Introduction
This new version is the result of your feedback and of all remarks sent to the technical help. We try to listen carefully to every message, to understand the very reason of all comments, difficulties, misunderstandings in the first contacts with the program and in the current work.
You'll find below a list of the major new or upgraded features, with pointer to sections developping those aspects. Since this page is rather new, don't hesitate to chime in for suggestions and comments.

Help File
To get a better idea of this new version, download the help file of the program. It is not yet the final version, but this should give you a better idea of all we've done.

Main Upgrades and New Features

• More Robust Project Management
• General Overhaul of the User Interface
• Icon Composer to compose Macintosh and Windows icon files
• Pasting Files and Folders from the Explorer
• Creating Folders from Scratch
• Searching/Replacing Signatures
• Refreshing the Project
• Refreshing the Contents of a Folder
• Replacing the Access Path
• Burning an Image from MacImage
• Compiling an Image with MacImage from the Command Line
• Registering MacImage Extensions in Windows Registry
• Adding a Postgap to the Image

More Robust Project Management
The development team and the betatest team spent a great lot of time checking and testing this particular aspect of the program behavior, and we gave the uttermost attention to all reports on this precise point. We think that we've improved significantly the management of the project files and hope that it will be as robust as you expect.
Anyway, we didn't have any crash report since weeks, and I would say that this is the mort important improvement of this new version.
The file supporting the autorun/autostart is selected directly from the Property box.
Hidden files and folders are now supported, which allows you to build a cleaner interface for your customers.
Back to Top of Page

General Overhaul of the User Interface
The graphical user interface was revised to take in account the wishes and observations of users. In particular, the buttons were redesigned, using new colors and new symbols. We now use a background color to better ascertain the working mode.
In Project Mode, le dispolayed views are selected with a single button, to avoid cluttering the toolbar.
MacImage displays icons delivered by Windows for all file types which are registered in the signature file.
MacImage displays at the bottom of its window a progress bar showing how much of the theoretical medium capacity is already taken and how much remains free. The basic capacity is 650-700MB in the case of CD-R[W] and any value in the case of DVD-R[W].
Back to Top of Page

Icon Composer
To help you producing Macintosh (and Windows) icon files on the PC (and to use them as custom icons of volumes and folders), we wrote a little program aimed at offering the same services as the utility named Icon Composer on the Macintosh. Our WinComposer doesn't claim to be a fully featured icon editor (there are very good tools for that and we don't intend to compete).
In particular, WinComposer doesn't offer all graphic tools. It allows you to cut and paste graphic resources from the clipboard or from files to compose an icon set, with several sizes and color depths, to be used as a Window icon file or a Macintosh icon file.
Since this program is still rather young, we wellcome all remarks, observations and suggestions.
Back to Top of Page

Pasting Files and Folders from the Explorer
If dragging-and-dropping is not enough, you can now paste files from the Explorer (Windows Explorer, File Searching window, etc.). Select the files in the Explorer windows, hit CTRL C, switch to MacImage and hit CTRL V. Easy, isn't it?
Back to Top of Page

Creating Folders from Scratch
Copying Folders from the PC hard disk to the project is fine, but it could be useful, in some circumstances, to be able to create a folder from scratch. This allows you to better organize the data contents of the CD-ROM without having to create it first on the PC hard disk.
Back to Top of Page

Searching/Replacing Signatures
Say you made a CD-ROM with HTML files using MSIE signature (MSIETEXT). And now, you just changed your mind and decided to use instead the Safari browser or even Netscape. Launch the Searching/Replacing Signature feature from the File menu, and here you go.
Back to Top of Page

Refreshing the Project
The Project Refresh feature was considerably improved and extended, to answer the needs expressed by users. It was thoroughly checked and tested by the betatesters, since this is the key to a fully functional reuse of the projects.
Its allows you to check that the files and folders you included in a project still exist on the source hard disk. The feature displays a list of all deleted and changed files. You can print this list to help you to pinpoint the problems, in particular with projects which you happen to reuse regularly.
More, this feature checks the real size of the files. This is useful if a file, within a week, grew from 10KB to 10 MB. MacImage checks the real size of file when compiling, but such a huge difference can hang the program when computing the file structure to be used to contain your files.
Please also note that it is possible to ask for a project refreshing when launching the compilation of the image.
See also below Refreshing the Contents of a Folder and Replacing the Access Path.
Back to Top of Page

Refreshing the Contents of a Folder
In the same vein, it is possible to check a folder for refreshing its contents. Most software packages used to build CD-ROMs only compose the CD-ROM from the files that existed at the time of inclusion. But there are situations where you intend to include a folder with whatever it will contain at compile time.
This can be particularly useful when you publish regularly a content CD-ROM from one or several folder whose contents changes with time.
See also the similar features Refreshing the Project and Replacing the Access Path.
Back to Top of Page

Replacing the Access Path
When files and folders are missing, the explanation may be simply that they were moved to some other place, on the same disk or on another one.
This feature allows you to do a search/replace operation on the access path of included files and folders. Launch it and your project is again usable!! See also above Refreshing the Project and Refreshing the Contents of a Folder.
Back to Top of Page

Burning an Image from MacImage
The Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit (do a search on Microsoft Web site if this address becomes invalid) offers two small command line utilities which can be very useful, cdburn.exe and dvdburn.exe, used, as their name tells it, to burn CD-ROM and DVD-ROM from an image. If you install those utilities (they only install under Windows XP and higher, but also run under Windows 2000), MacImage detects them and launches them with a correct command line to burn the image you selected.
See also below Compiling an Image with MacImage from the Command Line
Back to Top of Page

Compiling an Image with MacImage from the Command Line
MacImage is an application with a graphical user interface, but it may also be launched from the command line to compile a project to produce the image file.
Using this feature with the burning utilities presented above, you could write a batch file which compiles and burns a project in just two lines:

MacImage -c project.mipr
cdburn m: project.iso -speed max

Registering MacImage Extensions in Windows Registry
At install time, MacImage registers in Windows Registry the three extensions it uses for its working files:

• *.mipr for the projects created in Project Mode,
• *.hfs for the virtual Macintosh partitions managed in Partition Mode,
• *.misop for the project created in ISO+ Mode (ISO + Apple Extensions).

Adding a Postgap to the Image
Since not all burning software packages add a postgap to the image when burning it, MacImage now defaults to adding this postgap.
The postgap is a run of 150 empty sectors at the end of a track, and should be present. Some duplicators may refuse masters without the postgap.
Back to Top of Page