Historique des versions d'el-Print

macOS no longer calls el-Print damaged.

Until this version the Mac download was unsigned, and macOS refuses those in the bluntest possible way: "el-Print is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Bin." Nothing was damaged — that is simply what macOS says about a program whose publisher it cannot check. Getting past it meant a command in Terminal, and the instructions in the download had to explain that before anything else.

That is over. The application and the disk image are now signed by Extmag and checked by Apple, so the Mac download opens the way every other application does: open the image, drag el-Print to Applications, start it. Nothing to allow, nothing to type.

Windows and Linux are unchanged in this release. Windows still shows its blue "Windows protected your PC" screen over the installer — "More info", then "Run anyway" — and that needs a certificate of its own, which is a separate piece of work.

If 3.6 works for you and you are not on a Mac, there is nothing here you need.

el-Print now installs the way any other program does. Windows has an installer that puts it in Program Files and gives it a Start menu entry. macOS has a disk image with an application to drag across. Linux has a .deb and a .rpm that bring the libraries they need with them. Every system still has the plain archive as well, for a computer where you are not allowed to install anything.

It can now keep printing when nobody is signed in. This is off unless you ask for it: el-Print prints while it is open and starts when you sign in, which is what almost everybody wants. Turn it on from the settings window, or from the tick box in the Windows installer, for a shared print station or a machine that restarts overnight.

Settings move to a new version without being typed in again. Export writes them to a file you choose. Import offers that file, or the copies of el-Print already on this computer, newest first, so you can pick the one you were using. An import never replaces anything without keeping the previous settings beside the new ones.

A licence can be loaded from the settings window. Press "Load licence file…", pick the file you downloaded from your account, and el-Print stores it where it keeps its own files — so it survives moving or updating the program.

el-Print now tells you when a newer version exists. It asks the shop once a day and shows the answer beside its own version number. Nothing is sent but the version you are running, and it never installs anything by itself.

The log no longer keeps what you printed. It records that a job arrived and what became of it, and nothing of the document itself.

A refused job now says why in a form your shop can act on rather than only in words: the printer was not found, the settings were rejected, the printer refused the job, or a network printer could not be reached.

This release is about finding your way around.

The toolbar has a help button that opens the manual. Until now there was no way to get from the program to its documentation at all, and the manual itself still described a settings page in a browser that has not existed for two versions. It has been rewritten for the program you actually have, in all seven languages.

The instructions in the download now cover more than the licence: which websites are allowed to print and how to write their addresses, the test page, and the settings in config.json with their default values.

The "Websites allowed to print" field explains what may be typed into it. The port is part of the address, so a shop served on 192.168.1.50:8080 is not matched by 192.168.1.50 on its own — the sort of thing that is obvious once somebody says it and otherwise ends with printing quietly refused.

Nothing has changed in how el-Print prints. If you are on 3.4 and everything works, there is no hurry.

You can now choose which websites are allowed to print.

Until this version el-Print accepted a print job from any website open in the browser on the same machine. The program listens on your own computer, but it is the browser that makes the connection, so that offered no protection: a page you happened to visit could send jobs to your printer. Settings now has a list of the addresses permitted to print — put your shop's address there.

The list starts empty, which behaves exactly as before and keeps existing setups working. Filling it in is the fix, and the program writes a reminder to its log every time it accepts a connection while the list is empty.

Also fixed:

A configuration file damaged by a power cut or a full disk stopped the program from starting at all, with no window and no message. The unreadable file is now set aside and a fresh one written next to it.

Printing to a network printer could freeze for minutes and then report a failure for a label that had already come out. The job is now finished when the data reaches the printer.

A queue of labels shared a single ten-second budget, so a long batch — or one slow printer — stopped part-way through and the rest was never printed. Each job now has its own.

Turning autostart off did not stick: the program switched it back on the next time it started.

The log file grew without limit. It is now rotated.

Timeouts, size and rate limits and log retention have moved into config.json, so a slow printer or an unusually large job can be accommodated without waiting for a release. An existing config.json keeps working unchanged.

The application has a new icon.

The licence is now a separate file instead of being built into the program.

Download el-Print once, for whichever system you use, and load the licence file you get with your purchase — the program reads it at startup and tells you who it belongs to and how long it runs. A renewal is a new file; nothing has to be reinstalled.

Without a licence the program still starts, and everything except printing works.

New: a test page. The Printers section has a button that prints a fixed page — a document, or a ZPL, EPL or TSPL label — without needing a licence. If it comes out, el-Print can drive your printer, and anything that goes wrong afterwards is somewhere else. Useful before buying, and the first thing to try when a print does not arrive.

macOS builds are now produced on a Mac. The previous macOS downloads could crash on launch on some machines; those builds have been replaced.

Updated to Fyne 2.8, with the image decoding libraries updated to close known vulnerabilities.