Lose Your Mind Development

I’m proud to announce that Printer’s Apprentice 8.00.32 for Windows Vista & XP has been released and published on the Lose Your Mind Development web site. Our popular font manager continues to grow and improve with each new version.

Printer’s Apprentice is always available for you to try directly from our web site. And if you like the software, we hope that you will purchase a license! Use the link below and you can get Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 for $20. This is a 20% discount off the regular price

Download Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 for Vista & XP

Purchase Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 for Vista & XP – 20% discount

Here is a closer look at a few of the new features.

Speed! – Printer’s Apprentice now caches the information read from uninstalled TrueType, OpenType and Type 1 fonts. The data is stored in an xml file to make subsequent reads of the same fonts much faster. A past blog post examines the data storage structure and includes a performance table showing initial read versus subsequent reads.

Missing PFM / PFB Detection – One of the most frequent questions emailed to us is “Why can’t I view Type 1 fonts out of the Adobe Type Manager folder?” By default, ATM stores PFM and PFB files in separate folders. To view uninstalled Type 1 fonts, Printer’s Apprentice needs the PFM and PFB files in the same folder. Version 8.00.32 now displays this message box if missing files are detected in a folder.

Full Screen Toggle – Need to see more fonts? Use the full screen toggle button!

Sorting Arrows in Font Lists – Like Windows Explorer, Printer’s Apprentice now uses the built in sorting arrows in all the font lists throughout the application.

A complete list of changes can be found in the Printer’s Apprentice  versionhistory.txt file on the web site.

Any comments or questions? You can send them directly to the developer behind the software via helpdesk at lose your mind dot com.

The next version of Printer’s Apprentice is being prepped for the beta team. Download notices should go out in the next day or so.

The next  update will have a pair of “fit & polish” features. These are nothing too serious. And they certainly did not take long to implement. But they simply make the application better.

Full Screen Toggle – This button simply maximizes Printer’s Apprentice to fill the full screen. The top title bar is hidden and the Printer’s Apprentice window covers the Windows Taskbar. The hotkey to toggle full screen mode is F11. (Microsoft Office and FireFox also use F11 for full screen modes.)

This feature is great for when you really want to see your fonts blown up large. Or for when you are working with a client on font selection over a shared monitor.

Sorting Glyphs (Arrows) – Like Windows Explorer, Printer’s Apprentice now uses the built in sorting arrows in all the listviews throughout the application.

This should have been in the application a long time ago. However, the .NET listview control does not expose the arrow functionality directly. So the implementation uses Windows API calls. The code was not difficult at all. But it kept getting bumped down on the To Do list.