There’s a common problem when there are multiple versions of applications like Adobe® InDesign®, QuarkXPress®, Adobe Illustrator®… installed on the same computer.

Double-clicking a file’s icon will often cause the wrong application version to launch. As a result, you might unwittingly re-save a document into a more recent file format, which could be a bad thing. Maybe it’s a customer file, and the customer might not be able to open the updated file when you e-mail it back to her.

Soxy for Macintosh has now officially been released, and is available for US$19 per computer. Soxy for Windows is also already available for sale at the same price, but it is still in beta, and will probably be officially released in early 2010.

If you are interested in purchasing more than 10 licenses, you might want to contact sales@rorohiko.com to discuss a site license.

Download a 20-day fully functional demo here:

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

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

Changes since 0.2.0b:

• Fixed bug where selections go white on some lists.
• Fixed bug where setting Soxy as the default app crashed the program.
• Some other minor bug fixes.

There’s a common problem when there are multiple versions of applications like Adobe® InDesign®, QuarkXPress®, Adobe Illustrator®… installed on the same computer.

Double-clicking a file’s icon will often cause the wrong application version to launch. As a result, you might unwittingly re-save a document into a more recent file format, which could be a bad thing. Maybe it’s a customer file, and the customer might not be able to open the updated file when you e-mail it back to her.

Soxy for Macintosh has some new features.

The latest version knows how to handle InDesign .jsx script files. Instead of stashing your .jsx files into the InDesign Scripts Panel folder, you can now simply tell the Mac Finder to assign the .jsx file name extension to be opened with Soxy.

Soxy then looks inside the .jsx file for any comments that indicate the version of InDesign the script is destined for, and it then runs the .jsx file with that version.

This means that InDesign .jsx files become almost like little stand-alone applications: you can store them wherever you like on your hard disk, and simply double-clicking them will make the script run inside the proper copy of InDesign.

Soxy must be able to guess what version of InDesign needs to be launched – it will scan the beginning of the .jsx script file for comment lines like

// InDesign CS4

or

// InDesign 6.0

or entries like

#target indesign-6

and use these to decide what version of InDesign this script ‘belongs to’. Most script .jsx files have such a comment – and if they don’t you can always open them in a text editor and add such a line at the beginning of the script.

Make way for double-clickable .jsx files!

For more info click here.

Soxy 0.1.3 is available for download, testing and purchase! It’s InDesignProxy on steroids.

If you have a Macintosh with more than one version of applications like Adobe® Illustrator®, Adobe InDesign®, QuarkXPress®… installed, and you want to avoid accidentally resaving, say, an Illustrator CS2 document in Illustrator CS3 format – then Soxy is for you.

Click here for more info, and to download a fully functional time-limited demo version.

Version 0.1.3 is our first beta release. Soxy is a ‘drop-in’ replacement for InDesignProxy - but where InDesignProxy only knows how to handle InDesign files, Soxy offers a whole range of supported document types. Check it out!

More info here…

You have a Macintosh. You handle files from in various formats, created with a range of versions. So you have more than one version of Adobe Illustrator, or more than one version of InDesign, and maybe a few different versions of QuarkXPress installed.

You double-click a file, edit and save. Gaah! You’ve just accidentally saved the document into a newer format. Know the feeling? Then Soxy will be for you.

We’re close to releasing the first beta version of Soxy (short for Son of InDesignProxy).

Soxy does everything InDesignProxy does, and more – in addition to Adobe InDesign, it also supports Adobe Illustrator (so it knows how to launch Illustrator CS3 instead of Illustrator CS4 when double-clicking an Illustrator CS3 document, for example), QuarkXPress, and PDF, and we’ll be gradually adding other formats as time passes.

Simply tell the Finder to open all .pdf, .ai, .indd,… files with Soxy instead of with their ‘native’ app, and Soxy will take care of the rest; it will analyze each file as it is double-clicked, and then automatically forward it to the proper application.

Once Soxy is released, we’ll be selling it for US$19.00. For people who download and test the beta we’ll set a ‘beta price’ of US$14.00.

Watch this space – we’ll announce when the beta is ready for download here!

We’re also trying to gauge demand for ‘Soxy for Windows‘ – if you have a need for this, or any other thoughts or ideas about Soxy, or what additional file formats we should add, let us know at marketing@rorohiko.com

P.S. We’ve also added support for InDesign SDK/C++ software developers who have both debug and release versions of InDesign installed – don’t you hate it when you double click an .indd file and InDesign CS4 Debug launches?

Lightning Brain InDesignProxy 1.0.7 is available for download!

If you have a Macintosh with more than one version of InDesign installed, and you want to avoid accidentally resaving a CS2 document in CS3 format – then Lightning Brain InDesignProxy is for you. Click here for more info.

Version 1.0.6 adds support for more file name extensions: .indd, .indt, .incd, .incx, .icml

But more important, when you assign a file name extension to InDesignProxy, version 1.0.6 will now add proper Adobe InDesign icons to any documents it manages. So your InDesign CS, CS2 or CS3 files will always carry the correct document icon, even if you have CS4 installed.

More info here…

There’s a common problem on Mac OS X when there are multiple versions of Adobe® InDesign® or Adobe® InCopy® installed on the same computer. Double-clicking an .indd file’s icon will often cause the wrong application to launch.

The horror scenario: your customer sends you their InDesign CS2 file; you double-click it. It opens in the brand new copy of InDesign CS4 you just installed on your Mac. You work on the file for two days, and send it back to your customer. They cannot open it – they only have InDesign CS2. The fun starts…

To fix this, we’ve been building a little app called Lightning Brain InDesignProxy; we had a rapid succession of ever-improving versions over the last month, but things seem to have settled – we’ve had no bug reports for a while now. Click here for more info.

We’ve released it as ‘cup-of-coffee’-ware: if you like the app, and it saves you time, we’d appreciate a nice ‘Latte Grande’ with bells and whistles – come back to the Lightning Brain InDesignProxy page and send us a US$4 donation to show your appreciation.

On the other hand, if you hate the app, or it does not work for you – please send us feedback at support@rorohiko.com; we would really appreciate that!

Check it out – click here to read more and to download it!

InDesignProxy v1.0.7

Download

See further below.

What it does

There’s a common problem on Mac OS X when there are multiple versions of Adobe® InDesign® or Adobe® InCopy® installed on the same computer. Double-clicking an .indd file’s icon will often cause the wrong application to launch.

To work around this problem, I’ve created a little application that alleviates the issue – it’s called InDesignProxy.

We also have a US$ 19.00 commercial product – Soxy, which takes the limited concepts of InDesignProxy much further.

Where InDesignProxy only supports InDesign and InCopy, Soxy supports InDesign, PDF, Illustrator, Acrobat, and QuarkXPress, and the list is still growing.

Also, Soxy is available for Windows – InDesignProxy is Mac-only

Lastly, Soxy is much easier to configure – in InDesignProxy you have to dig around a fair number of the Finder’s Get Info dialogs, and there is room for error.

With Soxy you can configure all from its concise setup screen.

The web page you’re currently on is about InDesignProxy – click here for more info on Soxy.

InDesignProxy fixes the problem by working as a ’stand-in’ for InDesign and InCopy.

You can drag/drop any of a number of InDesign-related files onto the InDesignProxy application, and InDesignProxy will analyze the dropped document and will then forward it to the appropriate version of InDesign or InCopy.

You can also use the features of the Finder to have these files automatically opened by InDesignProxy instead of by Adobe InDesign – so your InDesign documents start behaving themselves even when you double-click them.

Currently, InDesignProxy supports .indd, .indt, .incd, .incx, or .icml files. Any InDesign-related files that carry a different file name extension are not supported.

If you’d like to show your appreciation, encourage us, and support us in our continued efforts to provide the designer and prepress communities with helpful tools, you can do a US$4 donation – roughly the price of a cup of coffee – by clicking the button below. You need to know that software development is not cheap and giving away freebies does not come easy for a small company like Rorohiko.

We use PayPal as our payment processor, but all you need is a credit card – you can send us a cup of coffee without need for a PayPal account.

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