This version of Atlantis Word Processor is a minor release with a number of important adjustments and improvements. Please read on for details.

User-specific files

Removable drives

Miscellaneous changes

User-specific files

Starting with this release of Atlantis, most of the Atlantis files will be stored in a new location on your PC.

Previously, most of the Atlantis files installed by the Atlantis Setup or generated by Atlantis itself were stored under the home folder of Atlantis (by default, "C:\Program Files\Atlantis").

This home folder not only contained the main executable file of Atlantis ("Atlantis.exe"), but also sub-folders with document templates, Favorites, Backup Files, spellcheck dictionaries, etc:

But storing the Atlantis files and folders in this way had undesirable side effects.

When a PC was shared by several persons with separate Windows user accounts, they also shared all the Atlantis files and folders indiscriminately. Let's suppose for example that someone logged into Windows as "John", launched Atlantis, then added a document to "his" Atlantis Favorites. With previous versions of Atlantis, that document would also automatically have appeared among the Atlantis Favorites of any other person sharing that PC, —even if that person had logged into Windows with a different user account. The Atlantis files which were supposed to be user-specific were actually shared by all the PC users. Having one's "own" Atlantis spellcheck dictionaries, document templates, Power Type data, separate from the other persons sharing the PC, was nearly impossible. The words you added to "your" Atlantis custom spellcheck dictionary were automatically shared with all the other users of the PC. Any change you might have made to the Normal template in Atlantis actually affected all the other users of Atlantis on that PC. The words and phrases Power Type collected from your typing were also shared among all users of Atlantis. As a consequence, Power Type could make suggestions unsuited for the current user, and also could raise concerns about infringements on people's privacy: each user could easily find out which words and phrases were typed by the others. To sum up, it was almost impossible to use Atlantis independently from the other persons sharing a PC with you.

Now, in practice most PCs are used by a single person. After all, "PC" stands for "personal computer". So the problems we just mentioned with PCs shared by multiple persons were actually not very common.

More important were the problems which arose when people switched to Windows Vista and Windows 7. On these new Windows systems, storing user-specific files under the home folder of Atlantis (i.e. "C:\Program Files\Atlantis") became problematic.

Why? Simply because the Windows "Program Files" folder was actually never meant to host user-specific files. Even then, on Windows 2000 and Windows XP it was always possible for an application to place files and folders under the Windows "Program Files" folder. But this became impractical under Windows Vista and Windows 7. When an application tries to create a file under the "Program Files" folder on these new systems, Windows makes the application believe that the file was created under the required folder, but the file is actually created under a special "Virtual Store" folder. So after saving a new document template to "C:\Program Files\Atlantis\Templates", Atlantis users were sometimes dismayed because they could not find the template in the expected location on their hard disk: the file had actually been saved to a different place, and finding it in a file manager was not always a simple task. Further information on file virtualization in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is available here and here.

Starting with this release, and in order to solve the problems mentioned above, Atlantis will store all its user-specific files differently. The home folder of Atlantis (by default, "C:\Program Files\Atlantis") will normally contain only a few files:

Atlantis will not place any other files in its "Program Files" folder.

All other Atlantis files will be stored under the "My Documents\Atlantis" folder. Under Windows Vista, and higher systems, this is the standard folder to save user-specific files and folders to. Each Windows account user will now have his/her own Atlantis "My Documents" folder inaccessible to other PC users, —except of course to those with administrative privileges.

So after upgrading to Atlantis version 1.6.5.8, each Windows account user will have an "Atlantis" folder under the Windows "My Documents" folder. Here are its typical contents:

Do not worry. If you have an older version of Atlantis on your PC, the Atlantis Setup file for version 1.6.5.8 will automatically make all the required adjustments to the Atlantis files on your hard disk and to the corresponding settings of Atlantis.

In previous versions of Atlantis, you could choose a custom location for the Atlantis Clip Library, Address Books, and Favorites. This is no longer possible in this new version of Atlantis. The location of these items is fixed. Being user-specific items, they are now always stored under the "My Documents\Atlantis" folder. The same regarding the spellcheck files. All the spellcheck files of Atlantis are now supposed to be stored under the "My Documents\Atlantis\Spellcheck" folder. So if you have placed custom spellcheck dictionaries in a different location on your hard disk, you should move these dictionary files to the "My Documents\Atlantis\Spellcheck" folder manually yourself.

In this new version of Atlantis, only one user-specific item can be placed in a custom location: the Backup folder. By default, your Backup Files will be saved to "My Documents\Atlantis\Backup", but you could still choose a different location, like, for example, another disk or removable drive.

The "My Documents\Atlantis" folder is now a kind of "super" folder in Atlantis with "magic" properties. We highly recommend storing all your Atlantis-related files (document files, custom audio files, etc) directly under this "My Documents\Atlantis" folder or under any of its subfolders. Some of the benefits of storing all the Atlantis files under the "My Documents\Atlantis" folder will be explained below.

From this new version on, the spellchecker files will be treated differently in Atlantis.

In previous versions, the "Tools | Options... > Spellcheck > Spellcheckers & Dictionaries..." dialog had two "Add..." and "Remove" buttons at the top:

These buttons were used to register or unregister spellcheckers in Atlantis.

In the present new version of Atlantis, these two buttons have been replaced with only one "Uninstall" button:

The old "Add..." button was no longer needed: Atlantis now automatically picks up (registers) all the spellcheckers available under the "My Documents\Atlantis\Spellcheck" folder. The new "Uninstall" button completely removes the highlighted spellchecker from the hard disk.

Removable drives

This new version of Atlantis has improved support for removable drives.

The new setup now installs Atlantis differently depending on the drive type.

By default, the Atlantis Setup suggests installing the standard version of Atlantis to a hard disk under the "Program Files" folder:

Now if you have a removable drive like a memory flash drive connected to your PC, and you choose that drive as a destination to install Atlantis onto, the Atlantis Setup will automatically suggest to install a portable copy of Atlantis to that removable drive. In the Atlantis Setup dialog, removable drives have specific icons:

Please note that on removable drives all the Atlantis files are installed within the home folder of Atlantis. This is where portable copies of Atlantis differ from their standard counterparts installed on fixed drives.

However, the new Atlantis Setup file can equally be used to

• install a portable copy of Atlantis to a removable drive,
• upgrade an existing portable copy of Atlantis,
• install a standard copy of Atlantis on a fixed hard drive,
• upgrade an existing standard copy of Atlantis on a fixed hard drive.

All you need to do is to direct the Atlantis Setup to the desired home folder for Atlantis, either on your hard disk or on a removable drive. The Setup will take care of everything as appropriate.

The "Help | Check for Updates..." command can be now used directly in a portable copy of Atlantis. Upgrading portable copies of Atlantis is easier than ever.

Both the new Atlantis Setup and Atlantis itself recognize a larger number of removable drives. You can now install a portable copy of Atlantis to external hard disks, FireWire disks, and more. A portable copy of Atlantis can be installed to virtually any device that appears in Windows as a removable drive when you connect the device to your PC. For example, you could install Atlantis to a camera, MP3 player, mobile phone, etc. To launch a portable Atlantis from, let's say, an MP3 player, all you need is to connect your MP3 player to a PC (typically through USB), then run the "Atlantis.exe" file from the home folder of Atlantis on the MP3 player drive in Windows Explorer.

This version of Atlantis has new commands which makes migrating to a new PC easier, and can also be used to synchronize multiple copies of Atlantis, either standard or portable.

In a standard copy of Atlantis installed on a hard disk, you will find a new "Install to Removable Drive..." command under the "Tools" menu:

Clicking this command displays a new dialog:

Of course, if you click "Next" and no removable drive is connected to your PC, Atlantis will ask you to connect one:

You can then either leave the suggested destination unchanged, or choose a different folder on the removable drive:

When you click "Install", Atlantis starts installing a portable copy (clone) of itself to the removable drive:

All the files from the "My Documents\Atlantis" folder on your hard disk automatically get copied to the home folder of Atlantis on the removable drive, and will be available to that portable copy of Atlantis. This is why it is preferable to store all the Atlantis files on your hard disk under the "My Documents\Atlantis" folder. It makes file and folder synchronization easier between hard and removable drives.

When you launch a portable copy of Atlantis, it will now have an "Install to PC..." command under the "Tools" menu:

Clicking this command displays the following dialog:

When you click "Next", you can choose a destination folder for Atlantis on your hard disk:

The "Tools | Install to Removable Drive..." command of a standard copy of Atlantis and the "Tools | Install to PC..." command of a portable copy of Atlantis can be used to install Atlantis to a removable drive or PC which do not have Atlantis yet. But they can also be used to synchronize two existing copies of Atlantis. Let's suppose that you have a standard copy of Atlantis on a hard disk, and a portable copy of Atlantis on a memory flash drive. After working with a portable copy of Atlantis on someone else's PC for some time, you might want to synchronize your standard copy of Atlantis with your current portable copy of Atlantis (i.e. transfer all the changed Atlantis settings and files from the memory flash drive to your PC). This can be done with a few mouse clicks: connect your memory flash drive to your PC, launch the portable copy of Atlantis, and run the "Tools | Install to PC..." command. Assuming that you have stored all the Atlantis files under its home folder (or any of its subfolders) on the memory flash drive, they will all be copied to the home folder of Atlantis on the hard disk. The current settings of your portable copy of Atlantis will be copied to your PC as well. In this way, both copies of Atlantis will be perfectly synchronized.

Migrating to a new PC is now also much easier. Just launch Atlantis on your old PC, then use the "Tools | Install to Removable Drive..." command to install to a memory flash drive. Then connect this memory drive to your new PC, launch the portable copy of Atlantis, and use its "Tools | Install to PC..." menu command to complete migration.

Miscellaneous changes

• The "Minimize to system tray" command has been removed from Atlantis. The corresponding button displayed in the title bar of the main window of previous versions of Atlantis:
  
  
  
  It is no longer available in this new version of Atlantis.
   
• The "Tools | Personal Settings..." command has been removed because Atlantis has now a fully-fledged support for systems with multiple user accounts in Windows.
   
• Support for Windows 9x (95, 98, ME) and Windows NT 4 has been dropped. The minimal Windows version required to run the new version of Atlantis is Windows 2000.
   
• Bug fixes: "style reference" fields did not display correctly in documents with footnotes/endnotes.
   
• A more convenient way to close documents through the Document Bar of Atlantis has been implemented. Now when you hover over a document button, a small "x" button displays in the top right-hand corner of the button:
  
  
  
  You can click it to close the corresponding document.

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