Unfortunately not as much got into this update as originally planned. The biggest new feature is the ability to add furs to Ordinaries. (Adding furs to Charges caused a few bugs that I wasn’t able to solve quickly so that feature was dropped.) Decorative partition lines was also dropped, but I plan to attack that again in the next version. It is something I really want to get in, but only recently did I have a good approach to writing the code for it. I’m hoping my approach will get even better when I attempt it again.
There are a few new ordinaries such as Quarter Sinister and Canton Sinister and Baton and Baton Sinister by request. I added a slew of new creature charges: Buck’s Head Couped, Bull Passant, Bull Rampant, Cameleopard, Centaur, Elephant and Castle, Enfield, Heron, Hind, Leopards’ Head Face, Leopard’s Head Erased, Leopard’s Head Erased Affronte, Moorcock, Paschal Lamb, Ram Salient Demi, Serpent Erect, Serpent Involved, Sphinx, and Unicorn Statant.
I also improved the process I use to get new releases out so things are a bit easier on me and for the Pro version I made the license key work a little better. (It saves the key in a different way.) There are probably a few other minor fixes as well. OK, on to the work of the decorative partition lines unless someone there are some bug reports.
To get the update for the free version, you may need to restart your browser if you used it recently. To confirm you have the update go to the “Help” then “About” menu and you should see version “0.75.” If you installed the Pro version with the “new” method (which uses Java Web Start) you should get the update automatically the next time you use the tool and are online. If you used the old method to install the pro version (where you downloaded a zip file and unzipped) you should go to the download page (linked in the email you received with the license) and install the software using the new process.
The issue is that I moved to Java 1.6 with this latest version. For mac users, even if you download and install Java 1.6, sometimes the browser isn’t set up to use it and it still uses Java 1.5.
Java 1.6 has been out for over two years now. And mac users who upgrade to Snow Leopard will get it working properly.
I’m not using anything too specific to Java 1.6, but supposedly it is a bit faster, it does have a more updated “look and feel” (button styles, etc.) and it has some features that I hope to use later. I’ll try to add a link to a Java 1.5 version of the Coat of Arms Design Studio in the next couple of days.
Have you considered adding other forms of piles? An inverted pile is likely to be popular, and what I’d really like to see is a pile inverted bendwise (or “issuant from sinister base” is how the SCA heralds changed the blazon.) Piles inverted bendwise appear multiple times in the Manesse Codex, a 13th or 14th century roll of arms.
It would be easy to add. I’ll put it on my list!