I am currently using AI 3. I've never written any scripts for Illustrator. Though I have scripting experience for other things.

I have a large existing AI file that is currently all one colour. it is made up of many text elements. It is an ASCII map. It uses alpha numeric symbols to represent terrain types.

I want to recolour each symbol depending on the symbol. for example ~ represents water so I want to recolour them all blue. I can use 'find and replace' to find each element and then change the colour of an individual element. I can 'replace all' to change all ~ to = (say) but not to change a black ~ to a blue ~.

So I figure a script with a loop that goes through each element, uses 'find' then alters a singles elements colour should be possible. Though I don't know if its possible.

I would prefer to use VBScript if possible but I've only seen JavaScript examples so far. I'm not sure is AI scripts can edit existing documents or only create new ones.

any help would be appreciated.

Anti