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Today, Adobe officially announced that InDesign CS2 Server, a server version of its end-user typography and design software for Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, and Mac OS X Server, will ship later this fall.
The company is offering the new server to developers and systems integrators creating automated publishing systems. The company also released the names of developers that are working on products based on the Server. Adobe is not selling InDesign CS2 Server to end users.
Whitney McCleary, senior product design manager for InDesign CS2 Server, said that Adobe has been working on the server since early 2004. Adobe made the decision to offer an OEM product rather than an end-user solution early on in the development process.
“This approach is very consistent with Adobes long-term approach,” said McCleary. “We build platform technologies rather than vertical solutions.”
The new server shares the same code base as InDesign and InCopy, and natively reads and writes all of the file formats supported by the user version of InDesign CS2.
InDesign CS2 Server adds specialized features not found in the desktop version, including error capturing and logging, the ability to run multiple instances of the server concurrently for processing multiple tasks, and a complete separation of the user interface from the core engine. Adobe is not providing a user interface, but OEMs can add native and Web-based user interfaces.
Kiyo Toma, Adobes product manager for InDesign CS2 Sever, described the error capturing and logging as way to keep the server running for periods of up to 30 days without stopping. When the server receives an error, such as a missing font or art element, it logs an error message into a log file rather than stopping the process.
“The goal was 30-day uptime,” said Toma. “Desktop software tools typically have a 24-hour testing cycle.”
For scripting, InDesign CS2 Server uses the SOAP (Small Object Access Protocol), an XML-based standard. The servers supports a SOAP API called Runscript, which directs InDesign to run a script written in JavaScript, VBScript, or AppleScript. Developers can also use C++ and Adobe-compatible plug-ins to create solutions.