental concepts.

5) Drupal and all its modules (which are build on the assumption that the output will be hypertext) would need to be substantially retooled. In particular, you would need a replacement for PHPTemplate that accesses AI objects.

So: There's a lot to do. I would say "let's get started," except that 6) AI is a proprietary product and we don't have licenses to develop and extend it.

Answer 2

I think it depends on what you want to do with the resulting file. Are you thinking of a variable data Illustrator document that would be generated from the values in Drupal? If so, I think that is very possible. The Illustrator file format specification is somewhat available, you would just need to process the file without the help of Illustrator (which may present some challenges).

If you want to generate something that would be viewable in a browser you're better off using SVG with some sort of placeholder that you could replace with regular expressions or maybe some XPath queries to get the nodes you want to manipulate and then adding your values there.

As Dominic said, the end use isn't very clear here so the answers are really dependent on what you need to accomplish.