Recipe Software

Current Version is 5.6, Released Apr 3, 2008

What's New? - Upgrade Instructions - Program History

How To Upgrade From An Older Version

Look in the Home Cookin title bar to see which version you are currently using.
Find your registration date:
- Version 5.4 or later: Click the Help tab. The registration date is displayed at the top of the Help screen.
- Version 5.0 to 5.3: Click the About button in the upper right corner of the program window. The registration date is displayed at the bottom of the About dialog.
- Version 4.9 or earlier: Click the Setup tab. The registration date is displayed on the Setup screen.
If your registration date is LESS than two years old, there is no cost to upgrade. Go to step 5.
If your registration date is more than two years old, you must renew your registration to use the new version:
Purchase the Home Cookin Upgrade for $19.95 from PayPal or RegSoft.
Please allow 48 hours for order processing.
Download the new trial version.
Open the installation program, and follow the prompts to install.
Double-click the desktop icon to open Home Cookin.
When the trial version notice appears, click the "Continue" button.
You should see a message asking if you want to copy recipes from an older version.
Let Home Cookin scan your drive and copy the recipes over. If you have more than one version on your system, you may be asked to select which one you want to copy from.

Assuming everything proceeds normally, the new version should now include the recipes, groceries, and meal plans from your old version. When you are confident everything is working well in the new version, you may uninstall any old versions using the "Add or Remove Programs" applet in Windows control panel.

New in Version 5.6 - Apr 3, 2008

Printing Changes

Page size now matches actual paper being printed. This should prevent problems with printers that refused to print index cards when letter size paper was indicated.
Added A4 print layout.
Increased left and right margins for Letter and A4 layouts. This should allow pages to fit binders better, especially with double-sided prints.
Slight margin increase within the card areas. This should reduce text being cut off when printing too close to paper edges.
Changed wording in print managers from margin to position to better reflect the actual operation.

PDF Cookbook Generation

Added new feature to Save PDF Cookbook.
Recipe selector lets you choose recipes for your cookbook.
Email PDF file to friends or family.
Upload PDF file to book printers such as Lulu.com to create real paperback or hardcover cookbooks.
Enter a title, subtitle, and author for your cookbook.
Index is generated automatically at the end of the cookbook.
Supports 6x9, 8.5x11, and A4 cookbook sizes.

Duplicate Finder

Improved statistical algorithm to find more matches with fewer false detections.
Added user control of accuracy level.
Modified automatic marking of exact matches (Marks last recipe added, or the recipe that does not have a photo attached if dates match.).
Added icon to indicate recipes with attached photos.

Meal Calendar

Recipes and Notes older than two months are now deleted automatically. This allows the calendar to advance properly, ensures the current week is always accessable, and reduces database maintenance.

Recipe Editor and Photo Support

Added popup quick entry for common measures in recipe editor (right click or escape key).
Added option to show or hide carriage returns
Added support for JPG and GIF file formats
Fixed bug when pasting some photos from clipboard
Added automatic resizing for images larger than 640x480

Importing

Added error checking when importing zero-byte files.
Fixed incorrect serving size when importing some recipes.
Cancel button in spell checker reworded to Quit to better reflect the actual operation
(Quit spell checking, not cancelling the previous spell check operations).

Miscellaneous

New upgrade process to simplify the transfer of recipes from old versions.
Added export feature to Grocery screen with a variety of export formats. This should allow transfer of grocery lists to palm and handheld computers.
Reworded error message when adding recipes to reserved chapters.

Version 5.5 - Apr 17, 2007:

Full Vista Compatibility

Code signing, manifests, and file descriptors minimize browser and UAC warnings.
When installed to the default Program Files folder, data files are saved to the users My Documents folder. This also provides multi-user capabilities.
When installed in any other folder, program and data files are saved together (as all prior versions did).
Home Cookin now uses the InnoSetup installer to install and uninstall files. One of the benefits is smaller file sizes for downloading. Upgrade features were moved to the program startup.

Minor Interface Changes

Window title bar now shows whether the program is the active window.
Some 3D shading effects were removed to enhance operational speed (Windows alphablending functions are fairly slow).
The recipe editor was reconfigured to eliminate the "very wide button" issue on high resolution screens, while maintaining compatibility with 800x600 screen sizes. This also makes the editor appearance more consistent with the rest of the program.
New background and popup images reduce the "pink" appearance that is seen on some LCD screens (laptops especially). This also improves readability of popup alerts. (If you prefer the old look, simply delete the background.bmp and popup.bmp files).

Recipe Editor Improved

Degree symbol can now be entered by pressing Control+D, or by right clicking the text.
1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 symbols can now be entered by pressing Control+1, Control+2, or Control+3.
Bug fixed that would sometimes mark text blocks incorrectly.
Text blocks are now managed better.
Ingredient cursor is now reset when resizing in the editor. This eliminates error conditions when the buffer size is reduced.

Miscellaneous

Beta now expires on a fixed date to ensure users install the final release version.
Minor improvements to drive scan for previous version files.
Added printing option to start directions in second column.

Version 5.4 - Oct 20, 2006

New Installer

Step by step interface should make installation easier.
New version installs to a separate folder. This allows you to try out the new version without affecting your current program. You also have the option to copy recipes, groceries, etc. from your current version, without worrying about the new version affecting your data. Your old version will remain intact until you uninstall it.
Removed the automatic drive scan for previous versions. This was slow and unnecessary for new users. The new installer now checks several default locations, with an optional scan button if you do have a previous version of Home Cookin installed somewhere else. If you do need to scan, the speed was improved by skipping the Windows folder and Recycle bin.
Default location changed to the Program Files folder. This is a step towards improving compatibility with limited accounts and the upcoming Windows Vista.
Reliance on the system registry has been reduced. This is to improve compatibility with limited accounts, as well as allowing Home Cookin to run from external hard drives or flash drives. The only registry entries are for the Add/Remove Programs feature.
New uninstaller should eliminate the random crashing that would sometimes occur.
Digital Signature. The installation program is now digitally signed to make the download security warnings less threatening, and ensure the program has not been tampered with.

Minor Interface changes:

New alpha blending effects, added drop shadows, new progress gauges, reworded popup messages, etc.
If you're tired of the same old look, you can use any BMP format graphic for the interface screens. Save the file in the Home Cookin folder as "background.bmp" to use it for the screen backgrounds, or save it as "popup.bmp" to use it for the popup backgrounds. Small images will be tiled to fill the screen.

Recipe Editor Improved:

New blinking cursors replace old DOS style block cursor.
Mouse wheel now scrolls the selected edit field.
Invalid control/key combinations are now blocked to prevent strange looking characters in your recipe text.

New Spell Checker:

New interface allows direct editing of mispelled words and editing of the spell check dictionary.
The spell check dictionary is now larger and much more accurate.
Added automatic replace. This is useful to automatically correct commonly mispelled words (i.e. replace "teh" with "the"), or to expand abbreviations (i.e. replace "tbsp" with "tablespoon").
The new spell checker uses the same format as the old version 4.x. If you still have a customized dictionary from that version, copy the diction.dat file to the new Home Cookin folder after upgrading. It will automatically be converted to the new format (some words will be filtered out to comply with the new spell checker requirements).

Duplicate Finder Improved:

New "Unmark All" button to erase the automatic selections.
New "Cancel" button makes it easier to abort the duplicate finder.
Enhanced visual indicator of selected duplicate

Manual Import Improved:

New indicators for selected recipe segments
Added right clicking to define highlighted segment. You can still click the segment buttons as before, but the right click option is faster since you don't have to move the mouse around so much.
Reworded some of the buttons to clarify their functions.
Improved error checking when exiting manual import.

Printing setups improved:

The space between cards can now be adjusted with multiple card print layouts.
Margins and card spacing can now be set by simply dragging the cards on screen.
Letter size paper is now selected automatically to avoid formatting problems.

Grocery Screen Improved:

Fixed rounding errors for item prices (i.e. 1.17 now saves correctly).
"New List" now has options for default, zero, or one quantities. Default functions the same as the old method, while zero lets you start with a completely empty list. The one option is useful if you want to print a master list of all grocery items.
New "Store" and "Location" buttons. These are search-and-replace functions that let you change all stores or locations from one description to another.
Grocery costs of 0.00 will no longer be displayed or printed. This allows you to ignore the cost field if you do not need it.

Meal Screen Improved:

You can now shift a meal up or down on the selected day by holding down the Control key and pressing the up or down cursor key.

New Help Screen:

The old Setup screen has been replaced with a new Help screen. The setup screen had no real purpose, while the new help screen offers quick links to FAQ's, the Mountain Software web site, a quick email to customer support, etc.
The old "About" button was eliminated, and the program information, registration, and maintenance functions were consolidated into the Help screen.
As before, the program documentation can be accessed by pressing function key F1 at any time.

Miscellaneous Changes:

Export directly to email. A new option was added to the export dialog that lets you export recipes directly to email.
Improved error-recovery for damaged databases. Home Cookin can now deal better with corrupted data files.
Added lockouts for refunded and pirated registration codes.
New lock file to prevent multiple instances of Home Cookin (provides protection when uninstalling).
Fixed a minor bug in the list selector.
Fixed bugs in the web browser launcher.
Updated program documentation.

Version 5 History:

Version 5.6 - Apr 03, 2008
Version 5.5 - Apr 17, 2007
Version 5.4 - Oct 20, 2006
Version 5.3 - Jan 26, 2006
Version 5.2 - Nov 04, 2005
Version 5.1 - Oct 19, 2005
Version 5.0 - Aug 23, 2005

Version 4 History:

Version 4.9 - Nov 27, 2002
Version 4.8 - May 03, 2002
Version 4.7 - Sep 09, 2001
Version 4.6 - May 09, 2001
Version 4.5 - Mar 26, 2001
Version 4.4 - Mar 16, 2001
Version 4.3 - Jan 05, 2001
Version 4.2 - Oct 12, 2000
Version 4.1 - Aug 21, 2000
Version 4.0 - Aug 14, 2000

Version 3 History:

Version 3.9 - Sep 21, 1999
Version 3.8 - Sep 03, 1999
Version 3.7 - Aug 09, 1999
Version 3.6 - Jun 25, 1999
Version 3.5 - Jun 08, 1999
Version 3.4 - Mar 19, 1999
Version 3.3 - Jan 10, 1999
Version 3.2 - Nov 12, 1998
Version 3.1 - Oct 19, 1998
Version 3.0 - Oct 09, 1998

Version 2 History:

Version 2.8 - Jan 14, 1998
Version 2.7 - Jan 09, 1998
Version 2.6 - Dec 05, 1997
Version 2.5 - Nov 12, 1997
Version 2.4 - Nov 03, 1997
Version 2.3 - Nov 01, 1997
Version 2.2 - Aug 31, 1997
Version 2.1 - Jul 20, 1997
Version 2.0 - Jun 23, 1997

Version 1 History:

Version 1.4 - Feb 06, 1997
Version 1.3 - Jul 29, 1996
Version 1.2 - Jun 10, 1996
Version 1.1 - May 19, 1996
Version 1.0 - Apr 02, 1996

Before Home Cookin...

The Recipe Box for the Commodore Amiga - Released 1993
The Mac Recipe Box for the Apple Macintosh - Released 1993
The Recipe Box for the Atari ST - Released 1991
The Atari Cookbook for the Atari 600XL - Released 1991

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