Utilities Updates: QuickTime; WebPrint Plus; PopChar; Nu Sans font; more

Apple has updated the preview version of QuickTime 4 to version 4.0b22. If you already downloaded a previous version of QuickTime 4, just run the updater application and it will automatically download the updater. Rob Henerey confirms that a new Sound Manager version is part of the update. Joseph Snodgrass says it does fix the ambient sound problems he had with the previous version.

WebPrint Plus 2.0 is out. "WebPrint Plus allows users to select and save, edit, index, or print just the part of the document that's needed by the user -- anything from a single character to multiple pages may be selected. Even noncontiguous selections from within a document/web page or across multiple sources/web pages may be combined so they are grouped together. Among the new features in 2.0: The ProjectBoard file has been added, so on-the-fly selections of information can be saved, edited, and printed without affecting the contents of the PrintBoard file; Both a Find and a Find Again feature have been added. Later in the month, the release of an updater for registered users of WebPrint Plus 1.0 will be announced. [This file is also in the MacFixIt Download Library.]

PopChar Pro 1.1.3 has been released.

Update PopChar users just received this email (thanks, David Kanter): "A few users have found a small but nevertheless nasty problem in the Layout Editor of PopChar Pro 1.1.3. When launched on a PowerMac without navigation services installed, an error message "NavigationLib not found" is displayed, and the Layout Editor quits. We have already fixed the problem and replaced the PopChar Pro package on our servers with the new version. We did not change the version numbers of the "sit" and "hqx" files. Only the new installer and the PopChar Pro Layout Editor now have the version number "1.1.3n". The other components of the PopChar Pro package (in particular, the control panel and the PopChar Pro Floater) have not changed.

If you are in doubt if the problem affects you, try double-clicking the PopChar Pro Layout Editor. If it launches without an error message, you do not need the new version."

Nu Sans font 9.1 is now available in PostScript and TrueType versions. Nu Sans is inspired by Apple's Espy Sans bitmap font. This version "marks a change in the font design approach. Instead of using bitmaps, the TrueType Nu Sans (plain weight) uses hand-edited TrueType instructions. This results in a smaller font size as well as an increase in readability."

9.1 fixes problems introduced in 9.0 Michael McCoy found problems with the just previously released version 9.0: "Nu Sans displays funky squares wherever there is a carriage return, BoldItalic is listed twice in font menus, and whenever I try to print, my system freezes. If I pull out Nu Sans from the fonts folder, the problems disappear. The problems occur even without the system patch that allows Nu Sans to be selected as the system font." Version 9.1 supposedly fixes these issues.

Update: Marty Pfeiffer (author of the font) confirms and explains: "Part of the problem was a new piece of software I'm using for font creation: FontLab. FontLab occasionally screws up the accented characters by making multiple component scaling flags. This is a no-no. I was eventually able to get good output from FontLab and I used Apple's FontValidator and TrueEdit to make sure that the problem was fixed. So that took care of the tricky part. The not-so tricky part was a stupid, stupid mistake on my part: one of the fonts was misnamed and caused itself to display twice in font menus."

Version Master-Mac 2.0 is out. It's an Internet based software update resource. The updated version adds automatic e-mail notification.

RealPlayer G2 is out.

File Buddy 5.1b1 has been released.

Software Hardware Tracker 3.3 is out.

Virex May 1999 definitions are now available.

Troi OSErrrs 1.2 is now available. Troi OSErrrs is a FileMaker Pro database that lists error codes for both Mac OS and Windows. Version 1.2 adds 643 new Mac error codes, making a total of 1882 errors codes in the database.

Renamer 1.6 has been released. It now includes Internet Config compatibility and will use the resources stored in your Internet Preferences and File Exchange Preferences to convert file extensions to Types and Creators.

A Better Finder Rename 2.1 has been released. This version of the Finder enhancement utility introduces a new automatic mode and the use of accelerator keys for some operations.

FontBuddy 1.2b6 is out.

NetStatus Pro 1.0

TextSpresso 1.1 is the latest version of this text cleaning utility.

TrashMaster Light 1.0 can be used to automatically empty the trash at startup.

Sherlock Menu 2.0b3 is out.

USB Overdrive 1.1 is out. This is a "universal" USB driver.

MacDrive 98 3.0 will be available next week. This software enables users to read and write Mac disks on PCs with Windows. New in 3.0 is the support for HFS Plus.