Lose Your Mind Development

Printer’s Apprentice 8.00.34 for Windows XP, Vista & 7 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. 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

This is a minor upgrade and includes the following changes:

• Updated web links to various pages at loseyourmind.com
• Improved startup splash screen.
• Various minor bug fixes.

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.

I’ve got two new user interface enhancements coming up that I think users will be very pleased with.

First up, lets take a look at the order of the tabs in the main font window. Going all the way back to Printer’s Apprentice 1.0, the first tab has always been the single character tab. Why? That is just how I did it back then. And new tabs have been tacked on giving us Printer’s Apprentice as we know it today. The default tab order is Single Character, Character Set, Sample Text, Keyboard, Font Information and Compare Fonts.

Of course, the tab order that I have selected may not be suited for everybody else. So I have added tab order selection to the User Interface section of the Options tab. All you do is drag the entries in the Tab Order listbox to reorder as you see fit.

After we move our tabs around and click OK, the main Printer’s Apprentice window looks like the screenshot below.

This feature has been requested by many users and I think it will be well received.

In the screenshot above, we made the Compare Fonts tab come first. This leads us into the next UI enhancement.

If you are familiar with the Compare Fonts tab, you know that you have to use the checkboxes to select which fonts appear. This is a glaring problem in the software and leads to problems. For example, if you are looking at a folder of fonts and want to compare them all, you can do a Ctrl-A and add them to the Compare Fonts tab. Now you want to print or install just five of them. You can’t do that because the all the fonts are selected for use in the Compare Fonts tab. Not good.

Well we have changed that. When browsing Install Fonts, folder and groups, all the fonts will automatically be added to the Compare Fonts tab. There is no longer the need to need to select one or more fonts using the checkbox.

These two enhancements will be in the next version of Printer’s Apprentice. If you have any comments or you are interested in being a beta tester, drop a note to helpdesk at loseyourmind.com.

Printer’s Apprentice 8.0.25 was recently posted to the web site and is available for download.

Download Printer’s Apprentice 8.0.26 for Vista & XP

This version includes many stability fixes. A full list of changes can be found in the versionhistory.txt file on the web site.

Send comments to Bryan at helpdesk at loseyourmind dot com.

Things have been quiet on the blog for a while. But that does not mean we are not working on Printer’s Apprentice!

Behind the scenes, I’ve been continuing work on Printer’s Apprentice. Most of the work is on stability improvements for the software. A few users have come up with scenarios that crash the software. So I’m working on those issues.

I hope to have a new release out before the end of December. If you have encountered any crashes or you have suggestions for improvement, please shoot me an email at helpdesk at lose your mind dot com. — Bryan

Printer’s Apprentice 8.0.25 was posted to the web site on Tuesday 11/4/08 and is available for download.

Download Printer’s Apprentice 8.0.25 for Vista & XP

This version includes a fix for a nasty little bug that was corrupting the application configuration file.

Fixed a problem with saving the configuration file. Under some circumstances, it could become corrupt and this would lead to all sorts of problems.

When copying/moving a font to a font group, added code to make sure the font groups root folder is valid. A message box gets displayed if the folder is missing or invalid. 

Send comments or suggestions to Bryan at helpdesk at loseyourmind dot com.

Printer’s Apprentice 8.0.24 was posted to the web site on Monday 10/27/08 and is available for download.

Download Printer’s Apprentice 8.0.24 for Vista & XP

This version includes the following fixes and changes:

• Fix for a "divide by zero" error
• Fixed a bug with the Edit>Copy Font List command. If there are no fonts selected in the currently selected tab, the application would crash.
• Compare Fonts tab – fixed a problem that resulted in an IndexOutofBounds error.
• Compare Fonts tab – as you navigate in a font list, the Compare Fonts tab now automatically scrolls so the selected font is at the top of the list.
• Compare Fonts tab – added some code to reduce flicker.
• Compare Fonts tab – fixed a bug that caused the Compare Fonts tab to not draw fonts correctly. This happened under a very specific set of mouse moves.
• Removed a line of code that referred to the Arial font. This could cause a crash if Arial is not installed on the system.
• Added additional error checking for TrueType fonts that have slightly invalid string tables. This would result in the font not being displayed in the Font Files tab.

Send comments or suggestions to Bryan at helpdesk at loseyourmind dot com.

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.

After a couple weeks, we finally received our Software Publishing Certificate (SPC) from Comodo. All future versions of Printer’s Apprentice will now have digital certificate attached to the main executable file identifying us as the publisher.

So… what does that mean for you, the Printer’s Apprentice user?

The primary purpose of the SPC is to identify the author and prevent tampering with the software after it has been published. So with the certificate attached, you know you are getting an unaltered copy of Printer’s Apprentice, just as we intended it to be.

The SPC adds an additional benefit with Vista. Vista takes advantage of the digital certificate to display the publisher information when a User Access Control prompt pops up. Because Printer’s Apprentice runs in administrator mode, Vista always displays a UAC prompt. (We need admin mode since PA manipulates files in the Windows Fonts folder.)

The left image, below, is a shot of the UAC prompt for our application with no SPC attached. On the right is the prompt after we added the SPC.

Needless to say, the dialog prompt on the right is far less alarming. All future versions of Printer’s Apprentice and Virtual Font Folder will be signed with our software publishing certificate. — Bryan

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