Riddle Me This! Looking for Plug-In or Handy Hint

Question

Good Day, Illustrator Forum Folk:
I'm looking for a freeware or shareware plug-in (or maybe just a handy hint that I'm unaware of) for ai CS5 that will show me the transform pane's coordinates of a PREVIOUSLY selected item.
In other words, I select an object or objects. I usually write down the co-ordinates on a scrap piece of paper. Then I select a different object or place or import a new object to these co-ordinates.
My best comparison is how in Photoshop in the Info Pane you can show 1st Color Readout and 2nd Color Readout. Just need some kind of tool that captures the position and size of an object so when I select another object I can still see those previous numbers instead of having to rely on scraps of paper and handwriting.
Does anyone know of such a tool?

Answer 1

Hi Russel, it took me a while to put something together, but finally here it is. If you only wanted to "see" the values of an object, then manually use those on another object, this might work for you. I'm still working on another version where values can be copied from one object to another, but i'm running into some trouble with it.
// script.name = copyPasteValues4.1;
// script description = 'shows' transform values of selected object;
// script.required = one selected object
// script.parent = CarlosCanto // 3/18/11;
// script.elegant = false;
//#target Illustrator
if (app.documents.length > 0)
        //alert("more than 0");
        var idoc = app.activeDocument;
        sel = idoc.selection;
        if (sel.length==1)
                //alert("selection = 2")
                var ipathTop = sel[0];
                var x = sel[0].position[0]+sel[0].width/2;
                var y = sel[0].position[1]-sel[0].height/2;
                var w = sel[0].width;
                var h = sel[0].height;
                var x2 = sel[0].position[0];
                var y2 = sel[0].position[1];
                var win = new Window("palette","Selection Values");
                var panelControls = win.add("panel");
                var grpControls = panelControls.add("group");
                var grpPosLbl = grpControls.add("group");
                var grpSizeLbl = grpControls.add("group");
                var lblx = grpPosLbl.add("statictext",undefined,"X: " + x); // x.toFixed (3)); // fixed to 3 decimal places
                var lbly = grpPosLbl.add("statictext",undefined,"Y: " + y); // y.toFixed (3));
                var lblw = grpSizeLbl.add("statictext",undefined,"W: " + w); // w.toFixed (3));
                var lblh = grpSizeLbl.add("statictext",undefined,"H: " + h); // h.toFixed (3));
                grpPosLbl.orientation = "column";
                grpSizeLbl.orientation = "column";
                grpPosLbl.alignChildren = "left";
                grpSizeLbl.alignChildren = "left";    
                //add Radio buttons
                var grpRadio = win.add("group")
                var radCenter = grpRadio.add("radiobutton",undefined,"Center");
                var radTopleft = grpRadio.add("radiobutton",undefined,"Top/Left");
                radCenter.value = true;
                win.margins = 10;
                win.spacing = 10;
                panelControls.margins = 10;         
                radCenter.onClick = function(){
                   // alert(idoc.name);
                    lblx.text = "X: " + x;
                    lbly.text = "Y: " + y;
               radTopleft.onClick = function(){
                   //alert(idoc.name);
                    lblx.text = "X: " + x2;
                    lbly.text = "Y: " + y2;
                win.center();
                win.show();
         else
                alert("select 1 artItem only before running");
else
        alert ("there's no open documents");