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

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/

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/

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

How Soxy can help you identify the PDF version of masses of PDF files with just a few clicks.

More info about Soxy:

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

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.

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

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.

To work around this problem we’ve created Soxy. – originally for Mac OS X only. Due to a large number of requests we have now also built a Windows version. The Windows version is brand new – there is not even a Readme.txt yet, and lots of loose ends, but it’s fairly functional. Stay tuned – more coming soon!

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…