ePress creates standalone electronic business cards (eCards), which can be distributed on conventional media or over networks to facilitate exchange of personal informations.
Typical use of an eCard would be to send it as an attachment to an email message to provide the destinatary with more than the usual text-only signature.
New features
The major improvements over the previous version are: long, multistyled, aligned and colored text; support for standard pictures and Finder icons as well as the old ╘cicn╒ resources; background patterns in eCards; a new plugin architecture; online documentation; improved interface; improved Clipboard support; PowerPC native code.
Requirements
ePress requires System 7.1 and the Thread Manager to run. The Thread Manager is a multithreading enabler built into System 7.5 (or later versions), and can be installed in previous systems in the form of a system extension (available for free from Apple). ePress is compatible and runs native on Power Macintosh computers.
eCards do not require any particular extension to System 7 in order to run.
Freeware notice
ePress is available free to the public. However sending postcards, junk material and spontaneous donations will encourage further development and improvement of this program.
Distribution
Associations, Magazines and Bullettin Boards planning to distribute/review this software are kindly requested to send me a copy of the media/magazine on which the program is being distributed/reviewed, or an email notice at least. Please don╒t distribute modified versions without explicit permission.
Plug-ins availability
Language plug-ins for most Western languages and Japanese are already available since ePress introduction. These additions were not included into a full package since downloading only the needed/wanted parts was faster for most users. If you want to get a list of currently available plug-ins, check my homepage or the disk/archive where you obtained your copy of ePress. Among them you will also find great collections of snapshots and patterns.
Author
I╒m a teen student at the Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa. My primary occupation should be the plenty of non-computer-related courses at my college, but my real commitment is programming the Macintosh and an interesting job offer would easily drive me elsewhere.
Comments, suggestions, bug reports and donations can be sent to my postal address:
Gabriele de Simone
via Trento, 3
56100 Pisa
Italy
Internet citizens can take advantage of my electronic presence for a faster response:
<mailto: macman@finsystem.it>
<mailto: desimon@cli.di.unipi.it>
<mailto: gabriele@nsm.it>
<http://www.cli.di.unipi.it/~desimon/intro.html>
People living in my country can easily reach me on PAN (0575/24676), an Italian Macintosh bullettin board I╒m often connected to. Informations on this service are also available on the web site <http://www.pan.it/>. Its administrators and founders are friends and long-time sustainers of my programming efforts Mario Ghezzi and Francesco Fumelli, who both also contribute to the Italian version of MacWorld. Before the Internet, believe it or not, I used to write my first and simple public programs primarily for their network.
I occasionally write reviews for an Italian Macintosh magazine. Besides being very user-oriented, the magazine also provides introductory articles on Macintosh software development, and they surely deserve a visit if you can speak Italian: ╘M╒ Macintosh Magazine, <http://www.mix.it/>.
Take also some time to visit NSM at <http://www.nsm.it/>, especially if you╒re planning to visit Italy soon. It╒s an important information center and I represent the one and only Macintosh-owning worker inside it. If you drop them a note, don╒t forget to tell the boss my name!
Aknowledgements
Many thanks to all the beta testers and localizers who helped me with this project and to the dearest users who sent contibutions of many sorts to encourage development of new ePress versions. It's mainly because of their participation that I decided to keep working on such a scope-limited program.
A special mention goes to the anonymous contributor (maybe inside Metrowerks?) who sent me those wonderful ╘Debug╒ glow-in-the-dark boxers.
Future improvements
Below are some of the improvements I plan to include in future releases:
Ñ adoption of the WASTE text engine instead of TextEdit. WASTE most desirable features include clickable URLs (now available only under special conditions) and Drag&Drop editing;
Ñ integration with the Internet Config component to ease data entry;
Ñ more customization options.
Version history
Ñ ePress
4.0b3 - Public beta release.
4.0.0 - Final release.
4.0.1 - Improved reliability. Some minor interface changes. Drawing operations and interface responsiveness can be significantly faster on most machines. The clipboard now supports ╘ppat╒ and ╘cicn╒ resources properly. ePress won╒t attempt any more to import pictures and icons whose size is too big to fit in a snapshot boundaries.
Ñ eCard
4.0b6 - Public beta release.
4.0.0 - Final release
4.0.1 - The eCard code has been largely modified.
The plug-in architecture
The new plug-in architecture built into ePress accepts three types of documents which can extend the application╒s functionality (but not modify its interface or behaviour). Localization and Code plug-ins actually contain the data ePress uses to create eCard applications. Snapshot plug-ins are libraries of graphic elements you can install in your eCards (snapshots and background patterns).
Ñ Localization plug-ins contain the language-dependent interface elements of an eCard.
Ñ Code plug-ins contain object code and application resources of an eCard.
Ñ Snapshot plug-ins contain any or all of picture, Finder icons, color icon and pattern type resources (╘PICT╒, ╘ICN#╒, ╘icl8╒, ╘icl4╒, ╘cicn╒, ╘ppat╒).
Any file can be changed to a plug-in by simply setting its type and creator to reflect the desired kind of plug-in. For a plug-in to be recognized on application launch, it must be located anywhere within the ePress folder.
Cross platform distribution
One major drawback of eCards is their inability to run on other platforms. Keep this in mind when sending your eCard over networks: only Macintosh destinataries will be able to view its content.
Also, when sending your eCard as an attachment to your Internet mail, make sure that the eCard is compressed and encoded before being attached to your message. Mail programs usually support automatic encoding of a message attachments. Some even provide automatic compression.
Cross platform implementation of eCard though the Java language is being considered for future versions.
QuickTime-compressed Snapshots
ePress lets you import and paste QuickTime images into eCards, for the fact that QuickTime compressed PICTs are treated equally to conventional PICT data. Though compressed images are smaller to distribute than their uncompressed equivalent, remember that your destinatary will be able to view these images only if QuickTime is installed on his/her machine. Though the latter is an very likely situation in these multimedia days, using uncompressed images is a safe workaround.
Invisible Snapshots
There are some cases in which a snapshot is not viewed when the eCard is opened. When the snapshot you install in the eCard is complex (such as for a 24-bit image) the default application memory partition may be insufficient to view the snapshot.
Simply increase the eCard application memory (in the Finder ╘Get Info╒ window) to view your image correctly.
Fonts conflicts
One of the great improvements over the previous versions is support for styled text. However, before browsing your huge personal collection of fonts looking for the right candidate to use in your eCard, keep in mind that the person that will receive your eCard will be able to view it correctly only if the fonts you used are also present on his Macintosh.
Times and Helvetica, for example, are very likely to be found on every Macintosh on earth; other fancy fonts, while great looking, may produce unpredictable garbage results when viewed on a Macintosh where that particular font is not available.
Background patterns explained
The type of resource ePress uses to draw background patterns is ╘ppat╒. This format is also used by Apple╒s Desktop Patterns control panel. However, when you copy a pattern from Desktop Patterns, a picture, not a ╘ppat╒ resource, is copied into the clipboard. If you later paste that pattern in ePress, the picture is - as you should already now - imported as a PICT-type snapshot.
To successfully paste patterns you need to copy them with a resource editor (like ResEdit) or create ╘ppat╒ resources yourself (again, with a resource editor or some pattern utility).
The Personal Info menu commands
As with previous ePress version, it is possible for the user to save all textual information and some customization settings into a private ╘Personal Info╒ record. This way, it is possible to avoid re-entering all your personal information each time you have to make your own eCard.
It is also possible (via the option in the ╘Preferences╒ window), to paste these information every time the ╘New...╒ command is chosen from the ╘File╒ menu (making it the default information from which to start building a new eCard).
To store these ╘Personal Info╒, choose the ╘Copy to Personal Info╒ command (under the ╘Edit╒ menu) whenever a new or existing eCard is being edited. Similarly, choose ╘Paste Personal Info╒ to fill out the current eCard with the ╘Personal Info╒ (if you ever saved some). The previous content of the eCard is deleted by the new information.
How to add pictures in the text fields
TextEdit, which is the system software text engine ePress uses, does not support embedded pictures. It is possible to overcome this limitation with a trick: there╒s an application called ╘FC Text-Picture╒ (⌐ Ammon Skidmore) which converts a variety of image and icon formats to a styled text file (or to the clipboard, for instance). This styled text data can be easily pasted into ePress.
This tecnique can produce amazing results, but must be used wisely. Due to the technique used to store image data into styled text, the results can show very slowly even on middle-range machines.
Shortcuts
Ñ Holding down the Option key and pressing the left and right arrows in the eCard editing window lets you view the previous/next snapshot in the current plug-in.
Ñ Holding down the Control key and pressing the left and right arrows in the eCard editing window lets you view the previous/next pattern in the current plug-in.
Ñ When the Credits in the about window are scrolling, the up and down arrows control the text scrolling speed.
