[Newsletter] Announcements from Alchemy Mindworks
Alchemy Mindworks
alchemy8147 at mindworkshop.com
Sat Dec 6 08:28:00 EST 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 4
2. Animation Workshop 5 Revision 4 (New This Week)
3. Graphic Workshop Professional 5 Revision 5 (Additional Notification)
4. Replying to this Message and List Removal
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'Tis the season to run someone evil through with a really big sword.
http://www.stevenwilliamrimmer.com/theorder.html
(Slow cashiers don't count.)
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1. GIF Construction Set Professional 5 Revision 4
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GIF Construction Set Professional 5 has been updated. This release:
- Adds resizable File Open and Save As windows. You can now make them
as big as the universe itself - if you have a larger-than-normal
monitor - and they'll stay that way between sessions.
- Rewrites the View window for better timing accuracy and a helpful
progress display. Note that if you disagree about the helpfulness
in question, the progress display can be disabled in Setup.
- Updates the validation logic to address some occasional hiccups that
could manifest themselves during updates. You'll notice that it now
displays an additional window after you complete the validation of
this update. Fear not - it's a one shot deal.
- Adds an Export Image feature to the right-click document menu. Right-
click on any Image block and you can save it to a graphic file.
Should the graphic file you select be the GIF format, it will even
preserve the original Image block's transparency, if it's present.
See the discussion of Cutting, Copying and Pasting Blocks in the
Reference document for more about this.
- Updates a number of minor features of the Animation Wizard.
- Makes the Supercompressor slightly more aggressive in its eternal
quest to make animations smaller... some of them, in any case.
- Fixes a number of minor cosmetic issues in various user interface
windows.
- Improves the document window memory management, which will make the
whole application run somewhat faster, especially on systems with
limited resources.
- Updates the documentation.
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, you’re 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. Animation Workshop 5 Revision 4 (New This Week)
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Animation Workshop 5 has been updated.
- This release addresses a theoretical bug that crept into the revision
3 update, and could crash Animation Workshop if the View mode was
used.
We know if no instances of it actually crashing the application, but
it's a bug... it deserved to die.
Last week's release:
- Adds resizable File Open and Save As windows. You can now make them
as big as the universe itself - if you have a larger-than-normal
monitor - and they'll stay that way between sessions.
- Rewrites the View window for better timing accuracy and a helpful
progress display. Note that if you disagree about the helpfulness
in question, the progress display can be disabled in Setup.
- Updates the validation logic to address some occasional hiccups that
could manifest themselves during updates. You'll notice that it now
displays an additional window after you complete the validation of
this update. Fear not - it's a one shot deal.
- Refines the metrics of the Shape object generator to address a number
of unanticipated conditions that could cause some o9f the shapes to
render... well, a little oddly at times.
- Speeds up the animation rendering engine.
- Fixes a troublesome resource leak.
IMPORTANT: If you're still using Animation Workshop 4, we urge you to
consider upgrading to Animation Workshop 5. Doing so will resolve
the aforementioned resource leak, and prevent it from sending
Animation Workshop... and possibly Windows itself... into a dark
nether-world from which none ever return. You have to hate it when
that happens.
- Fixes a bug that hitherto caused the entry in the Insert menu for
Shape objects to be disabled in some circumstances, when it shouldn't
have been.
- Fixes a bug in the Extract function that could cause it to create
somewhat peculiar still images files if Windows found itself squeezed
for resources.
- Speeds up the File menu history.
- Updates the documentation.
- Fixes a number of issues that appeared during the upgrade to
version 5.
You can download Animation Workshop 5 from:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/animwork.html#download
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UPGRADES
If you registered or upgraded a registration for Animation Workshop 4 on
or after June 1, 2013, you’re welcome to a free upgrade to Animation
Workshop 5.
If you registered or upgraded a registration for Animation Workshop 4
prior to June 1, 2013, you can upgrade to Animation Workshop 5 for half
the cost of a new single-user license.
When you first run Animation Workshop 5, it will check to see if you
have a registration for Animation Workshop 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 Animation
Workshop 5's menu bar.
You can also visit the no-cost upgrade page directly at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/anmkey.html
and the upgrade order page at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html
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2. The Ultimate Screen Clock 5 Revision 3 (Second Notification)
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The Ultimate Screen Clock 5 has been updated. This release:
- Adds a new clock style - taste the salt, smell the sea and try not to
get cracked across the head by a jib while you enable the Mariner
style.
Mariner is a mostly digital custom clock style. If you right-click on
its entry in the Select Style window of The Ultimate Screen Clock,
you'll be able to choose its size and its color palette.
We could probably indulge in a few more nautical references here, but
we're too classy for that.
- Adds an optional delay in the Net Time window at such time as it
appears to set your system clock when your computer boots up, to allow
for Internet connections that take a while to wake up. See the Net
Time Delay field in Setup.
- Fixes a really, really nasty bug in the custom clock styles that
caused them to leak memory in some situations, eventually crashing The
Ultimate Screen Clock and, not infrequently, Windows and all who sailed
in her. That might have been one of the aforementioned nautical
references we were too classy to indulge in...
- Fixes a bug that prevented The Ultimate Screen Clock from appearing
in the system tray or notification area under some configurations of
Windows.
- Improves a number of aspects of the clock rendering engine.
- Updates the Copy Time and Date function.
- Improves a number of user-interface, GDI and performance issues...
these being the things software developers just can't stop refining.
- 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 The Ultimate Screen Clock 5 from:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/clock.html#download
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UPGRADES
If you registered or upgraded a registration for The Ultimate Screen
Clock 4 on or after June 1, 2013, you’re welcome to a free upgrade to
The Ultimate Screen Clock 5.
If you registered or upgraded a registration for The Ultimate Screen
Clock 4 prior to June 1, 2013, you can upgrade to The Ultimate Screen
Clock 5 for half the cost of a new single-user license.
When you first run The Ultimate Screen Clock 5, it will check to
see if you have a registration for The Ultimate Screen Clock 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 Upgrade
Manager -> Upgrade from Previous Version item of the right-click menu
of The Ultimate Screen Clock.
You can also visit the no-cost upgrade page directly at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/clkkey.html
and the upgrade order page at:
http://www.mindworkshop.com/upgrade.html
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3. Graphic Workshop Professional 5 Revision 5 (Additional Notification)
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Graphic Workshop Professional 5 has been updated. This release:
...was something of an experiment. Graphic Workshop has been
extensively optimized to maximize its performance under Windows 7 and
Windows 8. The result of all this refinement, stealth and treachery
has been a measurable performance improvement across the entire
application. It's quicker and has a smaller memory footprint.
We've been impressed with how well this has worked - it's cool on any
platform, but especially when it's running on older, slower systems.
While Graphic Workshop still runs under Windows XP and Vista, should
you be feeling retro, its current persona may suffer a slight
performance hit if it's confronted by antique builds of Windows.
Time marches on.
In addition:
- Graphic Workshop's View window now defaults to showing oversized
pictures centered, rather than starting in their upper left corners.
You can disable this by unselecting Center Oversize Images In View
in the Setup window if you prove not to like it.
- Updates the e-Paint UltraLight rendering engine and fixes a really
nasty resource leak.
- Fixes a number of cosmetic issues in GIF Construction Set UltraLight.
- Fixes a number of cosmetic and performance issues in Montage Builder
UltraLight.
- Fixes a bug in GWS Camera which could cause it to grab the wrong
screen area in some... admittedly unlikely... circumstances.
- Updates Resource Extractor to allow it to deal with even more weird-
beard resource types that turn up under Windows 8.
- Addresses a number of GDI and performance issues that software
developers never really stop meddling with.
- 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, you’re 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. Replying to this Message and List Removal
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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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