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 Adobe's 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.

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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 OEM's can add native and Web-based user interfaces.

Kiyo Toma, Adobe's 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.

"Plug-in designers can port their plug-in solutions from the desktop version [of InDesign]," said Toma.

Toma said that there are two major use scenarios that developers could create with InDesign CS2 Server. One is editorial workflows. The other is the creation of dynamic publish services.

In an editorial workflow scenario, the end users would be working with InDesign or InCopy. Toma described this as "moving tasks off of the desktop to free up the workstation." The system based on InDesign CS2 Server would connect to editorial servers at back end for print publishing and the creation of parallel Web pages.

With a dynamic publisher system, users would interact with the InDesign CS2 Server solution via a Web-based interface, connecting with database servers for content management or catalog information. Such a system could be used to automatically generate catalogs, price lists, or brochures.

"We can fetch the content and insert it into the document itself," said Toma.

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Adobe said that several developers are using InDesign CS2 Server to create products or systems for there own use. These include Cacidi with its Extreme Enterprise Server 2, the Peter Schmidt Group ad agency, Sansui , Wave2, and XMPie. Toma also said that over 100 potential "partners" are currently evaluating InDesign CS2 Server.

Adobe said that the Peter Schmidt Group provides an InDesign Server-based system as an "integrated brand management system" for its customers. Schmidt owns the design it creates for its clients, who can change the content. Users can also create a template with the desktop version of InDesign, or have parts or the entire template dynamically created by the server. The client could enable a color scheme for users to choose, or could lock it out.

Adobe said that its OEM sales model will lead to a variety of uses of its server technology.

"We could have made a decision to create a complete solution," said Toma. "That would have meant that we would need to own everything. We didn't want to go there."

"By working with partners we can leverage their experiences, "he said. "We can give the customers more choices rather than trying to be all things to all people."

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