Printers' Apprentice History File Version 1.0 * 28 June 1991 Please read this file for the changes in this version of Printer's Apprentice. As it can be seen, this program has been a labor of love (and hate at times!) during the school year. Thanks to those who have gotten in touch with me about additions & changes to the program. Initial Release written in Visual Basic Simple viewing of fonts Ability to invoke ATM & CONTROL.EXE Color support Rescanning of system font information Bold, Italic, Roman, BoldItalic support Ability to scan through ANSI codes Points sizes 1 - 99 Screen only support No help! Version 2.0* August 1991 1. Added error trapping for "file not found" while shelling to the ATM & Windows control panel 2. Added API code to determine if shelled applications are currently running 3. Previous version only viewed ANSI 33 & above, range is now 1 - 255. "ASCII" was also spelled wrong in the application! (Yes, I am a college senior!) All references to ASCII have been changed to ANSI. The ASCII character set is only used by non-Win apps. Windows has always used the ANSI character set. 4. Special thanks to Sage Osterfeld at Atech software (the "Publisher's PowerPak" folks) for his suggestion that the user be able to directly enter the ANSI code. This has been implemented as a new menu item and an editable text box in the main window. Beer mugs to Sage! []) []) 5. The refresh font list menu item & button has been removed. The list is now refreshed anytime the current device is changed. Printer's Apprentice 2.0 defaults to the screen device on startup. 6. Printer's Apprentice now makes use of its own INI file to store values for the font, size, color, user name, and ANSI #. The PA.INI is read at startup and whenever the font lists are refreshed to determine how the font specimen is displayed. These items may be saved to the PA.INI file (*must* reside in the Windows directory) through a simple menu selection. The user's name is also stored in the PA.INI file. 7. Clipboard support is now offered. Selecting Copy from the Edit menu will send the specimen character to the clipboard in raw text format. No formatting is sent. A link option is also there. If you paste a link into WinWord or Excel with the autoupdate field on, the character WinWord/Excel will change when you change the character in PA. A nifty trick with no real purpose. 8. A DDE channel to Microsoft Word for Windows now allows you to send the currently displayed specimen character directly to Word! All formatting commands, with the exception of color, are sent along with the character. The character will appear in WinWord exactly as you saw it in The Printer's Apprentice preview window. 9. Batch printing is easy! A single menu click will bring you to the batch operations window. Select your batch operation from the drop down combo box. Use the "add", "delete", "add all", and "delete all" buttons to move fonts to the print list. After pressing go, a gauge will inform you of your printer's progress. 10. A new menu item has been added to start the Windows clipboard. As with all other program starting options, the EXE for the clipboard must be in current path. 11. Input from Printer's Apprentice 1.0 users everywhere has led to the creation of an editable text box for font samples. A new menu item, User Entered Text, has been added under Options. This puts up a floating text box where the user may enter his/her (let us not be sexist!) own text in the current font and style. This text changes as the options are changed. This box is a floating text box, it may be moved around, hidden, iconized, or closed. The print button will dump the contents to the printer. Thanks to the users who asked for this feature! Beer mugs to you! []) 12. Printer's Apprentice 2.0 is now copyrighted software. If you use PA to create font samples, browse ATM fonts, or use it simply as an on-line resource, please register your copy. A single $15 registration fee entitles you to a registration certificate, mail upgrades of registered versions, and a guilt free concious. Please join the users who have made the shareware system work. Version 2.10 * Late August 1991 1. Fixed a small bug which caused PA to crash if you selected a delete button (in Batch window) with nothing in the print list. PA would bomb out with an "illegal function call" error... not good... 2. Resolution! Who said Windows programs are device independent! The scupltured interface for PA 2.0 was actually a bitmap imported from Paintbrush. It was created on a 640x480 system. Those folks with 1024x768 monitors were seeing the bitmap shrink and distort because of the difference in resolution. This problem has now (famous last words) been fixed through the use of VB's internal, device independent drawing routines. Because the bitmaps are no longer stored in the executable file, the EXE has shrunk dramatically! 3. Some picture style fonts (dingbats & carta in particular) has very strange leading that will cause an "Unexpected error 6" message. This problem has been ironed out. Thanks to Lawrence E. Oliver, Terry Ganzel, and all the others who pointed this bug out to me. 4. The printing routines have been tweaked a bit and should run faster. 5. Various cosmetic changes have been made in the font sheets to give more information and just look better. The header has been standardized. Version 2.5 1. Simple internal speed changes... 2. Printer setup is now available through the use of a public domain DLL (PSETUP.DLL). The DLL file *must* be located in your path! This DLL also allows direct access to the Publisher's PowerPak control panel. To see PPak fonts, be sure the printer icon is selected as the current device. 3. Again, various cosmetic changes. The options menu now uses bitmaps for some menu items for that "professional look." Version 3.0 October '91 1. Addition of a "More" button to access the user text box. You may now edit text and see the control panel at the same time... 2. Removal of the screen and printer device options. PA 3.0 now uses only the printer device. This was causing *many* #380 error codes... 3. Addition of a keyboard guide and both capital and lower case spec sheets. 4. Addition of a RUN menu item that will access several utility programs (ATM, Win Control Panel, Clipboard, Atech Publisher's PowerPak. Version 3.01 1. Maintenance release Version 3.5 **Important release!** 1. The 380 error has continued to persist. The cause has finally been linked to the fact that some printer drivers do not allow the user access to the Windows HELV font. Because some printer drivers do not recognize the font, a 380 error popped up. This problem has been solved through the use of a set up process. The user is given the option of selecting a system font from the appropriate font list for the printer. MANY users have gotten in touch with me about this error. Again, my apologies. Thanks to all who have attempted to get in touch with me. 2. The user may select the default view of the Printer's Apprentice window and then save it by selecting the Save Options menu item. The option is saved in the PA.INI file. 3. A truncation algoritm has been added to the full spec sheet. The text no longer simply runs off the page, but stops at a natural spot on the page. 4. Some really W I D E fonts have the tendency to run into each other on the full spec sheet. It ussually happened between the numerals and symbols on the top half of the sheet. To prevent this, the symbols have been moved to the next line. Thanks to Bob Ulius for pointing out this glich. 5. Some cosmetic changes have been made on the inventory sheets. In particular, several users requested the name of the font be printed in another type family. Dingbat faces would not print in English, rather a string of symbols would appear! The system font (see 1 above for an explanation of the system font) is now used to print the name of the font on the left and the typeface itself is used to print a string of ABC's. Note, if the face name is too long to fit into the space, it is truncated. Again, thanks to Bob Ulius and others for requesting this change. 6. Again, W I D E fonts had a tendency to spill outside the borders on the capital & lower case specimen sheets. A font reducing algorithm has been introduced to shrink the font down to a size that will fit the page. 7. The system font can be changed during run time by choosing the menu item from Options. 8. Users with a HUGE number of font were reporting lockups on the red & green timer bar that pops up. For simplicty, this has been replaced with a simple counter (for now?). 9. The addition of an on screen keyboard of an on screen keyboard makes it easy for you to find your dingbat / picture font characters. Just choose Keyboard from the options menu. 10. Somewhat improved documentation. Please excuse typo's as the manual was rushed out to get PA in the pipe... Version 4.0 (FFebruary 1992) 1. A hidden gem in the Windows Programmer's Reference Guide (published by Microsoft) led to the general improvement of the ANSI chart and other spec sheets. The ANSI chart no longer chokes on Adobe's Carta or other fonts with strange internal leading. 2. The keyboard guide has been improved to handle Carta, etc, and includes a quick ANSI chart at the bottom. The keyboard guide now lists both the on and off keyboard characters of a face in an easy to read format. To place credit where credit is due: the idea came from the documentation distributed with Atech's typefaces. 3. The menu organization of the program has been altered slightly to accomodate a view menu. From this menu you can access the companion on-screen keyboard and ANSI chart. 4. As stated above, a new on screen ANSI chart has been added. Selecting ANSI Chart from the View menu brings up a small chart. You may browse chart by using the scroll bar and jump to a particular character by clicking on it. The selected character will appear in the main Printer's Apprentice window. Like the keyboard, this window may be minimized on the desktop. It's icon is the Printer's Apprentice laser with a small book in front of it, signifying the appendix placement of ANSI charts in most reference guides! 5. Spacing on the inventory sheets has been corrected. 6. A brand new setup dialog box has been added to the options menu. Making the Setup menu pick will bring up the setup/preferences menu. Four options are currently in the box: System font (as explained above), User name, Inventory sheet point size (new), and a default to the enlarged window check box. The old save options menu item has been changed to save only the text attributes of the current font to the PA.INI file. All other stuff is in the setup box... 7. The inventory sheet has been changed so that the point size is user selectable between 10 and 48 points. Smaller point sizes result in smaller type and thus few trees are destroyed, but bigger point sizes let you see more of the font... You make the choice! The option is located in the new setup dialog box. 8. The old Save Options menu has now been changed to Save Text Atttributs. Only the current font name, size, and color is saved to the PA.INI file when you select this option. Other options may be found in the Options Setup menu item. 09. Due to the unpredictable nature of the Printer Setup routines, this option has been removed for the time being. The code was based on some public domain code posted on Compuserve. It worked fine for me with the few drivers I used it with. Unfortunately, for others it was causing UAE's and crashing the system. Hopefully Windows 3.1 will include a single API routine to get to the dialog... 10. Clicking on the single font sample on the left side of the screen will cycle through the font attributes (i.e. Roman, Bold, Italic, BoldItalic). 11. An introductory registration screen has been added. This screen is removed in the registered version. 12. Printing has been integrated into one simple menu click as suggested by several users (thank you!). Selecting the FILE_PRINT command will reveal a single dialog box from which you may select one/a few/all print spec sheets for the particular font. The FILE_PRINT ALL SHEETS command has been removed since you may select all the sheets from the print dialog box. 13. An additional specimen sheet has been added. Specimen Sheet II is a more comprehensive sheet than the original Specimen Sheet I. The new displays the face in standard weight, plus one other attribute selected by the user. The user also has the option of printing the sheet in all capital letters for those capital only faces. These options are accessed by pressing the MORE >> button on the FILE_PRINT dialog box. The default settings are Bold and Upper/Lower Case letters. These different options are also available in the FILE_BATCH PRINT dialog box. Just use the drop down list box to select the options you want. 14. Printer's Apprentice can have a possible of three separate windows littering the desktop: the main window, the keyboard, and the ANSI chart. Previously, minimizing the main window had no effect on the other utilities. Now, minimizing the main window will cause the two other utilities to hide themselves... When the main window is restored, the others will restore themselves to whatever state they were in previously. 15. Double clicking on the list boxes in the batch printing dialog will add the selected font to the print list or remove the font from the list. 16. Cosmetic enhancements both on screen and the printed page lurk everywhere. 17. The capital letter spec sheet has been removed. It was originally created out of the need for a spec sheet that would turn out acceptable pages for font sets with only the capital character set. Specimen sheet II has the ability to print in all caps and it looks a lot better....