Newsletter2

Lose Your Mind Development
Newsletter #2

This newsletter is mailed periodically to registered users of our software. If you have registered a product with us and you included an email address then you are on the list. To make sure you are on the list, send an email to btkinkel@igi.net. Include the word "subscribe" in the subject line of your message.

Lose Your Mind Development * Newsletter #2 * 6/24/97 ---------------------------------------------------- published regularly by Lose Your Mind Development Quality Utilities for Microsoft Windows Post Office Box 302 Haverford, PA 19041-0302 http://www.igi.net/~btkinkel email: btkinkel@igi.net ----------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION AND POLICY CHANGE ------------------------------ Here we go again with another issue of the LYMD newsletter. It has been an exciting spring for us. On April 4, we started shipping Printer's Apprentice 6.5 for Windows 95. This program has been in development for over a year. The programming seems easy compared to writing help files, publishing the manual and building a new LYMD web page. The response to this product has been tremendous. Since it is essentially a 100% rewrite, it can qualify as a 1.0 product. But we have not had the number of bugs 1.0 products usually experience. However, a 6.52 maintenance upgrade is now shipping. More on this later in the newsletter. Right now we need to touch on a policy change in regards to upgrades. In short, we will be charging to upgrade to Printer's Apprentice 6.52. Purchasers of the 6.5a product will receive a free upgrade to 6.52 and all future 6.x upgrades. All registered 6.5a users will receive a new registration code for 6.52. The reasons for this change are twofold: The emergence of the Internet has both good aspects and bad aspects for independent software developer. We are sure everyone enjoys the web and its benefits, so it is not necessary to repeat what you already know. What most software companies are worried about is theft. It has been brought to our attention that registration codes for shareware programs can be easily found on the Internet. We have used the same code for years and have knowledge that it is posted in several newsgroups. Second, the 6.5 product took far longer to develop than anticipated. We feel it is a new product and that charging a small upgrade fee is reasonable. Shareware products are a bargain. Products distributed via shareware a often far superior to their commercial, shrink-wrapped counterparts. So please support us and other shareware developers. We hope you understand the reasons for this change. More detailed information on our new policy can be found below. If you have any questions or issues about this change, please get in touch with us. The rest of this newsletter details the PA upgrade policy in depth, the changes to PA 6.52 and the future of Printer's Apprentice. Enjoy! Bryan & Suzanne OFFICIAL UPGRADE POLICY FOR PRINTER'S APPRENTICE ------------------------------------------------ * Starting with Printer's Apprentice 6.52, a new registration code will be used to crackdown on piracy of our products. * Users who have purchased or upgraded to 6.5a (i.e. you paid for it) will be emailed a new registration code that will work with PA 6.52 when it is released. You can then download 6.52 from our Web site and enter your new registration code. This registration code was emailed to purchasers of the 6.5 product in June. If you have not received it yet, please email us. * Users who have purchased PA 6.1a, previous versions of PA or other LYMD products can order the Printer's Apprentice Upgrade Pack directly from Lose Your Mind Development. The Pack costs US $12 plus shipping ($3 USA, $5 everywhere else) and includes the software on two diskettes, the 50+ page Users Manual and extensive Setup and FAQ information. Send checks payable to Lose Your Mind Development, P.O. Box 302, Haverford, PA 19041-0302 USA. Or call Public Software Library at (713) 524-6394 and ask for upgrade pricing on product number 14515. * Once you upgrade to PA 6.52, all upgrades to PA 6.5x will be free and shipped via our Web site. You will receive notification via email when they are available. WHAT'S NEW IN PRINTER'S APPRENTICE 6.52 --------------------------------------- Listed below are all fixes and enhancements made to Printer's Apprentice since version 6.50. - Fixed "Divide by Zero" error that occurred when trying to install just one TrueType font. - Placed error checking code in effort to fix "Overflow" errors some users encountered at startup. - Placed error checking code in effort to fix "Subscript out of bounds" errors some folks have encountered when installing fonts. - Added a new specimen sheet. The 72 Point Character Set prints a table of alphabet and numeric characters at 72 points. - Added a new Select button to the Print/Install/Print from CD dialogs. When you click the new Select button, a menu drops down offering choices to select All, Regular, Bold, Italic, BoldItalic and None. This is response to lots of user feedback. Many users wanted a way to select all the Regular fonts at once. - Fixed progress bar in the Install Fonts Wizard. As it looped through the fonts to install, it would display 5%, 10%, 5%, 2% and other erratic patterns. - Added links on the menu to the Lose Your Mind Development home page. - Fixed a discrepancy between printing installed and uninstalled fonts. On the Installed version of any catalog, the "(TrueType)" text next to a TT font was not being printed. - Install Fonts and Print Fonts from CD-ROM Dialog Bug Fixes - (Install only) - If a selected font file already exists in your windows\fonts folder, you could get a "subscript out range" error. - If you selected a directory of TTF files and some of those font files were currently installed, upon returning to the main PA window, those fonts would not be displayed or available in PA or other Windows apps. (In other words, installed fonts were being inadvertently uninstalled by PA) - When reading a directory or changing a directory, the full status message above the progress bar was not being displayed. - Several users noted that it can take a few moments to close this window and return to the main PA window. We have tried to tweak this routine and added a "Cleaning up..." message to the Install/Print window. - Fixed a bug in the Filter drop down listbox. If you had the directory filtered, then printed a catalog or sample sheets, then click the << Previous buttons to go back and change your filter, the filter would no longer work. Each time the filter is changed, it resulted in a "No font files" list. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS FOR PRINTER'S APPRENTICE -------------------------------------------- Printer's Apprentice is definitely a product with a future. Here is a look at what we have in store for PA 7.0 (official product name and release date to be announced). Font Groups - This is the most popular feature request. Font grouping allows you to install and uninstall font groups in batches for specific projects or documents. We already have ideas on how this works, but there are still issues to be sorted out. If you have ideas on how your dream product would handle font groups, please send us your input. To help keep things organized, please use FONTGROUPS as the subject in your email. Uninstalling Fonts - The uninstall options will be enhanced so you can remove multiple font families at once, instead of just members of one font family. Postscript Support - This is still up in the air, but we would like to add printing and installation of uninstalled Postscript fonts. Please let us know if there is really a demand for this function. More Catalogs and Sample Sheets - If you have ideas for sample sheets or catalogs, please send them our way. Speed and more speed - We will be recompiling future versions of Printer's Apprentice in a newer, faster compiler. This will optimize PA for increased speed. IN CLOSING ---------- We hope that this newsletter was informative. We really do value your input. If you have any questions about Printer's Apprentice or our other software products. Please let us know.