Adobe Central Output Server

Version 5.7

Readme File

March 2009

Edition 3.0

Copyright 2009 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.

This file contains important information that was not available when the product documentation was written. Review this information before installing this version of Adobe Central Output Server (Central).


Contents

What's New

Supported Platforms and System Requirements

Known Issues

·  Using a Mapped Drive for the Collector Directory

·  Mail Reader

·  SMTP and MIME Base64-Encoded Messages

·  Messaging Agent

·  Display of Envelope Fields with a Non-System Code Page

·  Print Agent Backward Compatibility Issues

·  Command Line Option Defaults Changed

·  Reformatting Global Field Data

·  Printing 8-bit Gray-Scale Graphics

·  Positioning of Double-Byte Characters

·  Processing XML Data

·  Code Page ISO-8859-1

·  Processing Instruction Syntax

·  Unrecognized Options (Message Severity)

·  View Manager

·  Transformation Agent

·  Upgrading a Previous Central Installation

·  Uninstalling Central

·  Uninstalling Central Versions 5.3 or 5.4

· Installing Central  

·  Unknown Publisher Security Warning

· Documentation - Central Output Server version numbers

The Documentation Set

Licenses and Copyrights


What's New

The What's New document (WhatsNew.pdf) contains details on the new features added to Adobe Central Output Server and the Agents.

This release contains a number of bug fixes, which are summarized in the Resolved Issues file (resolved_issues.txt). This file is located in the directory where you installed Central, by default C:\Program Files\Adobe\Central.

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Supported Platforms and System Requirements

The following are the supported Microsoft Windows platforms for Central 5.7:

Supported Platform

Supported Version

Processor

Microsoft Windows 2000

Server Update Rollup #1 for Service Pack 4

x86 or VMware ESX/GSX

Microsoft Windows 2003

Server (32 bit) Service Pack 2 - Standard and Enterprise

x86 or VMware ESX/GSX

Microsoft Windows 2008

Server (32/64 bit) - Standard and Enterprise

x86 or VMware ESX/GSX

Microsoft Windows XP

Service Pack 3

x86 or VMware ESX/GSX

Microsoft Windows Vista

Service Pack 1

x86 or VMware ESX/GSX

Note: Central is not supported on a Microsoft Windows 2000 IPv6 environment.

The following are the supported Microsoft Windows e-mail systems for Central 5.7:

Central Platform

E-Mail Server

E-Mail Client

Protocol

Windows 2000

Exchange 5.5
Exchange 2000

Outlook 2000

MAPI
SMTP/POP3

Windows 2003

Exchange 2003

Outlook 2003

MAPI
SMTP/POP3

Windows 2008

Exchange 2007

Outlook 2007

MAPI
SMTP/POP3

Windows 2000
Windows 2003

Domino Server R5
Domino Server R6

Lotus Notes R5
Lotus Notes R6

SMTP/POP3

Note: The E-mail Client must be on the same machine as Central.

To install the base Central software, you need:

  • At a minimum, Pentium processor 450mhz with 256 MB of RAM.
  • 40 MB of space, plus 40 MB of temporary space during installation.
  • For long file names, an NTFS partition. For other issues concerning different file systems, consult your operating system documentation.
  • The Product Authorization Code (PAC). This is the 16-character code provided to you when you purchased your software or ordered your evaluation copy.

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Known Issues

Using a Mapped Drive for the Collector Directory

If you are running Central on Windows XP or Windows 2003 and want to use a shared drive for the collector directory, use a UNC name (for example, \\servername\pathname) rather than a mapped drive (for example, R:\pathname) when specifying the collector directory. Otherwise, Central will not start properly.

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Mail Reader

SMTP and MIME Base64-Encoded Messages

There is an issue with SMTP and the message text of MIME base64-encoded messages. The message text is downloaded as inline text. To download the message text correctly, ensure that your MIME messages use either non-base64 encoding or no encoding.

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Messaging Agent

Display of Envelope Fields with a Non-System Code Page

When you specify a symbol set other than your system code page, there may be discrepancies in the display of the message Subject, BCC, CC, To, and Message Text fields. To enable the proper display of characters in these fields, ensure that the message is sent via the SMTP protocol and that the message is encoded as MIME (configuration setting "SendASMime=Yes"). Note that this problem does not impact attachment files, including data files, sent with the message.

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Print Agent Backward Compatibility Issues

Command Line Option Defaults Changed

Effective with the 5.4.1 version of Print Agent, the default for two command line options has changed:

  • -aitc (Set Inline Text Control) - the default, -aitcon, is now to process Inline Text Control commands.
  • -apf (Picture Formatting) - the default, -apfon, is now to process picture formatting set for the field in Output Designer.

These changes may impact existing forms and data.

Reformatting Global Field Data

Effective with the 5.4.1 version of Print Agent, there is a new command line option, -arg (Reformat Global Field Data), added to this version of Print Agent, to control the handling of newline characters encountered in global field data. The default for this option is -argoff, which causes Print Agent, for global field data, to preserve all newline characters in the data, regardless of the current reformatting option, and to word wrap the data in accordance with the current reformatting option. This default behavior is different from the default behavior in previous versions and may impact existing forms and data.

Printing 8-bit Gray-Scale Graphics

Effective with the 5.5 version of Print Agent, the -agsm (Gray-scale Method) command line option is enhanced to add the "bluenoise" argument, which is now the default. This default behavior is different from the default behavior in previous versions and may impact existing applications.

In addition, a new command line option, -agst (Gray-scale Threshold) is added to the 5.5 version of the product, allowing the ability to define a threshold setting.

Positioning of Double-Byte Characters

In previous versions of Print Agent, when using double-byte fonts and Windows drivers, characters were incorrectly positioned in fields. This issue was addressed, effective with the 5.5 version of Print Agent, by redefining the calculation of the font baseline.

You can retain the older method of calculating the font baseline. To do so, set the variable group:UseOldWindowsFontBaseline to Yes. This can be accomplished in any of the ways that a dictionary variable can be set:

  • ^define group:UseOldWindowsFontBaseline Yes in the preamble or .dat file.
  • On the command line with -adv.
  • In the .ini file.

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Processing XML Data

Code Page ISO-8859-1

On Windows systems, the code page ISO-8859-1 is often used as an alias for Windows code page 1252, which contains Microsoft extensions to the ISO-8859-1 standard. Specifically, the codepoints from 128 (hex 80) through 159 (hex 9F) inclusively, contain glyphs (visible characters). In ISO-8859-1, these codepoints do not contain glyphs. This version does not support the Microsoft extensions on ISO-8859-1, and therefore, an XML data file claiming to be encoded in ISO-8859-1 that makes use of these codepoints will replace each character with a single space.

Therefore, we recommend that you substitute these codepoints with the equivalent Unicode codepoints. For instance, the codepoint 128 in "Windows Latin-1" is a Euro character. However, the XML Import Agent or Print Agent will not support a Euro character at codepoint 128. As a remedy, use an XML character entity reference for the Unicode Euro character at codepoint 8364 (hex 20AC), which the Agent supports.

This example illustrates the correct usage of the Euro character, and uses the character entity reference &#x20AC for the Euro:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<bill>
<total>&#x20AC; 100.50</total>

</bill>

Processing Instruction Syntax

Print Agent and XML Import Agent will now accept a new form of the ^job command inside XML data files as well as the existing form. The new recommended form is

<?xml version=1.0?>
<?adobecentral ^job jobname [-zprtname] [-axxtaskid] [jobtokens] ?>

In this form, ^job is no longer required to be on the first line of the XML file. The closing ?> is no longer required to be on a separate line, however, it must be within the first 4096 bytes of the file. See "The XML Job Card" in the "Working with Central" guide (central.pdf) for more information. This new form of the Processing Instruction was omitted from the "Integrating XML with Central" guide.

Unrecognized Options (Message Severity)

The message severity option (messaging.message.severity) specified in the Task Table of the Job Management Database does not overwrite the message severity value specified in the default XML Import Agent configuration file or in any user-defined configuration file. The intended behavior is that it should overwrite the settings in any configuration file. Therefore, ensure that you specify the message severity option in a configuration file instead of in the Task Table.

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View Manager

When View Manager receives a file, it displays a preview message box, giving you preview options. If you click Ignore, the file is moved to your system's temporary directory.

In addition, files that you choose to view are also moved to your system's temporary directory after viewing.

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Transformation Agent

In some cases, when you have a TDF File Table where the resultant output from Transformation Agent generates more than 999 data files, Transformation Agent does not create the output files in the order that the records appear in the input file. There are now two ways to address this issue.

Transformation Agent now recognizes a new configuration file setting, MaxSortOrderSize. You can add this setting to the [Options] section of the Transformation Agent configuration file, jftrans.ini. For example:

MaxSortOrderSize=1200

Transformation Agent also recognizes a new command line option, -amsonnnn, where nnnn is the maximum number of files.

In both cases, the number provided identifies the anticipated number of data files that will be created. This determines the number of zeros to pad the increment numbers.

When you supply conflicting options in the configuration file and on the command line, the command line takes precedence.

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Upgrading a Previous Central Installation

Upgrading from a previous version of Central to version 5.7 is not possible. The Setup program will not let you install Central 5.7 if it detects a previous version on your system. Previous versions of Central must be uninstalled before you can install Central 5.7.

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Uninstalling Central

When you uninstall Central, the Uninstall program removes all files originally installed with the software. This includes files which you may have customized, such as the .jmd and .ini files. It is strongly recommended that you backup any customized files before you uninstall Central.

Uninstalling Central versions 5.3 or 5.4

Central versions 5.3 and 5.4 contain a problem whereby uninstalling the software removes a section of the registry, specifically the Application branch of the event log. This problem impacts any user attempting to access the Microsoft Windows NT or Windows 2000 Application log from within the Event Viewer after the removal of Central. The following steps must be performed prior to uninstalling either Central version 5.3 or Central version 5.4 to prevent the problem:

  1. From the NT/2000 Registry, select to export the following branch to a Registry File:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application

  1. Uninstall the Central software.
  2. From the NT/2000 Registry, restore the Registry File created in Step 1.

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Installing Central

Unknown Publisher Security Warning

When you attempt to run the Central 5.7 install executable you may see a security warning dialog box that indicates that the publisher of the file could not be verified because the file does not contain a valid digital signature.  You can ignore this security warning and continue to install the software.  Even without a valid digital signature, users are able to click the Run button to confirm they want to install the software and the installation will proceed as normal.

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Documentation - Central Output Server version numbers

Any references to version 5.6 in the documentation should be considered applicable for this version of Central Output Server (5.7).

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The Documentation Set

Central includes a complete set of documentation to help you understand how to use the product and its components. The documentation resides in the Documentation folder of your Central installation. The Central Documentation Map (DocMap.pdf) provides access to this documentation set. To view the documentation, you must have Adobe Reader installed on your computer. You can download Adobe Reader from the Adobe website at www.adobe.com.

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Licenses and Copyrights

By installing this product, in addition to the Adobe license terms, you also agree to be bound by the third-party terms specified in the additional-legal-notices.html document, installed in the same location as the Central executable. Adobe recommends that you review these third-party terms.

Adobe Central Output Server includes technology from Symbol Technologies, Inc. Portions © 1994 Symbol Technologies, Inc.

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Readme File -- Adobe Central Output Server, Version 5.7 -- 1/15/2009 1:12:13 PM