ePress is an application that creates and customizes electronic business cards, called eCards. eCards are standalone applications viewable on any Macintosh, intended to be used as attachments to e-mail, FirstClass message forms, etc... ePress will run on any Macintosh or Power Macintosh with System 7.
Freeware notice
Although ePress is free, spontaneous donations will be gladly accepted. Paying for your copy of ePress will grant you free updates and other software I've written for the Macintosh. Remember I'm still young and I'd like to know how far my software has traveled. Iﾕm just asking for a postcard, after all!
Distribution
If you plan to distribute ePress, please send me a copy of the magazine, CD or floppy on which this software is included. Distribution is otherwise unrestricted as long as no modifications are made to the code/documentation and no money are asked espressely for it.
Possible conflicts
To let ePress run happily and without conflicts, please make sure that the ﾔPlug-insﾕ folder is in the same folder as ePress. Donﾕt move or rename the files used by the application. If ePress canﾕt find the basic files, it will advise to quit the application.
Known bugs
ePress lacks the error handling capabilities youﾕre supposed to find in commercial or good shareware utilities. It could never cause data loss or similar tragedies, but Iﾕd advise not to stress-test its code unless you are wishfully looking for a system bomb.
Converting older E-Cards
If you are one of the few to ever own and use E-Press 2.0.x, you can almost instantly convert your older collection of E-Cards 2.0.x to the new format by dragging all of them onto the ePress 3.0 icon, rather than going to the ﾔConvert...ﾕ menu command a hundred times.
Author history
Version 3.0 of ePress (actually the first after I had to change the name from E-Press/E-Card to ePress/eCard), has been written and tested while studying for my ﾔfinal examﾕ at the high school. I know this software ainﾕt no programming wonder, but some people have shown interest in the concept of electronic business cards (Apple provides a much similar option to PowerTalk users), and I decided to spend some time on it.
Even if you arenﾕt interested on the concept, give it a chance, launch the application - before throwing the whole folder in the trash...
Registrations
Donations and postcards can be mailed to:
Gabriele de Simone
via Trento, 3
56100 Pisa
Italia
eMail address:
desimon@cli.di.unipi.it
Check out my new homepage on the web:
http://www.cli.di.unipi.it/~desimon/intro.html
Thanks to...
Fulvio Artiano, who contributed to the development of ePress by letting me write code on his machine after my Power Mac had ﾔfriedﾕ; my friends and occasional beta testers Mario Ghezzi and Francesco Fumelli (from the PAN Network); Metrowerks, for its CodeWarrior development enviroment, which gave a PowerPC option and a better future to the numerous Pascal-written applications for the Macintosh (for more informations on Metrowerks products, a sample eCard is provided).
Final Considerations
Well, youﾕve been so smart to read all the documentation. Few people ever do that (Iﾕm not part of the bunch), so you deserve few more lines of attention.
It happens that Apple has already given us chance to see the look and feel of our future operating system, Copland, and shareware extensions such as Aaron have actually brought the major new interface changes to us months before the actual release date for System 8. The new interface brings few technical innovations and no estetic improvements at all. Gone are with Copland all the two or three things that let you recognize a Mac in an instant: the white menu bar, the white menus and the clean two dimensional folder icons. Donﾕt misunderstand me, I indeed appreciate all changes (if for the better), and I had been hoping for some interface refreshments for months. But, instead of exploring innovative solutions, Apple is just heading the Mac towards X-Window and Microsloth Windoze interfaces.
Those new too-blue folders in the basic interface (we wonﾕt be talking about the orrid high tech or kid interfaces) impose a limited range of colors in other desktop components, given that you want to respect the basic rules for mixing colors together without getting back to the seventies. The wide border around windows is implemented too similarly to other OSes. And the gray menu bar is just the answer to the popular belief that 3D look is always cool and must be implemented everywhere.
Not all of the new interface has went the wrong way though. The new slider control is a much needed standard among applications. The new scroll bars and arrows are less Mac-like than the old ones, but are cleaner and clearly surpass those found in the Main Competitorﾕs Product. The Espy font family is a great improvemet over the Chicago/Geneva duo; many people will miss the unique look of Chicago, but Espy is more readable and space saving especially at small sizes. Even the new desktop level icons (Trash, Hard Disk) are a nice touch.
I spend a lot of time thinking about computer interfaces. A lot more time than for coding these simple programs or in studying my early courses at the Department of Computer Science in Pisa where I recently migrated. Iﾕm willing to help all those shareware/freeware programmers who write terrific code but add an awful interface to it. So, if you are a developer, Iﾕll be glad to cooperate and work on the aspects of your application you usually donﾕt care about. I do think that inteface deserves as much attention as the code itself.
In the end, Iﾕd like to say thanks to all people who sent me postcards for ePress and especially to Alfred Komarek and Maria Lindhgren, the two only sweet persons to actually give me some money for ePress (I couldnﾕt really live with programming). Italians - call it a prejudice - tend to be very unpopular among shareware authors because they think shareware is a synonym to freeware; and thatﾕs the main reason ePress became freeware anyway. Sometimes I just think of great programmers such as Antoine Rosset - who registers 2000 users in one year - or Peter Lewis, who - as long as TidBITS interviews prove to be true - writes shareware for a living. I think Iﾕll go for a pizza.
