[Newsletter] Announcements from Alchemy Mindworks
Alchemy Mindworks
alchemy8147 at mindworkshop.com
Sat Oct 4 09:13:00 EDT 2014
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THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC POSTING FROM
THE ALCHEMY MINDWORKS UPDATE MAILING LIST
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Contents:
1. GIF Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 3
2. Font Wrangler Revision 2 (Second Notification)
3. Graphic Workshop Professional 5 Revision 4 (Additional Notification)
4. Graphic Workshop 4 Resource Leak (Additional Notification)
5. Potential Windows Software Installation Issue (Second Notification)
6. Steven William Rimmer's Novels on Kindle Unlimited in the UK
(Second Notification)
7. Negative on Shellshock (Second Notification)
8. Replying to this Message and List Removal
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Bankers weren't exactly loved in the nineteenth century either.
http://www.stevenwilliamrimmer.com/theorder.html
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1. GIF Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 3
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GIF Construction Set Professional 5 has been updated. This release:
- Adds thumbnails to the File menu history, so you can remind yourself
what your animations looked like before you open them. See the
discussion of Opening and Saving Files in the Reference document of
the GIF Construction Set Manual for assistance with configuring this
feature... or disabling it, should you ultimately decide that it's a
tool of unclean spirits or liberal politicians.
- Improves a number of aspects of the aforementioned File menu history
feature.
- Addresses a number of performance issues in Animation Wizard to make
it quicker and to improve its color management, which will result in
more attractive finished animations in many cases.
- Fixes a very subtle and potentially nasty resource leak in the
Animation Wizard's folder tree, which could crash GIF Construction
Set and potentially destabilize Windows.
IMPORTANT: If you're still using GIF Construction Set 4, we urge you
to consider upgrading to GIF Construction Set Professional 5. Doing
so will resolve the aforementioned resource leak, and prevent it
from biting you somewhere impolite when you least expect it.
- Fixes a bug in the PNG import library that could crash the Animation
Wizard window and several File Open windows if a grey-scale PNG file
were selected.
- Fixes a number of issues that appeared during the upgrade to
version 5.
You can download GIF Construction Set Professional 5 from:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/gifcon.html#download
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UPGRADES
If you registered or upgraded a registration for GIF Construction Set
Professional 4 on or after May 1, 2013, youre welcome to a free
upgrade to GIF Construction Set Professional 5.
If you registered or upgraded a registration for GIF Construction Set
Professional 4 prior to May 1, 2013, you can upgrade to GIF Construction
Set Professional 5 for half the cost of a new single-user license.
When you first run GIF Construction Set Professional 5, it will check to
see if you have a registration for GIF Construction Set Professional 4
on your system. If it finds one, it will display a window to tell you
which of the foregoing upgrade options is applicable. Click on the
Upgrade button to visit our web page and request or order an upgrade.
The upgrade window can subsequently be accessed through the Help >
Upgrade Manager > Upgrade from Previous Version item of GIF Construction
Set Professional 5's menu bar.
You can also visit the no-cost upgrade page directly at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/gcskey.html
and the upgrade order page at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html
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2. Font Wrangler Revision 2 (Second Notification)
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Font Wrangler 5 has been updated. This release:
- Rewrites the Change Font Name function to handle a larger variety of
weird and mutant fonts... of which the known universe has way too
many.
The Change Font Name window now includes an optional Detailed mode
to manage all the typeface-name related fields of a font file,
allowing your renamed fonts to better interact with Windows and
its slightly brain-damaged typographic management.
It also includes a warning mechanism to alert you if you're about
to change the name of a font into something that Windows won't get
along with.
- Adds a Refresh function to the Files pane of the Font Wrangler
application window.
- Fixes a very subtle and potentially nasty resource leak in the
Font Wrangler application window. If you're still using Font
Wrangler 4, we urge you to upgrade to version 5 to address this
issue, as it could potentially crash Font Wrangler and destabilize
Windows.
- Addresses a number of issues in the font sample window.
- Adds a View Font Structure window, to allow you to see selected
tables stored in font files. Knowing what's going on inside the
beasts is often helpful in resolving font conflicts and other
typographic conundrums... or would that be "connumdria?"
- Tidies up the font displays in the list panes of the Font Wrangler
application window.
- Addresses several issues in the Print function.
- Implements our work-around for the Microsoft installer limitation
that hitherto required each previous release of Font Wrangler to
be uninstalled before an update could be installed. This release
of Font Wrangler 5 can be installed right over the previous one -
it will in fact automatically uninstall the previous software as
part of the install.
While we're just tickled with how well this worked in house, we are
aware that some third-party install managers and security
applications meddle with the software installation process, and in
so doing might break our clever innovation. If you encounter any
issues with installing this release of Font Wrangler,
please let us know what happened.
We hasten to add that you'll still need to click on the Enter Your
Registration Key button in the opening window of the newly updated
Font Wrangler 5 to handle validating it. Assuming that
you allowed Font Wrangler to save your key to disk last
time, this will involve clicking on Next several times and then
closing the "thank you" window.
- Fixes a number of issues that appeared during the upgrade to
version 5.
- Updates the documentation.
Please see the discussion of version 5 enhancements at:
http://www.mindworkshop.info/gif-construction-set/v5-upgrades/
You can download Font Wrangler 5 from:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/fontrang.html#download
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UPGRADES
If you registered or upgraded a registration for Font Wrangler 4 on or
after July 1, 2013, youre welcome to a free upgrade to Font Wrangler 5.
If you registered or upgraded a registration for Font Wrangler 4 prior
to July 1, 2013, you can upgrade to Font Wrangler 5 for half the cost
of a new single-user license.
When you first run Font Wrangler 5, it will check to see if you have a
registration for Font Wrangler 4 on your system. If it finds one, it
will display a window to tell you which of the foregoing upgrade
options is applicable. Click on the Upgrade button to visit our web
page and request or order an upgrade.
The upgrade window can subsequently be accessed through the Font
Wrangler Help -> Upgrade Manager -> Upgrade from Previous Version menu
item.
You can also visit the no-cost upgrade page directly at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/fntkey.html
and the upgrade order page at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html
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3. Graphic Workshop Professional 5 Revision 4 (Additional Notification)
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Graphic Workshop Professional 5 has been updated. This release:
- Adds middle-click functionality. The middle mouse button is now
configurable to perform one of several functions in the View window.
The most useful of these is toggling the Zoom function - middle-click
to select between the default zoom level for a picture and
zoom-to-fill. See the Configure item in the Picture menu of the Zoom
window to change the behavior of the middle button.
- Fixes a bug in the PNG reader that prevented it from reading some
16-bit PNG graphics correctly.
- Fixes a bug in the PNG import library that could crash several of
Graphic Workshop's ancillary applications if they encountered a
malformed PNG file.
- Adds the capability of creating new folders, renaming folders and
deleting folders from within the Destination and the Move and Copy
windows. Right-click in the folder tree to access it.
- Adds the capability of creating new folders, renaming folders and
deleting folders from within the GWS Camera screen capture
application. Right-click in the folder tree to access it.
- Addresses a number of issues in the Textures and Fractals window,
and removes a spurious texture mode that didn't actually do anything.
- Fixes a very subtle and potentially nasty resource leak in the
various folder trees that appear in Graphic Workshop's browser
windows and dialogs.
- Improves the Windows shell interface, so files created by Graphic
Workshop will appear in Explorer with less delay.
- Improves the performance of the Graphic Workshop tool bar, so it
appears sooner... and all at once... when the application starts up.
- Fixes a bug in the Line tool of the e-Paint UltraLight application
included with Graphic Workshop that caused it to position incorrectly
when the snap-to grid was active, under some builds of Windows.
- Fixes a bug that prevented the folder history list from appearing in
the File menu under some circumstances.
- Adds an option to the White Balance filter to allow it to use the
selectable paper color as its white reference.
- Fixes a number of issues that appeared during the upgrade to
version 5.
- Updates the documentation.
Please visit:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwspro.html#download
to download Graphic Workshop Professional 5.
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UPGRADES
If you registered or upgraded a registration for Graphic Workshop
Professional 4 on or after May 1, 2013, youre welcome to a free
upgrade to Graphic Workshop Professional 5.
If you registered or upgraded a registration for Graphic Workshop
Professional 4 prior to May 1, 2013, you can upgrade to Graphic
Workshop Professional 5 for half the cost of a new single-user license.
When you first run Graphic Workshop Professional 5, it will check to see
if you have a registration for Graphic Workshop Professional 4 on your
system. If it finds one, it will display a window to tell you which of
the foregoing upgrade options is applicable. Click on the Upgrade button
to visit our web page and request or order an upgrade.
The upgrade window can subsequently be accessed through the Help >
Upgrade Manager > Upgrade from Previous Version item of Graphic Workshop
Professional 5's menu bar.
You can also visit the no-cost upgrade page directly at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/gwskey.html
and the upgrade order page at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html
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4. Graphic Workshop 4 Resource Leak (Additional Notification)
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It has come to our attention that the recently-discovered resource leak
in Graphic Workshop Professional 5 also affects earlier releases of
Graphic Workshop.
We suspect that it may have been caused by a recent Windows update, as
it hasn't been detected previously.
Users of Graphic Workshop Professional 5 can resolve this issue by
installing the revision announced in the foregoing item of this posting.
If you're still using Graphic Workshop 4... or the seriously ancient
Graphic Workshop 3... we'd like to take this opportunity to urge you to
consider upgrading to Graphic Workshop Professional 5.
Left to its own devices, this resource leak could cause Graphic Workshop
to crash unexpectedly, possibly destabilizing Windows.
Please see:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html
to upgrade.
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5. Potential Windows Software Installation Issue (Second Notification)
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We've become aware that a recent Windows update has broken the Windows
software installation functionality. This can affect the .MSI installers
used to distribute Alchemy Mindworks software.
It manifests itself by aborting an installation before it has completed
its install. The installer will display the messages "Object Already
Exists," "Key not Valid for Use," "Crypt Provider not Initialized" and
several others.
This issue will only appear under certain builds and configurations of
Windows. If you don't encounter it, yours isn't one of them, and you can
safely stop reading now.
Should you encounter this issue, you can resolve it by removing the
Windows update that caused it. We assume that Microsoft will replace the
update in question with a non-broken one shortly.
To remove the offending update:
1. Open the Windows Control Panel.
2. Open the Programs and Features or Add / Remove Programs applet...
probably the former.
3. Click on View Installed Updates.
4. Locate KB2918614 - the Search Installed Updates field will likely
prove to be of assistance in this regard.
5. Right-click on it and uninstall it.
We hasten to add that if this issue affects your computer, it will break
the software installation functionality for most products, not just ours.
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6. Steven William Rimmer's Novels on Kindle Unlimited in the UK
(Second Notification)
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Kindle Unlimited users in the United Kingdom and Ireland can now access
Steve's legendary cult fiction through Kindle Unlimited.
Kindle Unlimited allows users to read e-books at no cost. Steve gets
paid directly by Amazon when this happens. We too were shocked when this
actually proved to work as advertised.
There's more about Steven William Rimmer's fiction at:
http://www.stevenwilliamrimmer.com
For more about Kindle Unlimited, please visit:
http://www.stevenwilliamrimmer.com/index.html#lending
and click on the link at the end of the section.
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7. Negative on Shellshock
(Second Notification)
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We'd like to take this opportunity to note that the Alchemy Mindworks
web servers have been tested for the recently-discovered Shellshock
vulnerability.
Shellshock is not present on any of our systems.
Your downloads and transactions with our web servers remain secure.
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8. Replying to this Message and List Removal
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This message has been sent from an unmonitored address - please do not
reply to it.
To remove your address from this mailing list or to change your
address, please visit our web page at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/update-list.html
Removal requests will be processed instantly.
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If you have questions about this list or any Alchemy Mindworks
products, please contact us at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/email-alchemy.html
You can contact us by telephone at (705) 789-5238, and by snail-mail
at Alchemy Mindworks, L10 C8 Brunel, Huntsville, ON P1H 2J3, CANADA.
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