Printer's Apprentice 6.0 The easy way to look at your fonts! Lose Your Mind Development Bryan T. Kinkel Post Office Box 302 Haverford, PA 19041-0302 70564,2372@compuserve.com deadhead01@aol.com Support: (610) 645-0749 (evenings, EST) Orders: (217) 535-1000 "Virtually every user can benefit from Printer's Apprentice." -PC/Computing April 1993 "The best-designed Windows font viewer for all font formats..." -PC Magazine October 27, 1992 (c) copyright 1991-1995 by Bryan T. Kinkel Thanks for taking the time to download Printer's Apprentice 6.0. This file contains information about this software, what it does, and what the system requirements are. Instructions for quickly installing Printer's Apprentice 6.0 are also included. Information for registered users of the software is a few pages down in the document. The manual for Printer's Apprentice is located in a Windows help file. Q. What is it? A. Printer's Apprentice is a font management utility for the Windows 3.1 operating environment. It helps you manage all your TrueType and Adobe Type 1 fonts by printing inventory sheets (3 flavors!), ANSI charts, keyboard layouts, and specimen sheets. It was noted as the *BEST* Windows font utility by PC Magazine (10/27/92) and features one of the sharpest interfaces around. Printer's Apprentice is a great addition to the font CD-ROMs with 500 or more fonts. The Printer's Apprentice Font Install Wizard lets you look at TrueType fonts BEFORE you install them! You can even print a catalog of fonts from a CD/floppy/hard drive without installing or copying a single file! The Printer's Apprentice User's Guide is a full featured, context sensitive Windows help file. A printed User's Guide is available upon registration. Q. What are the system requirements? A. Printer's Apprentice 6.0 will run on any PC running Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11, or Windows NT. We recommend at least a 386 with 4 megs of memory. Printing functions will work on any printer, but we recommend a laser printer for acceptable quality. This software also requires a copy of VBRUN300.DLL. This DLL can be found on many BBS systems. It can also be found on Compuserve in the DTPFORUM, library 6, VBRUN3.ZIP. Q. What's New with 6.0? A. 6.0 adds Wizards for installing, uninstalling, and printing TrueType fonts. There is also a resource Wizard that searches your windows\system directory for unused font FOT files that take up precious hard drive space. Printer's Apprentice can preview and print uninstalled fonts (through the Wizards). This version is also faster and takes up fewer system resources. Q. How do I install this program real quick? A. Unzip the distribution ZIP file to a new diskette or directory and run INSTALL.EXE. The installation program copies the files files to your hard drive and creates a Program Manager icon for Printer's Apprentice. Q. I purchased and earlier version of Printer's Apprentice. Will my registration password still work? A. The registration password you received with the diskette will work with this and all future versions of Printer's Apprentice. If you are a registered user, you will be receiving an upgrade notice around April 1995. Q. What about Windows NT, Windows95(96?), and OS/2 Warp? A. Printer's Apprentice has been fully tested on a variety of machines running Windows 3.1/3.11. It has also been tested on Windows NT Workstation 3.5. However, we can only provide technical support to Windows 3.11 users. We are fully committed to a version of Printer's Apprentice for Windows95. However, we will only support Windows95 when the system is released to the general public in August, 1995. We *cannot* support Printer's Apprentice 6.0 running on beta versions of Chicago/Windows 4.0/Windows95. Q. How do I remove the program if I need more space on my machine? A. There is a file named INSTALL.LOG located in the PA directory. This lists out *every* file and Program Manager group added to your system. You can use this file to track down the EXE, VBX, and DLL files used by Printer's Apprentice. Be aware, however, that other programs on your system may rely on the support VBX and DLL files used by Printer's Apprentice. This is especially true if you are an active user of many shareware programs. For example, lots of commercial and shareware packages use the THREED.VBX library. If you delete this from your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory, you might get a error when you try to run a program that uses this DLL. Q. How do I purchase this program? A. We offer three easy payment options. Prices are listed below. 1. Phone - For quick orders over the phone with a credit card, please call (217) 535-1000. You will speak with KeyData Specialists, a group that handles credit orders for us. A charge from KeyData will appear on your monthly statement from your bank. Order lines are open 8am - 5pm Central Standard Time. 2. Mail - Please enclose a check or your VISA/MC number and send to Lose Your Mind Development, PO Box 302, Haverford, PA 19041-0302. If you are paying via credit card, a charge from KeyData Specialists will appear on your statement. Please make checks payble to "Lose Your Mind Development" (believe me, the bank takes them with that business name!). Please take the time to fill out the order form. The order form can be printed from the PA.HLP file. You need to install Printer's Apprentice first, access the PA.HLP file, and jump to the topic "Order Form." 3. Online - Compuserve users can order online via the Shareware Registration forum. GO SWREG to access the service. The charge will appear on your bill with the rest of your Compuserve charges. For foreign orders, please use a credit card, postal money order or a bank check drawn on US dollars. Pricing is as follows. Domestic United States: ----------------------- 1 copy of Printer's Apprentice, with 30 page users guide $25 1 copy of Printer's Apprentice $20 Canadian, Foreign orders, Europe, the world outside of the US -------------------------------------------------------------- 1 copy of Printer's Apprentice, with 20 page users guide $30 1 copy of Printer's Apprentice $25 Please make checks payable to "Lose Your Mind Development" Q. What is the upgrade policy? A. When you register, I will send you a registration code, a diskette and a license card. Upon release of major upgrades, I will notify you with a post card. Upgrades run between $5-$10 to cover the cost of mailing, diskettes, and duplication. The registration codeword will always work for future versions of the product. Q. Printer's Apprentice seems to install OK, but when I try to run it, I get a ".VBX is out of date" error. What is the problem? A. This is common for programs written in Visual Basic and Visual C++. VBX files are like DLL’s. They are files with common routines used by many programs. "Out of Date" errors and other problems with VBX files are often caused by two problems. 1. Version Control Just like end-user software packages, VBX’s are always being improved. Setup programs are supposed to check versions before installing a VBX/DLL file over one that is already on your computer. But this is not always the case. 2. Duplicate Files VBX files are supposed to be placed in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory by setup programs, but not everyone does this. Many times you will have duplicate copies of the same VBX in both your WINDOWS and your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. The installation program used by Printer’s Apprentice makes every effort to ensure the correct VBX files are placed in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. However, if you already have an older copy of a VBX file in your WINDOWS directory, the setup program may not be able to detect it. So when Printer’s Apprentice loads, it may see the older VBX in your WINDOWS directory instead of the newer one that shipped with PA and was placed in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. (Got all that?) This is when you get the "out of date" errors. The situation is easy, but tedious to fix. 1. Search your hard drive for every copy of the VBX file that is giving you errors. 2. If you have only one copy of that VBX file, then a recently installed software package copied it's older version of the VBX over the newer version that shipped with Printer's Apprentice. a. Move the older VBX file to your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory b. Rerun the Printer's Apprentice installation program. 3. If you have multiple copies of the same VBX file (for example, one in windows and one in windows\system), then you need to figure out which is the most recent version and move it to the windows\system directory. a. Use the Windows 3.11 File Manager to find out which copy has the most recent version number. Select the file and press ALT-ENTER to see the file’s properties. b. Move the most recent one to the windows\system directory. c. Move the older version off your computer to a floppy disk. - if you don’t have the Windows 3.11 File Manager - a. Move all the duplicate copies of the VBX file to floppies. b. Rerun the Printer's Apprentice installation program. Generally, you should only have one copy of each VBX file needed by your software programs. The VBX files should all be in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory so installation programs don’t stumble... Believe me, this problem does not just happen to Printer's Apprentice! Lose Your Mind Development distributes a program called VersionViewer for inspecting the version resources of executables, DLL's, VBX's, and drivers. See the help file for more information on this wonderful program! Other Information ----------------- Many software programs are written using third party programming tools. Printer's Apprentice is no exception. The following libraries were used to build PA. File Version Company/Author ------------------------------------------------------------- cbk.vbx 2.00$ Desaware, Inc. cmdialog.vbx 3.00 Microsoft grid.vbx 3.00.0537 Microsoft keystat.vbx 02.0.9000.1 Microsoft ss3d2.vbx Sheridan Software ssformfx.vbx 1.0.0.3 Sheridan Software ssidxtab.vbx 1.0.0.3 Sheridan Software threed.vbx 3.0.0.0 Microsoft/Sheridan tooltips.vbx 2.0.0.0 James F. Lamb dwspydll.dll 2.00$ Desaware, Inc.