ManuSoft version 6.0 was our first version of ManuSoft for Windows and was written for Windows 95 specifically. We never did a version for Windows 3.11 or earlier. As such, ManuSoft 6.x has always been a 32-bit Windows program, written in pure Microsoft Visual C++.

Through Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows XP and now Windows Vista, ManuSoft has remained a 32-bit program, and this is fine as it's what the vast majority of users out there are using. But just recently we're starting to see a few "64-bit Windows" users out there. These are people running "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition" or "Windows Vista 64-Bit Edition", sometimes also referred to as "x64" versions of Windows.

There is some software out there where special "x64" versions are produced, specifically for running on these versions of Windows. Microsoft has versions of their Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server products that are designed for 64-bit computers, and Adobe has released 64-bit versions of some of their photo and video editing software. Programs that use a lot of RAM or do computationally intensive operations typically perform better as 64-bit software, but for the vast majority of programs there is little to no benefit in converting to 64-bit. You will not find a 64-bit edition of Microsoft Word, or even Microsoft Excel.

Similarly, we have no plans to produce a 64-bit edition of ManuSoft. There is simply no benefit for the user in us doing so. It would not make ManuSoft run any faster, or be any more efficient. 

So what happens when you run 32-bit software on your 64-bit edition of Windows? The answer is that the 32-bit program is run in a special way, launched through a process called WOW64 or "Windows on Windows64". WOW64 essentially provides an emulated 32-bit environment so that the older software thinks it is still running on a 32-bit machine. Any time the software tries to talk to the 64-bit operating system the WOW64 process steps in and provides a translation service so things continue to run smoothly.

 (Incidentally, a very similar thing was done back when Windows 95 was first released. Windows 3.x was a 16-bit operating system, whereas Windows 95 was 32-bit. In order for all the older 16-bit software to continue functioning, Microsoft provided a service called WOW32, which performed in exactly the same way.)

All this happens silently and seamlessly. You'll have absolutely no idea that the WOW64 process is being used while you are running ManuSoft.

There is one small discrepancy that you must be aware of though. Because ManuSoft is 32-bit, it will only talk to 32-bit ODBC drivers. This is fine as the 32-bit ODBC drivers continue to function on 64-bit Windows. But if you go into the "ODBC Administrator" on a 64-bit edition of Windows (found by going into "Control Panel", then "Administrative Tools", then double-clicking "Data Sources (ODBC)"), then what you have in fact started is the "64-Bit ODBC Administrator".  You'll find the ManuSoftDAT and ManuSoftDBF User DSNs are listed, but if you try to configure them you'll get error messages about "The setup routines... could not be found."

Instead, you need to run the "32-Bit ODBC Administrator", which you can do by clicking "Start", then "Run", then entering "%WinDir%\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe" as the program you wish to open. This will launch an almost identical looking program, but this time you will be able to successfully click on the "Configure" button and modify the ManuSoftDAT and ManuSoftDBF entries (should you need to.)

As most of our users are aware, ManuSoft uses Crystal Reports to produce a lot of its printed output. Whereas earlier versions of ManuSoft produced very boring looking print outs - mono-spaced slabs of numbers in Courier New, dashes used for separating lines, etc. - since version 6.2 we've been steadily improving the look of our reports by using Crystal, where we can use many and multiple fonts, draw boxes, include graphics, etc.

As well as looking better, this also gives our users an opportunity to further customise our reports in ways that were not previously possible. We've also added the "MDBC Reports" menu to allow you create your own reports from scratch (or from one of the downloadable reports from our support site) and still run them from inside ManuSoft. ManuSoft provides automatically everything you need to run and view Crystal reports.

But to create your own reports, or to modify the reports that ManuSoft have provided, you need your own copy of the Crystal Reports program (and a licence for each user that you install the program for.) Many users will already have a copy, so it's worth quickly running through the recent versions that have been released and how suitable they are for use with ManuSoft.

ManuSoft v6.2 used Crystal Reports v8.0 and then v8.5. We also used an optional feature called "Compiled Reports" in order to view the reports in ManuSoft.

With ManuSoft v6.3 we moved on to Crystal Reports v9. This was a big update by Crystal and was not "backwards compatible" with v8.5 an earlier. That is, if you created in a report in V9 of Crystal you could not open that report with v8.5 or earlier. This version of Crystal also required Windows 2000 or better to run as it now fully supported (and required) something called Unicode, which Windows ME/98/95 did not support.

When we came to release ManuSoft v6.4 Crystal Reports had moved on to version 11 (also known as "Crystal Reports XI".) We made use of some of the new features in Crystal XI in reports like the Job Ticket, in order to allow drawings to be attached automatically to the print out. But Crystal XI (and indeed Crystal v10) were both backwards compatible with v9, thus if you already had a copy of Crystal Reports v9 then you could still create reports for ManuSoft v6.4 (so long as you didn't need some of the specifically new features provided by v10 or v11.)

ManuSoft v6.5 continued to use Crystal XI as its "viewer", so there were no real changes there. But new versions of Crystal have continued to be released, so let's look at them and what they offer.

First, there was "Crystal Reports XI Release 2". This was a relatively minor update of Crystal Reports, and indeed if you install this version and go into Help then About you'll see it's also referred to as v11.5. Because it was a minor update it has in fact been made available as a free upgrade for "Release 1" owners from this location:

http://resources.businessobjects.com/support/additional_downloads/service_packs/crxir2.asp

As it explains on the link, you just need to use your same licence code you got when you bought the Crystal XI product in order to install this updated version. Warning: It's a big download, at just over 1Gb, and you'll need plenty of free hard drive space to decompress the files before installing the program too.

I think there are some great new features in "Release 2" which make it a worthwhile upgrade. Most importantly there is a "Find in Formulas" option, which is great for when you're trying to locate all the possible places in a report where you reference a particular field or formula. The formula editor has also been improved with an "auto-complete" feature, which is pretty neat.

Finally, there is the recently released Crystal Reports 2008 (also known as version 12.) This version is still backwards compatible all the way back to v9, thus if you use this version of Crystal to modify or create your reports then you'll be able to use those reports in ManuSoft v6.4 and v6.5. If you use a new feature that is specific to Crystal 2008 (and there aren't many) then it will just be ignored when the report is displayed in ManuSoft.

Any version of Crystal Reports can be a daunting prospect. It's a big and complicated (but also powerful) program. We try to regularly do introductory training courses on specifically using Crystal Reports with your ManuSoft data, and there's also a basic introduction in the online help. Otherwise there's always our telephone and email support where we'll try to help out as best we can, so long as we don't end up writing the whole report for you. A bit of Crystal support here and there is covered in your maintenance contract; writing customer specific reports are not, but we will hapilly quote you a price for designing any reports you can't create yourself. Many users like us to do the hard work of creating the inital report, but then hapilly tweak it as needs change over time.

Welcome to the Manufacturing Software Team Blog. We plan to use this blog as an informal method of communicating with our users of ManuSoft and with anyone interested in finding out more about about our software.

This blog will offer the reader previews into upcoming updates to our software, tips and tricks for getting the most out of ManuSoft and descriptions of features which are often overlooked. It will also allow you to provide us with some feedback through the comment buttons. We hope you find this blog interesting and useful!

Happy New Year.