Printers' Apprentice History File Version 1.0 * 28 June 1991 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.