'Offline' Programming for FP Desktop

I am a programmer who supports a prepress person who uses FusionPro Desktop. I would like to be able to write complex scripts on my computer (which does not have FusionPro installed) for the prepress person to use.

I would like to use (at my desk) Microsoft Visual Studio or Adobe ExtendScript Toolbox (or some other software) to allow me to write JavaScript with Intellisense help --- including the FusionPro specific functions and routines.

Is there a way I can reference the libraries or assemblies of FusionPro inside of one of these external editors? -- At least to rough-in these scripts before we cut and paste them into the real app.

I know the simple answer is 'Buy another copy of FusionPro Desktop' however our company doesn't want to do that at this time.

Dan or Alex can you help me out?

-c

-c

You may want to look into FP Designer. It is a full-featured free version of FP Desktop. The only limitation is that you can only compose 1 record for output. You can do all the necessary programming and testing with Designer. Then take your template over to a full version Desktop or Server machine and run an entire file. I sometimes take work home and program on my pc, then collect the work as a .zip file and bring that back to work to use on my full versioned machine there.

The software is exactly the same for Designer, Desktop and the Server versions. The only difference is the activation key that you use when you install it. Simply contact Alex Marshall and ask for a Designer activation key.

Good Luck,

Hello,

Unfortunately, Printable doesn't directly support the use of external editor workflows for script creation of FusionPro Desktop rules. The JavaScript rules engine is an integral part of the application and was designed to work in concert with the Desktop product itself (as well as our other FusionPro VDP products). By using the Desktop product itself to create and manage rules, we are able to best ensure that the rule creation process will yield expected results within our product. Opening this up to any external editor introduces significant risk of rules failing to produce the results expected or, quite possibly, causing composition and output errors from our VDP engine.

We routinely update the custom JavaScript extensions that we supply with the application (barcode logic, copyfit logic, FusionPro class, etc) so using an external editor to work with our extensions runs the risk of having those rules be out of sync with the underlying JavaScript rules engine built into the product.

As David mentioned, we do have a product called FusionPro Designer that is essentially a light-weight Desktop product. However, Designer is supplied only to our FusionPro Server customers as part of their annual support and maintenance agreements and is not available for individual purchase.

I completely understand your need to support your users via the creation of scripts for their templates. We often see this division of programmer/designer within the VDP workflow who need to collaborate on template design. This is one of the numerous reasons we have priced the Desktop product at $599 per license to allow an organization to affordably place multiple licenses within their environment.