Developers

The c:four engine provides generic formatting, hyphenation and justification, and advanced typography capabilities for use within standalone and distributed multi-user document production systems. In support of this, the engine provides a rich toolkit of software components, encapsulating a wide range of capabilities commonly found in contemporary publishing applications. The toolkit is non-platform specific, and consequently frees the developer from many of the challenges involved in maintaining a suite of cross-platform products.

A major distinguishing feature of the engine is its inherent multi-language capabilities. The engine uses Unicode for its internal text representation, and incorporates extensible mechanisms for managing the vast range of technical problems encountered when dealing with multi-language layout and formatting. 

The architecture of the engine encapsulates the following high-level concepts:

1. Information organisation / layout
2. Formatting, hyphenation & justification
3. Information analysis
4. Font management
5. Color management
6. Rendering and printing
7. Editing / view mapping
8. Storage and retrieval
9. Internationalisation – multi-language capabilities

Target Applications

The c:four engine is scaleable, and supports the construction of target publishing systems that may vary greatly in their complexity and capability, such as:

• Lightweight text editors
• Desktop publishing applications
• Editorial / copyflow systems
• Classified systems
• Graphical Design / CAD applications
• Web publishing systems
• Technical Documentation applications

As an example of the variation in functionality that might be required, consider the following:

1. A simple standalone text editor application that has no information sharing capabilities, and which uses the local file system for storage
2. A complete document management system, comprised of applications distributed around an enterprise, and which uses multiple databases for storing shared information. Users can work concurrently on the production of documents, and shared elements within the documents.

The second of these systems would typically incorporate many different applications, each built around a subset of components provided by the c:four engine. For example, a newspaper / magazine production system might consist of:

• Front-end applications for overall layout and co-ordination of complex shared documents, containing both text and graphics
• Page planning applications, including master view of publications
• Simple text-based applications for entering raw information (stories) into the system
• Image editing / management applications
• Batch applications for filtering or printing
• Multiple databases for housing logically distinct types of information, such as image or advert libraries, articles and stories
• System administration applications for managing shared system information common to all applications, such as user permissions, access rights, preferences, and shared application-specific data tables
• Component deployment applications, for managing installations and upgrades.

The engine fully supports the heterogeneous and distributed nature of such systems.

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