The Journal

v5.1.0.481
Released 14 November 2011

Fixed

• Activating an inserted Excel worksheet is causing an "Index out of bounds" error.
• Category password option to prompt once per session is prompting every time restores from minimized, even with the "lock on minimize/hide" user preference turned off.
• "Import Entries..." menu command should recognize supported export file formats .xml (for WordPress exports) and .enex (EverNote export file).

New Features

• New (partial) Language: Russian
• Added the option to import Cumberland Diary entry export files to Batch Entry Import.
• Added the option to import WordPress export files (of posts and pages) to Batch Entry Import.
• Added the option to import EverNote (tm) export files (.enex) to Batch Entry Import.
• Updated to latest release of skinning components.
• New skins: Win8, Ubuntu, Android, iOS4 and more.
• Minor improvements to HTML importing.

v5.1.0.469
Released 8 August 2011

Fixed

• Importing large JNX files takes a long time.
• "Insert Media File" doesn't have a keyboard shortcut.
• On some non-English-language Windows, the month name of the category calendar would sometimes be gibberish.
• On some non-English-language Windows, in the monthly calendar view, reminders are displaying as gibberish.
• On some non-English-language Windows, inserting a topic sometimes displaying the topic name as gibberish.
• "Word Count" not working properly for text in some languages.
• Upgrading a TJ4 System database has an error in copying the database files.
• "Delete Users" is not deleting all of a user's entries.
• "Delete Users" needs a confirmation message when finished.
• Un-installing an add-on within The Journal is not deleting all of the add-on's entries.
• Calendar entries with a title or a calendar charm should not be considered empty, even if they have no text.
• When dropping multiple images into an entry, the images are inserted out of order.
• Calendar entries with titles are displaying only the title in the entry tree, and not the first line of the entry.
• "Class not registered" error happening on startup if option "Display reminder/events from MS Outlook" is checked and MS Outlook is not installed.
• WYSIWYG editor having issues with "Use Metric" option.
• When skinning is turned off, on View All Reminders, the reminder icons on the tabs show with a pink background.
• In New User Wizard, if you cancel out of verifying the password, the wizard still goes to the next step.
• Changing an entry's background color from the Format menu isn't always saving the new color.
• Daily/Weekly Entry Report isn't including sub-entry/attachments to calendar entries.

New Features

• Updated to latest release of skinning components.
• New User Preference, General: "Prompt for entry name when creating new loose-leaf entries"
• Moved category property "Display first line of entry in entry tree" from "Calendar" tab to "Entry" tab.

v5.1.0.461
Released 6 June 2011

Fixed

• When launching after first install, the new user wizard sometimes gets "stuck behind" the main form.
• Word Count/Entry Statistics needs to count hyphenated words as one word.
• Topic hot-keys are displaying incorrectly in Edit Topics.
• Changes in Journal Volume Properties aren't sticking.
• Restore from Backup now always confirms target Journal Volume before proceeding.
• There is no sanity check on the saved size of the main form.
• Entries in categories with WYSIWYG active are read only when they should not be.
• Don't show "Do this for all dropped files" option if there is only one dropped file.
• When collapsing a month or year in the entry tree, if the active entry is a child of that month or year, the collapse doesn't happen properly.
• User Preferences "Global" tab is getting crowded.

New Features

• Updated to latest release of editor components.
• New Journal Volume property: Exclude from automatic backups
• Journal Volumes can now be rearranged in Journal Volume Properties.
• Added .mp4 to Insert Media (requires Windows 7 or higher).

v5.1.0.453
Released 24 January 2011

Fixed

• Reminders with Cyrillic characters aren't displaying properly in View All Reminders.
• If a table is the first thing in an entry (no lines or text before the table), neither Find Text nor Search Entries is searching the table contents.
• When editing a task, the task priority is incorrectly displayed on the "Task" tab, but shows correctly on the Advanced:Status tab.
• Some images copied and pasted from Web pages, when right-clicked in The Journal, cannot edit the image properties (like layout).
• Cannot change the date of an hourly entry.
• Sometimes get an error when changing the date of any calendar entry.
• When creating a new Journal Volume in a different path than the default, The Journal locks up.
• When viewing the month or year calendar, all of the dates on the small calendar are displayed bold, whether those dates have an entry or not.

v5.1.0.451
Released 27 December 2010

Fixed

• When pasting from a Web page, the default font for the category is being ignored (always pasting as Times New Roman).
• "Find Text" should default to the selected text in the active entry (unless there is no selection).
• "Insert Calendar Charm", after selecting "Clear", the next time you bring it up, it's pointing to the TJ4 charms.
• When inserting a calendar charm (or other image) in a long entry, the insert point "jumps".
• "Search Results" should show the entry path for loose-leaf entries.
• If The Journal is using networked Journal Volumes and is left running when the PC goes into standby/hibernate, then when Windows is restarted, The Journal locks up.
• If The Journal is using networked Journal Volumes and the network connection is lost and regained, when closing The Journal, it locks up.
• In weekly categories, the small calendar isn't showing the dates included in an entry as bold.
• When using Ctrl to select multiple entries in the tree, then right-clicking and choosing "Expand Entry Tree", nothing happens.
• On "Backup Settings", you should be able to set both "Prompt for backup when closing" and "Prompt for backup every ... day(s)".
• "Prompt for backup when closing" only works when exiting from the main menu or the "x", not when closed from the tray icon popup menu.
• Pressing backspace at the beginning of a line that is right justified should make the line centered, and should make a centered line left justified.

New Features

• Added "Edit Right-to-Left" to text style paragraph options.

The Journal 5.1 Build #451 (5.1.0.451)
Released 27 December 2010

Fixed

• "Save Entry As..." menu command should be on the Export sub-menu.
• Entries imported with "Batch Entry Import" aren't displaying their first line of text in the entry tree.
• If the default font color is not black, setting the font color to "Default" with the Format menu (or the font color toolbar icon) is setting the wrong color.
• Setting a loose-leaf category to WYSIWYG, the active entry displays "Read Only".
• On "Backup The Journal", when updating settings with "Backup Settings", changes made aren't showing up until closing and re-opening "Backup The Journal".
• When a Journal Volume is set to "Read Only", a new entry is still created in calendar categories for the current date.
• When dragging-and-dropping loose-leaf entries to re-arrange them, the view of the entry tree is reset to the top.
• On Windows 7, The Journal is prompting for a backup on closing, even during a Windows shutdown.
• Fixed minor display bug when creating new recurring events.
• The option to disable Ctrl+Alt hot-keys should be on the "Global" tab of User Preferences.
• "Disable Ctrl+Alt hot-keys" option should also affect Toggle Timer (Ctrl+Alt+I).
• "Import Entries" doesn't properly import a Unicode text (.txt) file.
• "Search Entries" form is too tall for smaller displays.
• "Save Entry As..." should default the file name to a loose-leaf entry's full path if that Export option is set.
• Post to Blog should remove any blank bullets/numberings at the beginning and end of the entry.
• When clicking on the small calendar, the list of previous/later months doesn't show which one is about to be selected (no highlighting).
• If text is selected, Word Count (Ctrl+W) should only count words in the selected text. (This removes the need for the command Word Count Selection, Ctrl+Shift+W hot-key.)

New Features

• Added "Search entire entry" option to Find Text (on the Search menu).
• Added the option to import CSV and 750words entry export files to Batch Entry Import.

The Journal 5.1 Build #427 (5.1.0.427)
Released 10 May 2010

Fixed

• Reminder display issue.
• If the saved position of a form is from a different monitor in a multi-monitor setup, opening the form causes The Journal to hang.
• Sometimes lagging on close/minimize.
• Sometimes getting a "closed dataset" error after backup/restore.
• Displaying text with multiple topics applied should blend the topic highlight colors to create a unique highlight color.
• "RPC Server Not Available" error sometimes happening when displaying Outlook events.
• After "Insert Date" or "Insert Time", the active text style is being changed.
• When the entry tree has focus, pressing Ctrl+F9 is cutting the entry and all sub-entries to the clipboard.
• In "View All Reminders", old tasks aren't showing their status.
• When using "Change Entry Date/Time" on a new (previously unsaved) entry, any content in the entry is lost.
• Deleting text with a topic applied to it is leaving a "ghost topic" in the entry.
• Undo/redo needs to bundle typing, instead of requiring a keystroke for every character.
• Importing entries with topics from a JNX not always adding the topics to the user's list.
• "Show in System Tray" not always working in Windows 7.
• Turning off skinning, it should remember the last active skin.
• The "Add Journal Volume..." form looks askew in Large Fonts.

New Features

• New Language: Chinese (PRC) (use only on Asian-language versions of Windows)

The Journal 5.1 Build #417 (5.1.0.417)
Released 3 March 2010

Fixed

• Importing calendar entries from a JNX created by an earlier version of The Journal sometimes having problems.
• Changes to a category's entry header setting aren't being saved between sessions.
• Insert Media has a problem with Asian characters in the file name.
• Insert Bookmark accepts a blank bookmark name.
• Still some issues with re-arranging entries in long trees in loose-leaf categories.
• Setting/clearing "auto-login" should automatically clear/set "lock on minimize".
• Background color "lavender" misspelled.
• When editing the name of loose-leaf entries directly in the entry tree, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+C, etc, editing hot-keys don't function as expected.
• "Find Text..." command doesn't move keyboard focus to the entry editor.
• Hourly category entries with charms assigned aren't always showing up on the small calendar.
• New calendar entries created with "Create New Entry" (hot-key: F9) should load the category's default entry template.
• Some menu commands have no flyover hints.
• When editing "Outline style", "Reset to Default" isn't working.

The Journal 5.1 Build #409 (5.1.0.409)
Released 27 January 2010

Fixed

• User default and standard styles (including bullet, numbering, etc) were messed up.

The Journal 5.1 Build #407 (5.1.0.407)
Released 25 January 2010

New Features

• Updated to latest BusinessSkinForm.
• New skins: SLMedia.
• New Reformat menu command: "Detect URL's"
• New Insert menu command: "Insert Entry Date" (hot-key: Ctrl+Shift+A)
• New hot-keys: Ctrl+Shift+B (Backup The Journal)

Fixed

• Caret/scroll position in editor isn't being saved consistently.
• Using "Move Entry Up/Down", the entry tree jumps back to the beginning.
• Calendar charms aren't displaying in the entry tree if TJ4 icons are active.
• Under Russian-language Windows, the days of the week on the small calendar are gibberish.
• When deactivating an installed add-on, getting an error.
• When importing a JNX file, creating a new category with "Create New", having an error when first accessing the new category.
• Newly created unformatted auto-replace strings getting messed up.
• In Vista, using Alt+Tab to bring up TJ5 isn't always properly setting keyboard focus.
• Sub-categories in add-on packages aren't being loaded as sub-categories.
• When a reminder is set to popup 24 hours beforehand, it's not popping up.
• "Keep all active calendar categories on the same date" isn't working for sub-categories.
• When coming back to a calendar, it's always going back to the current entry date, even if it was on a different date before.
• Auto-capitalize and quotes having an issue.
• Media attachment with Asian characters in the file name causes an error on playback.
• Default to no Ctrl+Alt hot-keys if Windows locale is Polish.
• Journal Volume read only checking on startup isn't always working.
• Backup process needs to verify the contents of the backup archive.
• Insert Table and Table Properties aren't getting the user's custom colors.
• In Export Entries, expanding categories with a lot of entries is taking a long time.
• When importing user preferences, auto-replace strings and styles are getting messed up.

The Journal 5.1

Released 15 December 2009

December 2009: The Journal 5.1 is a feature update and bug-fix of The Journal 5. Work on The Journal 5.1 began in late October 2009. My goal for The Journal 5.1 was to add some of the features that had been planned for the initial release of The Journal 5 but, due to time constraints, had been put off to the future.

The Journal 5.1 fixes some bugs (see the list below), updates a few third-party components, and adds some significant new features:

• Improvements to skinning and more new skins! Many of the skins have been updated, including The Journal's default skin (BlueBrilliant). The new skins are: BlueBrilliant_Ext, Charm_Ext, Charm2, Office2010 (multiple skins), and SnowLeopard.
• New toolbar icons for a number of commands, plus the option to use The Journal 4's icons for toolbars, menus and the entry tree.
• Localization support - As new language translations of The Journal become available, they will be added.
• Improvements for using The Journal over a network with multiple simultaneous users.
• View your Outlook calendar reminders in The Journal!
• Support for "Quick Blogcast" blog tool and new blog posting options.
• And, finally, you can wrap text around images in your entries!

The Journal 5.1 Build #393 (5.1.0.393)
Released 15 December 2009

New Features

• Added support for "Quick Blogcast" blog API.
• Added "Language" sub-menu to "View" menu.
• Added icons for commands: Backup The Journal, Restore The Journal, Exit The Journal, Paste as Text, Paste Special, Clipboard Viewer, and all reports on the Tools menu.
• New blog profile export options: "Force a leading blank line in post" and "Force a trailing blank line in post"
• New install option for storing The Journal's databases on a shared or network folder.
• New reminder option in User Preferences: "Display reminders/events from MS Outlook in The Journal"
• Added new global option in User Preferences: "Use TJ4 icons for the toolbars, menus and entry tree"
• Updated to latest BusinessSkinForm.
• New skins: Charm2, Office2010, Office2010_Blue, and SnowLeopard.
• New command on the Edit menu (and editor right-click menu): "Edit Image/Object Properties & Layout"
• New command in Edit Topics: "New Sub-Topic"

Fixed

• After editing category properties, empty calendar entries are displayed in the entry tree.
• When viewing past/future entry dates, the old-style reminder list isn't putting in the header before any past/future reminders.
• De-activating the last sub-category of a master category is deactivating the master category, even if the master category isn't set to "folder only".
• "stream read error" on startup.
• 8-bit JPG images in an image entry aren't displaying when selecting the entry.
• Day planner times are always showing 24-hour times instead of reflecting the Windows locale setting.
• Open Journal Volume form should be sizeable.
• Create New Entry and Create New Sub-Entry should share the same "last entry type created".
• Put "Create New Entry" and "Create New Sub-Entry" menus back on the entry tree context menu.
• When dropping a batch of files, don't prompt for entry names; just default entry name to the name of the dropped file.
• Prompt for how to handle drag-and-dropped image files, even if dropping in a document entry.
• Edit Symbol Replace isn't properly displaying the symbols.
• Error when dragging a decade entry folder from one calendar category to another.
• Default highlighter colors aren't the best choices (need some paler defaults).
• Menu color commands display ugly.
• Loading the "Insert Template" sub-menu is very sluggish.
• Typed entry links are sometimes being auto-capitalized.
• Default entry links (example: entry:Daily Journal\\*) aren't being properly handled.
• In some rare cases, upgrading from The Journal 4 Journal Volume still failing.
• When leaving The Journal running multiple days, future entries viewed aren't having their default template loaded when the entry date becomes current.
• If multiple table cells are selected, the font attributes (bold, italic, etc) on the toolbar aren't displaying properly.
• Cannot select and scroll in WYSIWYG editor.
• Using "Save Entry As..." on a loose-leaf entry in a calendar category has an error.
• When editing inside a table, using clipboard copy/cut/paste is causing an error.
• Upgrading TJ4 topics with identical sub-topics (ex: "Family: Issue" and "Work: Issue") isn't working properly.
• When updating renamed topics, inserted topic name headers should be updated as well.
• Default white space around the small calendar is a bit wide, and minimum white space should be narrower.
• Showing reminders for the current week not always working.
• Entry header for weekly categories improperly formatted.
• There is no separation between entries when printing with the entry header turned off.
• When printing calendar entries, sometimes getting year and month headers that shouldn't be there.
• Auto-capitalize should "submit" if the user backs up and changes it back, not keep doing it over and over.
• Auto-capitalize needs to handle quoted text better.
• Flyover hints for reminders on planners are formatted oddly.
• Can't set a reminder to popup 24 hours beforehand.
• "Copy/Cut Entry to Clipboard" not saving the contents of the entry before performing the operation.
• Category "Lock entries on edit" feature isn't always unlocking the entry when closing.
• Can't use spacebar to check/un-check topics in "Apply Topic".
• When exporting entries to HTML "as a Web page", exported entry links aren't working.

The Journal 5 Build #367 (5.0.0.367)
Released 5 October 2009

New Features

• Category Properties, Calendar tab, new option: "Display day of week for daily entries in tree".

Fixed

• Setting an inserted image's description isn't marking the entry as modified.
• In a category without automatic time-stamping, when creating a new entry and choosing a time, the time isn't sticking.
• On 64-bit Windows, resizing the main form isn't working properly.
• When creating a new Special Day reminder, selecting "Holiday" isn't updating the default name and charm.
• The "Sort ..." commands on the Tools menu need to be active in calendar categories.
• Typing in an entry still sometimes causing "Program not responding".
• Clicking on an inserted media file is not properly selecting it.
• Resizing the main form has a lot of flicker.
• Closing The Journal takes too long sometimes.
• Exporting to HTML isn't including media files.
• Reminder end effective dates are supposed to be inclusive.
• Shouldn't save form size if the form is rolled up.
• Unroll form on restore from minimized.
• If timer is visible when minimizing the main form, the timer doesn't work properly after restoring from minimized.
• Exporting and importing calendar entries with loose-leaf sub-entries not working properly in all cases.
• Clicking "Import New" on Import Entries form should process all categories and entries in the JNX file.
• 3 days is a better default for backup prompting.
• Creating a new root-level loose-leaf entry in a calendar category sometimes inserts the new entry in the wrong place in the entry tree.
• Changes to the date & time styles in User Preferences aren't saving.
• -v command line parameter isn't working.

The Journal 5 Build #359 (5.0.0.359)
Released 21 September 2009

New Features

• New hot-keys: Ctrl+Shift+K (Insert Link), Ctrl+Shift+H (Edit Right-to-Left)
• Added "Force Bidirectional Editing" option to User Preferences, Global tab.

Fixed

• Can't assign hot-keys to topics (the dropdown list is empty).
• Default entry templates not loading for new entries if a calendar category has "include time" option checked.
• Entry name display over editor not displaying selected user interface font after logging out and back in again.
• "Delete entry" confirmation prompt should only mention sub-entries if the active entry has sub-entries.
• On "Journal Volume Properties" form, "Done" button is not active unless the "Apply" button is active.
• When returning to a calendar category where the last date selected has no entry, the year calendar is coming up instead of the entry editor.
• Entries in some add-on packages not being properly upgraded.
• Changing categories sometimes causing "Program not responding".
• Typing in an entry after a period of idleness sometimes causing "Program not responding".
• Display error in Style Modify when the style has no options checked.
• Error exporting entries with entry links to JNX format.
• When importing JNX's from previous versions of The Journal, entry links are not being properly updated.
• Applying a style to a block of text copied from the Web is wiping out the hyperlinks.
• Applying a style to a block of text with bullets or numbering isn't affecting the bullets or numbering.
• Timer start/pause/reset buttons not displaying if skinning is turned off.
• On the "Create New Category" form, the list of categories under "Make a sub-category of" is out of order.
• When exporting (or doing a "Save Entries as...") to RTF format, the category's page setup information isn't included.
• When the first word of a sentence is in quotes, it's not being auto-capitalized.
• There is a hot-key conflict between the thesaurus and edit right-to-left.

The Journal 5 Build #355 (5.0.0.355)
Released 9 September 2009

Fixed

• When you rename a calendar entry, the new name doesn't show up in the entry tree immediately.
• Reminders aren't updating as often as they should be.
• Untended reminder popups are sometimes preventing popup of reminders coming due.
• Upgrading a Journal Volume from The Journal 4 or earlier should repair the database before starting the upgrade process.
• "Rename Journal Volume" is always reporting "Could not rename..."
• The main menu needs to be forced to visible on startup.
• Spell checker suggestions and flyover reminder hints are messed up for international characters.
• Topics tagged to an entry aren't being automatically updated when topics are edited.
• Reminders with a specific time not always properly reporting their status.
• Various reminder fixes (especially for recurring, time-specific tasks).
• Post to Blog is getting an "Access denied" error.
• Categories set as "read only" not upgrading properly from The Journal 4.
• Creating a new reminder should default to the date selected on the calendar.
• When opening The Journal again on the same day, don't create a new, empty entry if an entry for the date already exists, even with the "include time" setting.
• "View All Reminders" should list today's and upcoming reminders first.
• In Style Editor, when editing a standard style (e.g., "Bullet Style"), "Reset to Default" should reset the style to its "factory" settings (not just the default font).
• "Merge Categories" shouldn't allow merging into "read only" categories, and shouldn't list the reminder category.
• Found another set of data sanity checks to make (fixes the "out of memory" error).
• Selecting some calendar charms resulting in a "white square" instead of the proper charm.

The Journal 5 Build #347 (5.0.0.347)
Released 31 August 2009

Fixed

• After selecting an external object or image entry, selecting another entry causes an error.
• "Go to Random Entry" is only going to the first date of this or the last century.
• "Check for Update of The Journal" is trying to download the wrong version.
• Reminders with a specific time not being properly set to "missed".
• "Show Topic" command isn't showing on the toolbars after being put there when customizing the toolbars.
• Need better handling of corrupted entries and sanity checking of entry dates, especially during upgrade from TJ4.
• Image entries should skip redundant compression of compressed image formats (JPG, PNG and GIF).
• Top-level category tabs are displaying on a single line when arranged at the top.
• "Search Entries" isn't properly searching with a date range.
• "Font color" and "Highlight color" toolbar icons not correctly displaying their current color.
• "Check for Update of The Journal" needs a better Web page.

The Journal 5

Released 26 August 2009

July 2009: My plan for The Journal 5, which began development in September 2007, can be summed up as "The Journal Even Better". I wanted to improve all the major parts of The Journal--the database, the internal data structures, the user interface--and provide more support for international users. Plus I wanted to offer additional category and entry options, more reports and other tools, and, finally, to offer a selection of "skins" for the user interface.

I think I achieved most of that--even if it took a bit longer than I expected.

In short, The Journal 5 is an inside-out redesign of The Journal, preserving all the great journaling and writing features that have accumulated over the years and adding some cool new features and capabilities.

What's New in The Journal 5

The Journal 4.1

(March 2006 - August 2009)

March 2006: Though not a major upgrade like the one from v3 to v4, The Journal 4.1 is still a significant step forward. Reminders & Tasks have now been added to The Journal, supplying whole new ways you can use The Journal to organize your life and life's work. Set reminders for daily tasks, monthly appointments, special days and anniversaries, and more! And with the new entry locking features for shared categories, The Journal edges closer to becoming a true multi-user, maybe even a collaborative, platform. I look forward to building on all of the 4.1 additions and changes as The Journal continues to grow.

August 2007: The last major new feature added to The Journal 4.1 was the option to have multiple entries on a given date. Such an obvious feature (in retrospect), and yet added so late. I'm always surprised by how The Journal continues to evolve.

v4.1.0.253 - Released 5 February 2008
v4.1.0.247 - Released 10 December 2007
v4.1.0.241 - Released 15 October 2007
v4.1.0.239 - Released 9 October 2007
v4.1.0.237 - Released 4 September 2007
v4.1.0.231 - Released 13 June 2007
v4.1.0.229 - Released 11 June 2007
v4.1.0.219 - Released 8 May 2007
v4.1.0.213 - Released 23 April 2007
v4.1.0.207 - Released 19 February 2007
v4.1.0.195 - Released 4 December 2006
v4.1.0.189 - Released 2 October 2006
v4.1.0.181 - Released 12 June 2006
v4.1.0.177 - Released 26 April 2006
v4.1.0.175 - Released 17 April 2006

The Journal 4

(November 2004 - March 2006)

August 2004: Though the story of The Journal 4 lacks the drama of The Journal 3's grueling development period, it's an important upgrade nonetheless. Built on the foundation created in v3, v4 takes The Journal to new levels of power and ease of use.

Work on The Journal 4 began in December 2003, with early efforts centered on switching from using the Windows Rich Text Common Control to the very powerful TRichView components created by Sergey Tkachenko. This was a huge change, both in source code and in philosophy, because The Journal was originally built around the rich text edit, and probably would not have existed except for that feature of Windows 95. After years spent tweaking and cajoling (and cursing) the rich text edit to get it to do things that Microsoft probably never meant for it to do, I suffered a few withdrawals. However, this one change, by itself, made possible a large portion of The Journal 4's new features, including background images for entries, print preview, tables, and on and on. So I'm past the withdrawals now, and not looking back.

With the new entry editor in place, I shifted to adding numerous other features that users have asked for over the years, such as n-depth category nesting, user-created Calendar Charms, and daily/weekly reporting. Beyond user requests, there were other extensions that I wanted to make, such as the ability to install and run The Journal on read-only CDROM's, that would make The Journal more stable overall and useful in new arenas.

By late August 2004, I had implemented the last of the planned additions and on 1 September I handed The Journal 4 over to a small group of testers. There's nothing like user testing to help smooth out the new interface and add the necessary polish to the new features--and point out the obvious features and extensions you somehow forgot.

The Journal 4 added:

• A more modern look-and-feel, that tracked Windows XP themes
  
• Improved editing capabilities, including:
  
  
  • Background images for entries
    
  • Improved image handling (faster saving and loading, resizing, and more)
    
  • Tables
    
  • More powerful and more flexible text styles
    
  • Paragraph borders and background colors
    
  • Improved bullets and numbering
    
  • Outline mode
    
  • HTML importing and improved HTML exporting
    
  • Improved auto-replace, supporting both formatted and unformatted text
    
  • Assigning topics to blocks of text within an entry
  
  
• Improved printing, including print preview
  
• Improved searching, with:
  
  
  • Google-like results presentation, with excerpts of found text and links to the found entries
    
  • Search text highlighting in found entries
    
  • Date range limiting for standard categories
    
  • Searching by topic, or by image description
  
  
• Daily/weekly/etc "reporting" for standard categories, with printing
  
• Support for user-created Calendar Charms and entry background images
  
• Improved blog support, with posting of images (if the blog supports posting images)
  
• Web page "archiving" within entries
  
• Improved arranging of loose-leaf entries and categories
  
• Improved category "nesting", so you can have sub-categories of sub-categories of sub-categories of...
  
• New category options likes "Read Only" and "Folder Only"
  
• The ability to install and run The Journal on self-contained, removable media, like a USB flash drive or CDROM
  
• Improved database speed and security

v4.0.0.163 - Released 6 December 2005
v4.0.0.161 - Released 24 October 2005
v4.0.0.157 - Released 26 September 2005
v4.0.0.153 - Released 29 August 2005
v4.0.0.147 - Released 20 July 2005
v4.0.0.145 - Released 13 July 2005
v4.0.0.141 - Released 11 April 2005
v4.0.0.137 - Released 2 February 2005
v4.0.0.135 - Released 24 January 2005
v4.0.0.133 - Released 29 December 2004
v4.0.0.127 - Released 8 December 2004
v4.0.0.123 - Released 2 December 2004
v4.0 - Released 29 November 2004

The Journal 3

(November 2001 - November 2004)

(From November 2001): The Journal 3 is a complete re-design and re-write of The Journal, incorporating years of accumulated feedback and suggestions. Since The Journal was first released in 1996, users have sent in their suggestions for features and extensions. As much as possible, these suggestions were incorporated. But some suggestions were beyond what the original design of The Journal could tolerate. There was only so far that The Journal's feature set could be stretched without starting over from scratch.

Begun in the summer of 1999, development on The Journal 3 proceeded slower than expected. These initial delays were caused by several factors. I was (and still am) co-owner of another software company (Samu Games, http://www.samugames.com) and other projects came up that stalled the development of The Journal 3. Plus there was the ever-present need to support the current version of The Journal. By the end of 1999, only The Journal 3's new database configuration was completed.

In 2000, two major projects with Samu Games prevented significant work on The Journal 3. The Journal 2.3 was released in early 2000, and The Journal 2.4 was begun in the fall of the year. Though the 2.3 release was a relatively straightforward update of The Journal 2.2. The 2.4 release, however, incorporated some of the features that had been designed for The Journal 3. New word processing features (like numbered lists and multi-level undo), improved image handling, and especially the new export/import format were all from work done for The Journal 3.

Most of the work on The Journal 3 that occurred during 2000 was on the new user interface. There was a lot of experimentation with new layouts, new configurations, and new ways of representing the categories and entries in the database. Some of it worked, and was kept. A lot of it, though, proved "iffy at best" and was discarded (or turned into a "user preference", default off).

In March 2001, following the release of The Journal 2.4, I realized that I had spent too much time on "research and development". If I expected to release The Journal 3 in this lifetime, I was going to have to stop thinking up new features to add and experiment with. So the feature set of The Journal 3 was "frozen", and I began working on getting The Journal 3 done.

Interestingly enough, while The Journal 3 already sported quite a few features that The Journal 2.x would never be able to duplicate, The Journal 2.x had many more features that had not yet been implemented in The Journal 3. So to get The Journal 3 "done" I had to get all of the existing 2.x features working in the new version. Everything from simple options like "minimize to system tray" to more complex features like entry templates had yet to be added to The Journal 3.

This turned out to be the single largest effort in the development of The Journal 3. The Journal had accumulated quite a few features in its 5+ years, and re-doing them for The Journal 3 proved to take more time than I estimated. In August 2001, 6 months later, the last of the 2.x feature set was finally added to The Journal 3.

In September 2001, The Journal 3 was handed over to a small number of volunteers to see how it would stand up. With their help, most of the bugs and issues were found and either fixed or resolved. The last bit of testing and polishing occurred when The Journal 3 "pre-release" was made available in mid-November.

The Journal has already grown beyond my original vision for the project. I'm excited to see what new directions the product will head in the future.

2004 Afternote: The Journal grew significantly after the initial release of v3. Here's a list of the major improvements and features added to The Journal from November 2001 to October 2004:

• Improved printing
• Improved "Search Entries..."
• Improved entry navigation
• Improved entry templates
• Improved initial defaults for new users
• Improved entry export and import
• Improved user interface, including lots of new hot-keys
• Improved entry links and internet links
• Improved database maintenance
• Improved documentation
• Calendar Charms
• Add-on package support
• MemoryGrabber add-on package
• Writing Prompts 1 add-on package
• Blog support

v3.0.0.71 -Released 22 September 2004
v3.0.0.67 -Released 13 July 2004
v3.0.0.65 -Released 13 April 2004
v3.0.0.63 -Released 6 April 2004
v3.0.0.61 -Released 10 February 2004
v3.0.0.59 -Released 29 December 2003
v3.0.0.57 -Released 15 December 2003
v3.0.0.51 -Released 6 October 2003
v3.0.0.49 -Released 15 July 2003
v3.0.0.47 -Released 9 July 2003
v3.0.0.45 -Released 10 April 2003
v3.0.0.43 -Released 24 February 2003
v3.0.0.41 -Released 9 December 2002
v3.0.0.39 -Released 26 August 2002
v3.0.0.35 -Released 2 April 2002
v3.0.0.33 -Released 18 February 2002
v3.0.0.31 -Released 12 February 2002
v3.0.0.27 -Released 6 February 2002
v3.0.0.25 -Released 4 February 2002
v3.0.0.23 -Released 7 January 2002
v3.0.0.21 -Released 17 December 2001
v3.0.0.19 -Released 3 December 2001
v3.0 -Released 28 November 2001

The Journal 2

(September 1998 - October 2001)

The Journal 2.0, released in late September, 1998, built on the feature set that had been finalized in the 1.51 release. More word-processing and security features were added, and database maintenance and stability was greatly enhanced. Throughout the 2.x series of releases, The Journal continued to mature, though not at the same pace as before. Refinement and extension replaced a headlong rush to add new features. The 2.4 release of The Journal, coming nearly a year after the previous release, was the most significant of the 2.x updates after 2.0.

v2.43 - Released September 28 2001.
v2.42 - Released August 20 2001.
v2.41 - Released April 16 2001.
v2.40 - Released February 9 2001.
v2.30 - Released April 7 2000.
v2.20 - Released December 6 1999.
v2.11 - Released June 21 1999.
v2.10 - Released April 5 1999.
v2.02 - Released February 1 1999.
v2.01 - Released November 11 1998.
v2.00 - Released September 30 1998.

The Journal 1

(October 1996 - August 1998)

v1.30 was the first shareware release of The Journal, made available in October, 1996. This was a period of expanding features for The Journal. Hardly a month went by without a new release coming out with more features--and bug-fixes for previously added features. This "growth spurt" period went on for nearly a year before finally slowing down.

With the release of The Journal 1.5 in January, 1998, The Journal became a mature software product.

v1.51 - Released February 20 1998.
v1.50 - Released January 30 1998.
v1.44 - Released December 12 1997.
v1.43 - Released September 26 1997
v1.42 - Released July 19 1997
v1.41 - Released July 1 1997
v1.40 - Released June 28 1997
v1.39 - Released June 7 1997
v1.38 - Released March 23 1997
v1.37 - Released February 9 1997
v1.36 - Released January 12 1997
v1.35 - Released December 29 1996
v1.34 - Released December 13 1996
v1.33 - Released November 25 1996
v1.32 - Released November 15 1996
v1.31 - Released October 14 1996
v1.30 - First Shareware Release October 11 1996

The Journal 1 - The Freeware Days

(June-September 1996)

The Journal started out as a quick project, mostly as a way to learn how to use Delphi. Fittingly, most of the original users of The Journal were other Delphi programmers who downloaded it from the various "Made in Delphi" web pages. Feedback from these and other users prompted me to extend The Journal significantly, and release it as shareware.

v1.21 - Released August 12 1996
v1.20 - Released August 9 1996
v1.1 - Released July 8 1996
v1.0 - Initial Release. June 18 1996