Un-Editable Macros

[Sullyman]

Quick question....

Is there a way you can make your macros un-editable? Let say in the case of wanting to sell them without giving away your magic sauce?

 

[v_kyr]

How should that work for a sequence of recorded and stored actions, which in turn must be able to be reloaded, possibly edited and reinterpreted again? - AFAIK there is nothing like a macro compiler or sort of an obfuscator for such things, at least not in AP.

[walt.farrell]

I suspect that to truly hide one's magic sauce one would want to implement and distribute a plugin, rather than a macro.

[v_kyr]

That's right, plugins would offer this and could also have their own license manager etc. incorporated.

[Sullyman]

For me it just seems overkill to have to code a plugin and have to then involve license management, keeping in mind I'm a designer first and very limited coder/non-programmer. Being able to tick an option to keep macro's editable or not, in theory, seems a much more simple route. But then again, what do I know, it could be massive work on their end

[Sullyman]

Also, where would one go to look into programming a plugin for Affinity? Any know where to start?

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, Sullyman said:

Also, where would one go to look into programming a plugin for Affinity? Any know where to start?

AP seems to support one of the Photoshop plugin formats, so I would start by looking for PS documentation for that format. Or, possibly, GIMP documentation.

[v_kyr]

7 hours ago, Sullyman said:

For me it just seems overkill to have to code a plugin and have to then involve license management, keeping in mind I'm a designer first and very limited coder/non-programmer. Being able to tick an option to keep macro's editable or not, in theory, seems a much more simple route. But then again, what do I know, it could be massive work on their end

Well that's usually why such apps have or do offer macros or even better a sort of scripting API access, since those are overall easier to deal with for non programmers/developers. However the problem there with macros and scripts would be how to hide their implementation steps. As a designer you for sure know the Adobe apps which do offer action recording (ATN files) and JS like scripting engine capabilities here. But there too (in the Adobe world) it's difficult to hide those things from being altered at all!

[v_kyr]

7 hours ago, Sullyman said:

Also, where would one go to look into programming a plugin for Affinity? Any know where to start?

Good question! - Affinity itself doesn't offer here any public informations or samples how to make correct use of the Adobe PS API and which Win/Mac versions of those best to use. So it might be more or less try & error here, meaning you have to find out by yourself!