- Monitoring mode has been added. USB disk connections/disconnections are now handled. Monitoring start/end on disk replacement is recorded in the event log.

- Correct handling of computer wakeup from sleep when starting scheduled tasks. The task will start in accordance with the Schedule>Advanced>If unexecuted task is detected on load option.

- Mail can be sent via SSL.

- By default, the service is installed in silent mode for compatibility with Windows 2008 and Windows 7.

- Program hangs when showing the notification window before task performance have been resolved.

- A new option, “Write to log task’s execution progress each % done”, has been added to the Performance tab.

- Copying to FTP servers has been improved.

The program now allows users to configure hotkeys for any measurements.

The automatic area measurement mode now allows you to quickly select areas filled with the same color and also use a color tolerance value to include areas with a similar color.

When selecting objects on the screen, you can now see an enlarged area (magnifying glass effect) around the cursor, which allows you to define object limits more accurately.

Added a possibility to make a screenshot of a selected screen area. All such screenshots can then be found in the “Measurement results” window

You can specify unique file names using a date stamp and the nesting depth of the backup files for each of the additional folders (3+FTP folder). This allows you to implement flexible backup storage scenarios – for instance, a current backup file and monthly backups.

Let’s take a look at an example. We need to:

• create a full daily backup of a specific folder and save it locally, keeping the last 40 copies there
• copy the backup file to a network location and keep one most recent copy there
• keep 12 most recent monthly backups and upload 10 most recent backups to an FTP server

To do that, you need to set the following parameters.

The main folder has been configured to store 40 most recent backups.

The additional folder (Extra 1) is configured to copy the backup file to a network location. Note that the “Date format” field in this case is left blank, so the backup file will have the same name (“LastTestBackup”) and will be overwritten every time the task is run.

The additional folder (Extra 2) is configured to store 12 most recent monthly archives. This can be achieved by setting the date format to “YYMM” – that is, without the day part.

Whenever this task is run during the same month, the file name will remain the same as well and the file will be overwritten. To prevent this, we need to enable the “Do not overwrite if archive exists” option. In this case, the backup file will not be copied. Once the first archive in a given month has been saved, no files will be copied to this folder when the task is run again during this month.

To upload backup files to an FTP server, you need to configure the upload parameters on the “Upload to FTP” panel. That’s also where you can specify the name of the FTP backup file, the date format and the necessary nesting depth of the backup.

When using additional folders, bear in mind that renaming of files and folders according to custom naming rules takes place only after they have been successfully copied to the destination location. Therefore, if copying is interrupted for some reason, the old backup file will remain intact. This may cause a problem with low hard drive space in the additional folder, as the old backup file will only be deleted after the new backup has been successfully copied. If you have limited space in the additional folder, you can use the “Delete backups BEFORE copy for extra folders” option on the [Backup]-[Advanced] panel. If this option is enabled, the old backup file will be deleted before the program starts copying the new one and the problem with low disk space in the additional folder will be solved.

Related links:

Using the “date format” to manage the structure of backup archives in APBackup
Archive saving

In this case, the APBackup task will be terminated with one of the following errors:

Can not create destination file: [EID:3:Path not found...
Can not create destination file: [EID:206:The filename or extension is too long:...
Can not create destination file: [EID:3:The filename or extension is too long:...


For instance, a task copies folder C:Documents and SettingsUser*.*
to a backup archive called D:BackupBackup_2011Daily_BackupsJanuaryProfile
In this case, a source file with a name slightly shorter than 260 characters - "C:Documents and SettingsUser[210_symbols_path]example.txt" – will be copied to a file called "D:BackupBackup_2011Daily_BackupsJanuaryProfileDocuments and SettingsUser[210_symbols_path]example.txt" and its final length will exceed 260 characters. This APBackup task will be terminated with an error.

There are several ways to avoid this situation:

1. Sometimes it turns out that files with such long names in the source location are not needed. For instance, these can be various temporary or cache files. In this case, termination of the task because of such a file is highly undesirable or the archive must be created regardless of these problems and even if some files are lost in the process.
For such cases, APBackup has a special option on the [Source] tab: "Skip files with too long destination name".

If you enable this option and a long path situation takes place, APBackup will add a warning with the name of the source file to the log, will skip this file and will resume the execution of the task. In this case, the task will be completed and the names of skipped files will be written to the APBackup log. By the way, APBackup can email the log for a specific task to the admin after the completion of the task.

2. Another method is to shorten the path to the resulting file in the destination folder. You can shorten the archive path – in this example, shorten the "D:BackupBackup_2011Daily_BackupsJanuaryProfile" path. You can also uncheck the "Store full source path on copy" option on the [Source] tab.

If this option is enabled, the full path to the source file will be saved, starting from the root of the drive.
In our case, the following will be saved: "Documents and SettingsUser":

D:BackupBackup_2011Daily_BackupsJanuaryProfileDocuments and SettingsUser[210_symbols_path]example.txt

If you enable this option, the path will be saved only from the source folder – that is, the "Documents and SettingsUser" part of the file name will not be saved.

D:BackupBackup_2011Daily_BackupsJanuaryProfile[210 symbols path]example.txt


This is how you can use the second method to nearly completely exclude the possibility of an error arising during task execution. If the second method doesn’t work for some reason, use the option that allows skipping files with long names without stopping the execution of the task.

Related links:

MSDN: Maximum Path Length Limitation
APBackup: backup creation modes.

When a task is executed using an external archiver, APBackup creates a command line to start it using the information from the corresponding configuration file, creates a process for executing this command line and waits for the process to end. In this case, an archiving task is considered completed if the return code of the created process is 0 and the program finds a newly-created volume after the external archiver has finished working. If the external archiver returns a code different from 0, it means that the task has been completed with an error. Unfortunately, APBackup cannot identify what’s causing the error, as it is related to a different process it has no access to. So what can you do to find the source of the problem?

Let’s take a look at an example using 7-zip and demonstrating how you can obtain more information about an error occurring during the work of an external archiver. This method can be used for any console archiver.

Let’s switch the standard screen output of the archiver to output into a log file for this task.
Below is the command line executed in our task for the external archiver:

"C:Program files7-zip7z.EXE" u -t7z -r -y "d:testRS2SS101216.7z" @"d:testRS2SS101216.IFM" -mx=5

To switch the output of the archiver to a text file, you need to add the following to the end of the line:

"C:Program files7-zip7z.EXE" u -t7z -r -y "d:testRS2SS101216.7z" @"d:testRS2SS101216.IFM" -mx=5 > "d:testRS2SS101216.7z.7zlog"

In this case, all messages generated by the archiver will be saved to “d:testRS2SS101216.7z.7zlog”. The file has the name of the archive being created. That is, when the external archiver finishes the task, there will be a log file next to it containing any console messages it generated during its work, so you will be able to check what the problem was, if any.

Let’s make it work with APBackup now.

To start off, let’s create a .bat file that we will call instead of 7z.exe. This file, in turn, will call 7zip and pass over the parameters that were first passed to the .bat file itself.

7zip.bat
----------------------------------------
"c:Program files7-zip7z.exe" %*

Now, let’s create a new configuration file in APBackup based on the file for 7-ZIP (7-Zip.EMC). Use the “Preferences – Edit Configurations of External Archivers”. Let’s open 7-Zip.EMC and save it under a new name – like 7ZipWLog.EMC, for instance.

All we need to do now is to change the command line and the parameters line. Let’s add the path to the previously created 7Zip.bat file to the command line and add the following to the end of the parameters line:


> "[ArchiveName].7zlog"


In this case, when a task is executed, the [ArchiveName] macros will be replaced with the name of the archive being created.

Once the configuration file has been saved, you need to restart APBackup to enable it to add the new file to the list of external archivers.

From now on, you will be able to select an external archiver called 7ZipWLog for any task. It will create a log with the name of the created archive and will have the “7zlog” extension.

This method can be used for any archiver supporting the console mode.

Related links

Using external archivers in APBackup
Configuring external archivers in APBackup

When a document is opened, APFill uses the GhostScript library to convert a PDF (or PS) file into color-separated bitmap TIFF files to measure ink coverage. This is when the “Resolution” parameter is used. The higher it is, the higher the conversion quality and lower its speed. Therefore, when this parameter is increased, the speed of image processing goes down, but the coverage calculation accuracy is improved. The opposite is also true – when this parameter is decreased, the processing speed grows, but the accuracy is affected. As a rule, setting the resolution to 300dpi will give you decent processing speed and sufficient measurement accuracy.

The default ”Resolution” value can be set using the “Options” menu of APFill. You can also set a different value of the “Resolution” parameter after opening a document for re-conversion with a new resolution.

Some users ask us if APFill supports documents with arbitrary page sizes and not just the ones set by the “Default Page Size” parameter (A4,A3,etc). The thing is that the “Default Page Size” parameter is used ONLY if the page size is not set in the PDF/PS file. If the page size is specified in the file, APFill uses this value and DOES NOT use the “Default Page Size” parameter. Therefore, APFill can calculate ink coverage of pages of ANY sizes.

Please note that APFill calculates ink coverage as a per cent value of the page area. That is, if a page has a standard A4 size and the result of filling with any color (CMYK) is 5%, this is not the identical to a 5% filling of an A3 page. Since the area of an А3 sheet is two times larger than that of an A4 page, its 5% fraction will be correspondingly larger. Therefore, 5% A3 = 2*5% A4 = 10% A4.

In general, if you need to calculate the X% coverage of a page with an area of S1 and you know the Y% coverage of a page with an area of S2, you can use the following formula:

X% = Y%*(S2/S1);

Also now photo label can be imprinted with any background color.

In this version:

- If the connection with an FTP server is broken, the program resumes the upload of the backup archive to the server.

- A possibility to save the list of processed files to an additional log file.
Use the “Save the full list of processed files to a folder” option on the “Backup” – “Advanced” tab and select the folder the detailed log file will be saved to (by default, this is the folder the archive is located in). The program will create a new file called “_[Archive name].log” that will contain the list of processed files along with the information about their size and date of the latest modification.

- An external application can be launched after the creation of a backup file only if there haven’t been any problems during the work of the archiver.

- APBackup now features a quick run menu intended for launching tasks without opening the main program window.

To add a task to this menu, you need to enable the “Show this task in APBackup Quick Run submenu” option in the task configuration window.

In this version:
- Windows 7 compatibility
- Scale settings are saved between program launches
- The clipboard copy (Excel) routine has been improved

In this version:

- Improved compatibility
- The program now supports GhostScript 8.70 libraries for processing of PDF and PS/EPS files. Other versions of Ghost Script libraries supported by the program: 8.61 (we recommend this version as the fastest one), 8.62, 8.63, 8.64.
- New parameters have been added to the automatic mode.
Some details:
APFill can be started in the automatic mode where a PDF/PS file is sent to the input and a text CSV file with an ink coverage table is generated for it.

The following parameters can be used in this mode

apfill.exe coverage -r300 -dA4 -show -noprogress c:input.pdf
c:output.txt';

Description of parameters:
-r300 – 300 dpi resolution
-dA4 – the default page size is A4. This parameter will have effect only if the page size is not explicitly specified in the document.
-show – show the results table after calculation.
-noprogress – do not show the calculation progress on the screen.
-Histogram – the program will additionally calculate an intensity table with a step of 10% for each page

You can also start APFill without the COVERAGE parameter. In this case, you don’t need to set the output file name – it will be created automatically and will be based on the name of the input file.

Example:
apfill.exe -r300 c:input.pdf
or
apfill.exe c:input.pdf
In this case, the program will save the results to c:input.pdf.COVERAGE.txt.

Version 5.3 also supports a new “RGB” format for calculating RGB ink coverage in the automatic mode.

Example:
APFill.exe RGB -r300 "c:Comcostat.pdf"
In this case, you get RGB/GRAY coverage results.
APFill.exe -r300 "c:Comcostat.pdf"
In this case, the program will calculate CMYK coverage.

Related links:

Download a trial version of APFill Ink Coverage Calculator
APFill User’s Manual