If you design and create ExtendScripts targeting Adobe InDesign for other people, like we often do, you probably also need Soxy.

Our customers use a diverse range of InDesign versions (CS, CS2, CS3, CS4), so we need to make sure the custom scripts we develop are tested against the same version of InDesign as the customer’s.

So, if my customer uses, say, CS2, I’ll use InDesign CS2 to test my script before e-mailing it off to the customer. (Of course, I could use InDesign CS4, and make InDesign CS4 switch to the CS2 script object model, but I rather play it safe, and test the script in the same environment as my customer).

During these tests, I often have the need to debug the script – so I need to use ExtendScript Toolkit.

The problem is somewhat convoluted, but very annoying.

First of all, I have multiple copies of the ExtendScript Toolkit on my computer. There is ExtendScript Toolkit (goes with CS2), ExtendScript Toolkit v2 (goes with CS3), and ExtendScript Toolkit CS4.

When I want to test a script in InDesign CS2, I first make sure it resides in the appropriate InDesign scripts folder.

Then, when I see the script appear on the Scripts Palette (oops *) Panel, I’d love to right-click the script and select Edit Script from the context menu.

Here’s where it goes wrong if you don’t have Soxy: when you select that Edit Script menu item, one of the three installed copies of ExtendScript Toolkit will ‘grab’ the script – and it’s often the wrong one.

So, you need to quit the wrong ESTK, then manually launch the version of ESTK that is associated with the version of InDesign you’re using, and then File – Open… the script from there. Or alternatively, you need to drag your script onto the appropriate ExtendScript Toolkit icon. Not exactly straightforward – it’s what I call an ‘aaargh’ moment.

Thanks to Soxy, you can forget all that – simply set up Soxy to handle .jsx files, and to pick the proper copy of ExtendScript Toolkit. So, when you’re slaving away on an InDesign CS2 script, you can simply right-click the script name, and select Edit Script. The script will be opened by Soxy, Soxy checks which Scripts Panel folder the script resides in (CS2, CS3 or CS4?) and immediately forwards the script to the proper version of ExtendScript Toolkit. It’s all but invisible – and no more ‘aaargh’!

So, next time you need to debug an InDesign CS2 ExtendScript – give Soxy a try! More info and a fully functional, time limited demo can be found here:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/downloads/lightning-brain-soxy/

* Footnote: Click here to see what the Palette Panel  ’oops’ is about

If you’re involved in automation around the Adobe Creative Suite, you need to mark the week of May 3 to May 7, 2010 on your calendar – there’s another Adobe Creative Suite Developer Summit (aka CSBU Developer Summit) coming up in Seattle, at the Adobe Fremont Campus.

For the third year in a row, we’ll be running our acclaimed Getting Started With The InDesign SDK workshop during the summit – click this link for more info:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/workshop-getting-started-with-the-indesign-sdk/

(Photo courtesy of Mark Niemann-Ross)

Familiarizing yourself with the InDesign SDK takes many months of hard work and study. This workshop will slash a substantial amount from the time it takes to gain a good understanding and get properly started. Make sure you enroll as soon as possible – there is only room for 12 participants!

More about the Adobe Creative Suite Developer Summit can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/go/2010csbuDevSummit/

We have added a new feature to help work around a Finder issue in Mac OS X Snow Leopard which occurs when you double-click an InDesign document that has a ‘#’ character in its name.

Read more about it on the Adobe forums by clicking here

Download our latest version of Soxy:

http://www.rorohiko.com/soxy/

ShowPaths for Macintosh is a very simple app, with only one purpose: give you easy copy/paste access to the file path of a file or folder.

It’s released as donationware.

Have a look here for the download link:

http://www.rorohiko.com/showpaths

Soxy 1.0.4 for Macintosh adds support for EPS files. Thanks to Soxy, one can double-click an EPS file icon in the Finder – and any Photoshop EPS file will open in Photoshop; any Illustrator EPS files will open in Illustrator.

You can download Soxy from this page:

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/downloads/lightning-brain-soxy/

When that CD filled with EPS files arrives, there’s no more guessing. Simply double-click any EPS file’s icon – and Soxy will take care of it!

Here’s a small demo of how it could go.

I just upgraded my workstation to Soxy 1.0.4, but I have not configured it yet to handle EPS files.

Let’s do that first. The Soxy preferences screen can be accessed by simply double-clicking the Soxy application icon.

I now tick the Open with Soxy checkbox for the EPS file format – and from then on, my EPS file worries are over!

I have a disk with some images that originated on from a PC; when I mounted it on my desktop earlier, before I installed Soxy, I saw this:

With Soxy installed and configured, I can now simply select the two EPS file icons and double-click:

In a unnoticeable split second, Soxy analyzes both files, and hands them over to the proper applications. At the same time, it also updates the file icons to show which is which.

Turns out image1.eps is a Photoshop file, and image2.eps is an Illustrator file.

Try Soxy out today – once you’ve tried it, you will have a hard time imagining how you ever lived without it!

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/downloads/lightning-brain-soxy/

TextExporter is a plug-in for InDesign CS, CS2, CS3 or CS4. It allows you to export all the text from an InDesign document concatenated into a single RTF file, while following a natural reading order. Text files and InDesign Tagged Text are also supported.

The latest version adds support for properly exporting the bullets or numbers that are created by using bulleted and numbered paragraph styles in InDesign – normally, these bullets vanish from the resulting RTF file when exported.

Read all about it at

http://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/text-exporter/