Listed below is detailed information about changes made in recent Printer's Apprentice releases.
This list is also available as an RSS feed from the following URL:
rss-pa80changes.asp.
Add the feed (http://www.loseyourmind.com/rss-pachanges.asp) to your feed reader and you will always know when
a new version is released!
We also maintain a blog at http://blog.loseyourmind.com. The blog contains
news about upcoming versions of our products.
02/10/10 Printer's Apprentice 8.1.0007
- Installer version 8.1.0007
- Additional fixes for "Font Verdana/Tahoma does not support the style Regular". If
either of these two fonts are not installed, Printer's Apprentice will now display
a nicer dialog box and prompt the user to make sure the fonts are installed. I have
tried to eliminate all references to Verdana & Tahoma from the application.
However Visual Studio 2005 development environment has a nasty habit of adding
references to whatever your current system fonts are.
01/20/10 Printer's Apprentice 8.1.0006
- Installer version 8.1.0006
- Minor bug fixes.
01/05/10 Printer's Apprentice 8.1.0005
- Installer version 8.1.0005
- Printer's Apprentice 8.1 works great with Windows 7. There are many
cosmetic enhancments in the application for better integration with
both Windows 7 and Vista.
- Printer's Apprentice now queries the system to determine the correct font
used for drawing dialog boxes. This font is then used to render the
various screens in Printer's Apprentice. In most cases this is Segoe UI.
- New Menus & Colors tab on the Options dialog. On this screen you can
change menu, toolbar & icon styles.
You can also change the color of the accent bars used across the top of
the main screen.
- Font Files and Font Groups tabs use a new tree control. This should eliminate
the "object not set" errors that could pop up with the old control.
The old control, exptreelib.dll & .pdb, will be replaced with the new
logicnp.folderview.dll when you run the Printer's Apprentice setup program.
- Added a "Make New Folder" button to the Copy / Move Font to Folder dialog box.
- Added a "Make New Group" button to the Copy / Move Font to Font Group dialog box.
- Fixed a bug with installing Type 1 fonts. If the registry key
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Type 1 Installer\Type 1 Fonts did
not exist, then the install would fail.
- When installing multiple fonts, and one or more of them is already installed,
a dialog box would popup showing you the number to be installed and the number
already installed. This now uses a message box with Yes/No buttons instead of
just OK.
- Fixed a bug in the OpenType font reading routines. Some fonts were being ignored
if they had invalid strings in the OTF NAME table.
- When no font is selected, the Character Set and Keyboard tabs no longer
display a font. This is more consistent with the behavior of other tabs.
- Fonts that are in use, locked by Windows or protected by file permissions
often cannot be uninstalled. Additional text has been added to the
"0 Fonts were uninstalled" message box explaining why fonts can't be
uninstalled.
11/03/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.35
- Installer version 8.00.0058
- Fixed a problem with the File > Printer Setup command. It was not working on 64 bit systems.
10/13/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.34
- Installer version 8.00.0057
- Updated the web links to various pages at loseyourmind.com.
- Improved startup splash screen.
- Various minor fixes.
8/03/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.33
- Installer version 8.00.0056
- Minor cosmetic fixes and typo corrections.
- Additional coding to make Windows Fonts folder path determination error proof. In some cases the API method was failing.
- The code-signing certificate embedded in the prnapp.exe file has been updated and renewed.
7/06/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.32
- Installer version 8.00.0055
- Added speed improvements when reading fonts using the Font Files and Font Groups tab. Information such as the font name, etc is now stored in a fontcache.xml file located in the all users\application data\Printer's Apprentice folder. For more information about this feature, see the following blog entry: http://blog.loseyourmind.com/?p=158.
- Fixed a problem with Arial in pstaskdialog.dll. If Arial was missing, PA would crash when a messagebox was displayed.
- Added a new message box warning about PFM and PFB files not being in the same folder.
This appears after reading a folder and one or more TrueType fonts don't have matching
PFM & PFB files. This messagebox can be disabled after the first viewing.
- Added a fix for a crash in the print engine. If the print job was deleted from
the spooler before PA was done creating the document, then PA would crash.
- Print dialog box - Fixed abug that caused the pages to be redrawn twice when changing
the Sort By or Sort Order radio buttons.
- File > Print All Fonts In Folder - Fixed a bug that prevented the progress
dialog from being displayed properly.
- Column headers now have arrows to indicate sort order.
- Added full screen toggle mode.
5/20/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.31
- Installer version 8.00.0050
- Fixed a bug that caused font files to not be copied from readonly
media such as CDs & DVDs
4/24/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.30
- Installer version 8.00.0049
- Removed "Could not create startup log file" message box. This could be
triggered by starting two copies of the software quickly in succession.
- When trying to print Postscript based fonts, you will no longer receive the
"Printer's Apprentice cannot print Postscript fonts" dialog.
- Fixed a bug - if you started Printer's Apprentice with the Character set
tab initially selected and immediatly selected Edit>Copy, the software would
crash with an Index Out of Range Exception.
4/02/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.29
- Installer version 8.00.0048
- This version includes support for printing Adboe Type 1 fonts and OpenType
fonts that have Postscript-based outlines.
- When trying to print Postscript based fonts, you will no longer receive the
"Printer's Apprentice cannot print Postscript fonts" dialog.
- Fixed a bug that would cause the application to crash if Printer's Apprentice
was blocked by a firewall when trying to access the Internet.
- Fixed a "file not found exception" in cTypeOneInfo.vb
- Fixed a problem with the display of the ANSI/Unicode codes in the upper
right hand corner of the Character Set tab. The codes were not displaying
properly based on the settings in the Options tab.
2/23/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.28
- Installer version 8.00.0044
- This version includes a reworking of the Font Compare tab.
There is a new "Font List" tab. This automatically lists all fonts in
the current folder using the font itself.
The "Compare Fonts" tab has been renamed "Compare Selected Fonts" and
displays only the fonts that you have selected.
- Added the ability to change the display order of tab in the main UI
via the Options dialog.
- New icons for the some of the tabs in the main UI.
- Added a warning prompt to the File|Properties menu if you have
more than two fonts selected. This prevents you from accidentally opening
a lot of Properties dialogs by accident.
- Added hotkeys for the Copy to Folder, Move to Folder, Copy to Font Group
and Move to Font Group menu items.
- Fixed a bug that caused the font display colors to revert to their
initial settings after opening the Options dialog.
- Additional error checking put in place in the Tools > Control Panel
and Tools > Character Map menus. The application would fail if
control.exe or charmap.exe could not be found.
- Cosmetic changes in the shareware splash screen
- Typographical corrections in the help file.
01/20/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.27
- Installer version 8.00.0036
- Stability fixes through out the application.
- Removed options for "form fade in / out" for snappier performance.
- Improved rendering & error checking on the Sample Text tab.
Word wrap is now working correctly.
01/02/09 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.26
- Installer version 8.00.0035
- Fixed a problem with the application crashing on the Print dialog box
if the Verdana font is not installed.
- Fixed a problem where the Print dialog would crash with an overflow error.
This was happening with fonts that have invalid ascender & descender
information.
- Fixed a problem where the app could crash if your font groups folder was
invalid or missing and you tried to copy a font file to a group. There
is now an additional check in place and a dialog box will notify you
if the font groups folder is not specified.
- Fixed a bug on the Print dialog box. If you had one or more sample sheets
selected, then changed the printer, the application would print a single
sheet with some "please select something to print" text on it.
Thanks to BD for helping track this one down.
- Added a check to make sure the currently selected printer is valid
in the Print menu option. If a detached printer was selected, the software
would crash with a "settings to access printer are invalid" message.
- Fix for for the Sample Text and Font Compare tabs. The were not drawing
non-ANSI characters correctly due to an invalid declaration
of the Win32 TextOut() function.
- Fixed a bug in the Move to Font Groups command. It was not working
correctly for Adobe Type 1 fonts. Thanks to DM for pointing this out.
- Fixed a System.IO.FileNotFoundException bug in the font enumeration routine.
- Enhancement to the Edit>Copy command when the Sample Text tab is selected.
If some text is selected, then only the selected text will be copied. Otherwise
the entire contents of the Sample Text textbox will be copied.
- The Multiple Character tab now has a right-click context menu. If you click
a character in the grid, you will get a popup menu with Zoom and Copy Character
commands. Zoom will load the character in the Single Character tab. The
Copy Character command copies the character to the clipboard.
- Improved the load speed on the Copy/Move Fonts dialog box when copying a
large number (1000+) fonts.
- Font list on Copy/Move Fonts dialog box no longer freezes when copying
many fonts.
- When finished uninstalling fonts, the next available font in the list
is selected instead of the first.
- Added a "Select by Family" function to the Select menus.
- Various stability improvements.
- Additional "no spyware" text in the About > Warrenty tab.
- Additional helpful text in the exception dialog.
11/04/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.25
- Installer version 8.00.0033
- Fixed a problem with saving the configuration file. Under
some circumstances, it could become corrupt and this would
lead to all sorts of problems.
- When copying/moving a font to a font group, added code to
make sure the font groups root folder is valid. A message box
gets displayed if the folder is missing or invalid.
10/23/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.24
- Installer version 8.00.0032
- Fix for a "divide by zero" error.
10/23/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0.23
- Installer version 8.00.0031
- Fixed a bug with the Edit>Copy Font List command. If there are no fonts
selected in the currently selected tab, the application would crash.
- Compare Fonts tab - fixed a problem that resulted in an IndexOutofBounds error.
- Compare Fonts tab - as you navigate in a font list, the Compare Fonts tab now
automatically scrolls so the selected font is at the top of the list.
- Compare Fonts tab - added some code to reduce flicker.
- Compare Fonts tab - fixed a bug that caused the Compare Fonts tab to not
draw fonts correctly. This happened under a very specific set of mouse moves.
- Removed a line of code that referred to the Arial font. This could cause a
crash if Arial is not installed on the system.
- Added additional error checking for TrueType fonts that have slightly
invalid string tables. This would result in the font not being displayed in the
Font Files tab.
10/17/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.00.0022
- Installer version 8.00.0030
- More information about this release can be found our our blog
http://blog.loseyourmind.com
- Support for different character sets. You can change the character
set using the Options dialog. The current character set is
displayed in the upper right hand corner of the title bar in the
main display window.
- The printed Character Sets now respect the current character
sets. So if, for example, Cyrillic is selected in the Options dialog
box, the printed Character sets will default to Cyrillic. You can
also change the Character Set using the Options tab on the
Print dialog box. The current set name is printed on the upper
hand corner of the printed output.
- The Multiple Character window has been reworked and is
much faster in terms of redraw and resizing speed.
- You can now display a grid of up to 20x20 characters in the
Multiple Character window.
- Font file name is now displayed in the title bar of the
display window.
- Fixed a "path is of illegal form" bug on startup. This would happen
if the Fonts section of the registry contained an empty key.
- We changed our ecommerce provider. Product purchase links in the application
and help file have been changed from Regsoft to Avangate.
9/30/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.00.0021
- Installer version 8.00.0027
- Fixed a bug with an expiration date in the software.
9/25/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.00.0020
- Installer version 8.00.0026
- Fixed a start up bug - If the Print Spooler service was not started,
Printer's Apprentice would crash with an "The RPC server is unavailable" error message.
- Fixed a bug that could cause italic fonts to not print correctly if thier internal
"italic" flag was not set correctly.
- Added a much-needed scroll bar to the Sample Text tab.
- Added a "Don't show this message again" checkbox to the message box that
appears when attempting to print both TrueType and Postscript based files.
- Several menu items were missing status bar help.
9/10/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.00.0019
- Installer version 8.00.0025
- 19th public release
- Fixed the Print command on the Font Groups context menu. It was not hooked up to trigger the Print dialog box.
- Fixed a problem with the Help file. It was not initially showing the Index.
- Fixed a drawing problem with the Sample Text tab. With some fonts (Brush Script MT) the left side of the text would be clipped off.
9/06/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0 Beta #18
- Installer version 8.00.0024
- 18th public release
- The prnapp.exe and setup.exe files are now digitally signed with our
software publishing certificate. See http://blog.loseyourmind.com/?p=100
for more information.
- Added new "Check for New Version" entry on the Help menu.
- When the Font Compare tab is selected, Select All and Select None operations
are much faster. I eliminated much of the flicker and scrolling that occurred.
- Added operating system & service pack info to error handling dialog box & report.
- Added "Need Fonts" entry to the Help menu. This links to a list of font resources
on our web site.
- Added the font embedding status to the Font Information tab and
Font Information sample sheet.
- Added additional code that fixes the "object not set" error in the cShItem
segment of the tree view control. I was never able to replicate the error,
so let me know if you run into this again.
- Added error handling code for "Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and
less than the size of the collection." error in the Font Compare tab.
- Fixed an inconsistency on the Font Files & Font Groups right-click context
menu. "Deselect" is now labeled "Deselect All."
8/14/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0 Beta #17
- Installer version 8.00.0023
- 17th public release
- Added the ampersand (&) character to the Characters > Symbols menu
- Fixed a problem with the color selectors at the bottom of the screen.
The default colors were set to use Window system colors for text and
background rather than Black & White.
- Select > Deselect menu relabeled as Select > Deselect All
- Fixed a problem with ampersand characters not displaying correctly in the
Sample Text tab.
- Fixed a problem with disappearing text in the Sample Paragraphs tab of the
Options dialog box.
7/28/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0 Beta #16
- Installer version 8.00.0022
- 16th public release
- Additional work in the treeview control to eliminate the "This window
has already been registered as a drop target" error.
7/27/08 - Printer's Apprentice 8.0 Beta #15
- Installer version 8.00.0021
- 15th public release
- Fixed a bug in the font reading routines that caused the software to ignore
symbol and dingbat fonts.
- Fixed a bug that caused Printer's Apprentice to crash on startup
if Verdana was not installed.
- Fixed an "object reference not set" error when using the Font Files tab on
Vista 64 systems.
- Added initial support for A4 paper size to the catalogs. (We still need to
tweak the sample sheets for A4.)