Lose Your Mind Development

A new beta for our font manager has been posted to the web site. No big changes, just some minor cosmetic tweaks.

You can download the latest beta from this link:
http://www.loseyourmind.com/zipfiles/prnapp81-120308beta.zip

This release can be installed over existing versions. Your license key and font groups will be preserved.

If you have any problems or suggestions, drop me a line at helpdesk at loseyourmind dot com.

3/8/12 Printer’s Apprentice 8.1.24.1 BETA

- NEW: If you click in the text area on the Single Character or Sample Text tab,
  you can use the mouse wheel to change the font size.
- FIXED: Minor cosmetic fixes in Options dialog when Windows display settings
  are using large fonts. 

The latest beta is up on the web site. The big improvement for this version is better support for systems running under “High DPI” or “large fonts” settings. See this recent blog post for screenshots and more information.

You can download the latest beta from this link:
http://www.loseyourmind.com/zipfiles/prnapp81-120301beta.zip

This release can be installed over existing versions. Your license key and font groups will be preserved.

If you have any problems or suggestions, drop me a line at helpdesk at loseyourmind dot com.

3/1/12 Printer’s Apprentice 8.1.23.1 BETA

- NEW: Support for higher screen DPI settings. No more clipped text, etc. Includes high-resolution icons and other cosmetic changes.
- NEW: Improved borders on various progress screens.
- NEW: Completely redesigned shareware splash screen.
- NEW: Added license key recovery link on "Enter License Key" screen.
- NEW: Many other minor fixes.

Printer’s Apprentice 8.1.18.1, a font manager for Windows 7, Vista & XP, has been released and published on the Lose Your Mind Development web site.

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.

We have a special offer available during the month of March. Use the link below and you can get Printer’s Apprentice 8.1 for $14.99. This is a 40% discount off the regular price.

Download Printer’s Apprentice 8.1 for Windows 7, Vista & XP

Purchase Printer’s Apprentice 8.1 for Windows 7, Vista & XP – 40% discount

This upgrade includes the following changes:

• Installer version 8.1.18.1
• FIX: Updated several pages in the help file. Options section, etc.
• FIX: If the the tabTextSampleText key in the prnapp.exe.config file got corrupted or included too much data, Printer’s Apprentice would crash with an overflow error. This has been fixed.
• FIX: Added status bar help prompts for a few menu items that were missing.
• FIX: In certain cases, OpenType files with hyphenated names would not show up in the Install font list. This has been fixed.

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.

Our software was recently featured in the “Apps we love” column in The Globe and Mail newspaper (Toronto, Canada). From the article:

“The shareware font manager has all the important features a designer needs to efficiently manage fonts: the ability to preview both installed fonts and uninstalled font files, to view and compare several different typefaces, and to print out contact sheets for some or all of your fonts, so you can browse through your font collection on paper as well as on screen.”

“…and Printer’s Apprentice is still a major improvement over the standard Windows interface.”

Apps we love – Wesley Fok – October 10, 2008

Thanks for the spotlight, Wesley.

On Friday, September 12, 2008, Lose Your Mind Development released Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 on our web site.

Printer’s Apprentice is our powerful font manager for both Windows Vista & XP.
With Printer’s Apprentice, you can browse and print samples of the TrueType, Type 1 and OpenType fonts on your PC, view uninstalled fonts, print font catalogs in multiple formats and effortlessly install/uninstall groups of fonts with a few clicks. Printer’s Apprentice has many other features that makes Windows font management fun and easy.

Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 is for Vista & XP only. New features include redesigned user interface, better looking printouts, full print preview functionality and superior compatibility with Vista. Our software is digitally signed.

For more information, please see the following pages:

Lose Your Mind Development home page
Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 product information
Screen shot Gallery
Font Catalog & Sample Sheet Gallery

If you have purchased a previous version of Printer’s Apprentice, see our Upgrade Information page.

I’m waiting to get a few things taken care of before the next beta. Here is where we are

Code Signing Certificate – I’ve ordered a certificate from Comodo. But I’m hung up in the company validation stage. Hope to get this resolved on Tuesday.

Check for Updates – I would like to add a “Check for Updates” entry to the Help menu and then return a download link and list of changes.

The HTML version of the changes file (see this page) is already assembled with content pulled from a DBF file. I want Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 to query this file via formal web services. But I’m waiting on our hosting company to install the VPF OLEDB driver so I can hit the DBF.

Bug in the Uninstalled Fonts tab – There is a pesky bug in the treeview control used on the Uninstalled Fonts tab. I’m working with the author of that control to get this resolved.

So I hope to have a new beta released the first week of September. — Bryan

Work on the beta continues at a good pace and I think we are coming close to releasing 8.0 at the end of August or the start of September. There was a short break in work while I was on vacation. But it is time to get the product out the door.

I just finished up a web page that displays the font catalogs and sample sheets that can be printed from Printer’s Apprentice 8.0. Check it out!

Printer’s Apprentice 8.0 Font Catalogs & Sample Sheets

A beta tester sent me a nice email and mentioned an older font program that displayed a category for the font as one of the columns. This is something I have wanted to implement since the early days of Printer’s Apprentice, but simply never did.

I’ve been hip-deep in font related Win32 API calls and I remembered the PitchAndFamily enumeration member of the LogFont class. The PitchAndFamily field classifies a font as decorative,modern (fixed pitch), roman (serif), swiss (sans serif) and script. (There is also “dontcare” which means the font vendor did not add a classification to the font).

Printer’s Apprentice already makes heavy use of the Logfont structure, so it was very easy to expose the classification on screen as a “Family” column. Check out the shot below.

Unfortunately, the PitchAndFamily classification is very rough. And not all vendors use it. I’m looking into exposing the Panose values for a future version.

We continue to test Printer’s Apprentice 8.0. If you want to help out, fill out the sign up form and we will send you the information. — Bryan