Welcome!!!

The enclosed Beer Magazine Viewer is a custom written Java application which can be used to view/search back issues of numerous collecting magazines such as "Rustlings", "Can-O-Rama", "Beer Cans Monthly", "Brewery Collectibles", and eventually BCCA "News Reports" and "Beer Cans and Brewery Collectibles". Please take a few moments to familiarize yourself with content of this archive. Hopefully you find countless hours of enjoyment reading about the history of the hobby of beer can collecting. -Randy Karasek, RB 636

Installing the "Beer Magazine Viewer"

This used to be a fairly detailed section, discussing different operating systems and setup process. With BMV 2.0 all that was eliminated. Instead, BMV 2.0 and later is simply packaged as a single zip file, and you just need to extract the zipped content into any folder of your choice. Thats it, other than maybe creating a desktop shortcut/alias to the program.

From there, simply use the "Tools -> Check For Updates" to keep the program up-to-date as well as download new magazine content. While it may be possible to purchase a USB/DVD with everything, for many it will be easier to simply download. Please see www.mbcinfo.com/BMV for full details.

What is included in a BMV package?

The Beer Magazine Viewer and electronic archive may be distributed as a single USB/DVD, or the program and individual magazine content may be downloaded from web host. Either way, the end result will be a fair number of data files installed under the single extract point. There is absolutely ZERO information written outside the unzip specified directory, nothing in any registry.

Content of the BMV package: README.html File you are currently reading COPYRIGHT.html Copyright notice. Copyright © 2003-2024, Randall Karasek, All rights reserved. LICENSE.html Single user license. You may make as many copies as necessary, or install content onto as many computers as you want. You simply are not allowed to sell the content! /shared Directory containing some shared data files, help HTML, table of content (toc) files, and thumbnail cover page images. /content The scanned/encoded BMV files of the individual magazine pages. You may have zero content or many gigabytes, depending on what content you chose to install.

Content of the "/shared" directory: /data Shared data such as index of all magazines, featured articles, and new beer can data. /help HTML files for various viewer help topics, as well as BMV images for display of missing files/pages. /thumbs Contains small thumbnail BMV images for all magazine issues cover pages. /toc Binary table of contents mappings/links for each given magazine issue.    /search    Binary search index files, the heart of the search engine.

Uninstalling this package

There is no uninstall script. If you ever want to remove or move the BMV content simply delete the folder in which you extracted the content. Everything is 100% contained under that single folder.

Version History

Version 4.0.0 Update released May 2024 See the new help topic "BMV 4.0" for better detail Improved navigation. All windows now have much improved Right-Click popup dialog to quickly navigate to related information (e.g. magaizne for a given page), or the "last viewed" of a given type. These are stored as persistent properties, so if you stop/restart BMV, a simple right-click, view "Last..." will return you exactly where you left previous session. There is now a "Show Page Thumbnails" for list/search pages, similar to the thumbnail viewing for a given month. This now allows VISUAL viewing of the matching pages for a search or other content. Complete redo of Print logic, using newer code recently added to CanDB. Now internals so much simpler printing to image/file, can now support splitting into N smaller PNG files for large content, or group into multi-page PDF document. New content cataloged as Canning Companies, Advertisements, and Sponsors. These are grouped pages of existing content or for many, new digital images. New format of the "Year" display. Since most publication have only produced six issues per calendar year, the old format of 4 columns x 3 rows of smaller cover images displays too small. New 4.0 default format is 3 columns x 2 rows of much larger images. Quick right-click option to toggle formats for either user preference or viewing older publication years. New Tools -> Options dialog to provide some user configuration control. Content update. Latest Foam Matters, Rainier and BCCA Some optimizations based on tools JProfiler and Sleak.

Version 3.2.3 Update released February 2024 Content update. Latest Rustlings, Foam Matters and Rainier newletters.

Version 3.2.2 Update released October 2023 Added "Tools -> Choose Content" dialog. This allows a user to select/unselect given magazine content if not interested in viewing. This does NOT remove any data, just hides the unchecked magazines from most menus, views, and check for updates. It is simple to change your mind and just re-check content. Fixed bug where scroll bars might not get properly resized/appear when switching windows. This was most notable when viewing individual page thumbnails for a magazine with lots of pages and then switching to thumbnail view for magazine with fewer pages. It was possible the scroll bar was NOT getting resized/appearing. Fixed bug where some dialogs could have N instances opened (e.g. Tools -> Register). The intent has always been just one instance open for any given dialog.

Version 3.2.1 Update released September 2023 Content update. Latest Rustlings, Foam Matters and Rainier newletters. BCCA content now available through end of 2022.

Version 3.2.0 Update released June 2023 Added American Brewer content to the BMV! The Hagley Digital Archive has a large quantity of digital content, of which includes digital scans and PDFs of almost 30 years of the publication American Brewer. I asked for permissions to include content 1935-1942 (years covering the Beer Can) and received a quick "YES" reply, only requirement to include citation to the source of the content. Absolutely, and thus BMV version 3.2 Added citation/links to source of the digital content, or at least the publisher's web page. These are "live" HTML references, so not only displayed by BMV, but just click on them to open browser for the given location. The citation information is now shown on multiple BMV windows as well as when printing to printer or file PNG. Added couple of missing months of Rainier Brewings news letters Fixed mouse wheel scrolling. I broke this when adding mouse wheel listener for the "Print Preview" dialog. Fixed several bugs with less used features. Resizing individual page window now properly recalculates scroll bar height. When looking at a "list" window, e.g. Search, Features, etc, if filtering by specific magazine, now will print only the filtered content, not the original list. While updating help topics, I realized that older BMV used to support keyboard mnenomics (e.g. Alt F). Re-added this feature. BMV 3.2 main Index.dat and all monthly TOC.dat files are no longer compatible with previous BMV versions due to extra citation data. If someone does a "Check For Updates" and updates to 3.2 without "automatic restart" (added in BMV 3.1.1) or run the BMV-UPDATER.exe (on Windows platforms) the previous software will fail to load the files.

Version 3.1.2 Update released June 2023 Fixed issue with loading individual page thumbnails and user clicking Back/Fore/Prev/Next before all images loaded. BMV does not store individual small images for each page, so when showing a thumbnail it needs to get the full page image and scale it down to appropriate size. This is not instant, and why a separate thread is used to update display as each image is loaded. For older versions of BMV, you can see this by clicking on the thumbnails button, watch start loading, and then click Back before finished. If you use Forward to return, BMV was not resuming the loader thread where last left off. Last round of full code review. Tighter handling of "need layout" and tweaking of widget layouts. Reviewed and minor updates to the help topics. Fixed data inconsistencies with some search keys

Version 3.1.1 Update released June 2023 Yes another update release but since very re-familiar with code all BeerComp reviewed, all layouts now exactly how I want them, and fixed issues with the BeerBrowser objects able to calculate correct width/height pixels. Now all displays have correctly sized (and visible if necessesary) scroll bars. Now can do "Check For Updates" with auto restart, no more need for BMV-UPDATER.exe once 3.1.1 is installed. The new logic is BMV runs a non-GUI Java program which sleeps three seconds, main BMV.exe exits (releasing all locked files), updater wakes up and renames any temporary files, and then will auto start BMV.exe! Nice and clean.

Version 3.1 Update released June 2023 Semi-major update. Reworked the logic for marking a given window as "needs redraw". All Java classes now follow consistent updating of layout. Gone is some of the annoying screen flashing (e.g. on View Search Results would redraw all the radio buttons EVERY time). Not perfect, but this version just feels smoother. Return of a feature I must have broken in 3.0 rewrite. Now, just hitting the Space bar will have BMV do the "next/prev logical action". For example, if on search results 1..25, just keep hitting the space bar to cycle through the set of matches, jumping to page, jumping back to search on next item, repeat. There is just one place in BMV where might be necessary to type a space character and that still allows them. Added two new features, "Tools -> Show Content Statistics" and "Tools -> Show Author Statistics". BMV generator was modified to keep track of unique authors and their contrbutions. I think a nice addition! From these dialogs it is possible to fire off actions to other windows. Fixed issue of BMV not re-opening in Maximized mode if that is what the user was in when BMV previously exited. While the upper left screen location was correctly being saved as (0,0) and the size correct display bounds, you can't actually reset full sized by width/height, but must put the window in Maximized mode! I did not know about this until just a few days ago... Reminder the website registration information was reworked. If BMV shows "Not Registered" please do so again. Apologizes but easier than for me to merge server data.

Version 3.0.4 Update released May 2023 Updated content for most recent issue of Foam Matters and Rustlings Fixed small bug with resizing the main window. If various composites had already been displayed (e.g. magazine, years, table of contents) and then the main window was resized, using the Back/Forward buttons were just re-displaying their composite with same size as previously, so possibly buttons/content were not visible, or extra padding to the right. While another resize of the window would fix display, BMV now detects the main window being resized and will automatically re-layout the widgets for all composites as necessary.

Version 3.0.3 Update released May 2023 Fixed issue with opening custom BMV file format. Was not closing the Java FileInputStream object, leaking a file descriptor for each .bmv file opened. While not a noticeable problem on Windows, on MacoOS a lock was maintained on the file preventing any Check For Updates overwrite. On MacOS the updated app script, and Linux shell script, must have execute permissions. The paths to bmv.sh and BMV.app/Contents/MacOS/BMV were not registered as executables, thus were not getting execute permissions if Check For Updates changes.

Version 3.0.2 Update released May 2023 Fixed issue with storing "last remembered screen location" with negative numbers. For reason unknown, Windows returned (-8,-8) for fully maximized display.

Version 3.0.1 Update released May 2023 Updated content for all provided news letters through May 2023 Added BMV-UPDATER.exe which allowes for updates to BMV.exe itself Fixed annoying bug of always scrolling back to top during Back action Now detects download of new magazine content to reload month/page images

Version 3.0 Update released August 2020 Updated content for all provided news letters through spring 2020 Added Tools -> Accelerators for user defined menu/keyboard accelerators Replaced core Elcipse-RCP framework with my own custom over SWT Now baselines Java 8 such that can again support Mac Removed embedded Java packages, user must install if not already there Added Linux support (at least RHEL and Centos)

Version 2.4 Update released May 2017 Updated content for all provided news letters through May 2017

Version 2.3 Update released November 2016 Added Foam Matters content. Thanks to Clayton Emery for scanning back issues and providing PDF content. Updated content for all provided news letters through November 2016

Version 2.2 Update released January 2016 Added logic to work around BCCA requirement that content must age for at at least two full years before made available digitally. While agreement prevents actual BCCA magazine pages made available, I am fully in my right without violating copyright to post derived works of table of contents and search keys.

Version 2.1 Update released March 2015. Added "Check for Media" menu command. Some collectors don't have high speed internet access and this option allows for easy install with BMV content from DVD. Recommendation is to install from DVD all content at the time the DVD was created, and then use the "Check for Updates" feature to download deltas from the internet.

Version 2.0 Major rewrite released June 2014. Switched from Swing to SWT. While the display of the user interface has deliberately been retained, the internals have had major GUI changes. The BMV look and feel should be much closer to any applcation running on a given operating system. BMV 2.0 is still fully backwards compatible with previous versions. Redo of the BMV packaging. Gone is the entire setup process. In its place is a much simpler single zipped file of which the user just needs to extract into any folder of their choice. Introduced new "Tools -> Check For Updates" to allow BMV to update itself from web site, as well as ability to selective download magazine content. Many users probably no longer need to install from DVD. Replaced the fixed 12, 14 and 18 point font menu items with full Preferences control. All aspects of BMV can now be fully user configured as to font sizes, styles, and colors. Start of "View -> In Memoriam". Sadly too many of our hobby are passing on Addition of the Miami Valley Guzzelette and thumbnails of Merry Bocksters Goatzette. Full content for the Goatzette should be available by end of summer 2014

Version 1.3 Upgrade version released February 2014. Changes from earlier BMV packages: Fully working "Tools -> Install Magazine Update" so should now be possible to release/download monthly magazine updates Now includes update of Rustlings through 2013, Keeping Tabs (BCCA) and Fortune (Time-Fortune) Mouse wheel scrolling much improved with larger scroll increment Added Tools menu items to adjust base font size to 12, 14 or 18 point. Some windows can adjust dynamically if you change fonts. For full effect you will need to exit/restart BMV after changing a font base The "View -> Search" window now opens with the search text box with focus so you can start typing straight away. Testing on Windows 8

Version 1.2 Upgrade version released March 2012. Changes from earlier BMV packages: Now includes full Beer Cans Monthly (BCM) and Brewery Collectibles (BC) content approved for distribution per the BCCA. Hopefully inclusion of the BCCA's own Beer Cans and Brewery Collectibles will follow Some minor changes to the Welcome and About help topics Now able to view the README, COPYRIGHT, and LICENSE files from the viewer

Version 1.1 Upgrade version released August 2011. Changes from earlier BMV packages: Upgraded from Java JRE 1.4 (2004) to JRE 1.6.0 build 25 (May, 2011). I was impressed though that software written back in 2003 on a Windows XP machine for the most part ran just fine eight years later on a Windows 7 machine Support and testing on Windows 7 and Windows Vista Major improvement to the search engine in that it now allows partial search keys. For example, if I am searching for "altes", any of the input text of "al", "alt", "alte" or "altes" will now find relevant matches. This makes it much easier to type just the characters "eig" instead of the full word "eigenbrots". Previous versions required the full key word. Clean up of some menu structure, gone are the long cascading menus with each year, each month Updated HTML help topics Full Rustlings content up to Jun/Jul 2011

Version 1.0 First production version, initially released at the 2006 Canvention. Minor cleanup based on Rusty Bunch member testing, with the following changes: First release with Mac OS X (10.1 or later) support Redesigned the magazine table of content indexing. This version now uses a persistent generated index key for each magazine/month, one that will be constant between new DVD releases. Previous versions would require a full set of new search data files with each release, preventing incremental downloads or month-to-month magazine installs. Added install/patch functionality to allow install of new monthly magazine content (e.g. able to install a new month of Rustlings after the DVD was originally created). This will allow registered users to keep their BMV content up-to-date. Full table of contents and search keys for Beer Cans Monthly, Brewery Collectibles, and Can-O-Rama, even if individual magazine content not allowed by the BCCA to be distributed Search logic to allow for search keys to either span multiple pages of a given article (default) or to only match if all keys are found on the same physical page Fixed several bugs with the search logic reporting "matches" when three or more keywords specified but not all of the keys were actually found Minor packaging changes to move Table of Contents to a separate folder, making it easier to package media with some content removed Re-designed the DVD label to include an awesome Hop Gold, Town Club and Silver Springs photo (with permission from Ed Scoglietti)

Version 0.4 Fairly major feature additions, internal program changes, as well as bug fixes. Binary data files from previous versions are not compatible with this release, and beta testers are requested to uninstall prior versions and do a clean install. Plan is for this version to become the 1.0 production release unless major issues are discovered during next round of beta testing. Some of the changes in this version include: Full table of contents and search keys for each and every page of each and every issues of Rustlings!!! Some persistent configuration (e.g. window size, location, tool bar location, zoom level, ...) so viewer feels the same with each stop and restart Bookmarks features similar to web browsers, with persistent store to local disk Page thumbnails, being able to view small images of all pages for a given month. This gives a nice overview of all pages and helps that search where you remember "kind of what a page looked like" but can't remember the specific text/magazine/month. Improved search logic allowing for matching keyword within body of article, title of article, AND/OR author. Previous versions only allowed a single matching selection. With this change you can now search for something like "adamowicz top ten" and choose to match author name AND within article title, allowing for finer filtering options. Basic "Print Preview" (one page only). At least gives a good idea what a display will look like prior to printing. Much improved display of individual pages. Previous versions used to load JPEG data into memory and make another in memory copy resized to the correct zoom level. This version now loads the JPEG and simply draws it to the scaled size. Most files are now proprietary BMV file format instead of raw JPEG. This will help prevent someone taking all the many hours of labor into this project and possibly using for another purpose, and hopefully will help remove some "intellectual property" concerns. Files can still be printed but are still subject to publisher's copyright. Scrolling from month to month is now much faster. Each month now has a pre-generated 400 pixel height cover page image which can be blasted directly into memory instead of needing to read/resize. Updated help files, README.html, COPYRIGHT.html, LICENSE.html Updated the setup process to allow install of multiple "/diskN" content First version which supports DVD packaging

Version 0.3 Version demo'd at Blue/Gray 2006. There were some bug fixes and minor feature additions from the previous version but no copies of this version were distributed. All beta testing is an upgrade from version 0.2.

Version 0.2 Most known issues from version 0.1 have now been fixed, as well as many new features added. Version 0.2 now includes a professional setup process, a floating viewer toolbar, better navigation and default buttons, redesigned product packaging, more complete help topics, and much improved printing support. Plus, over 5,700 pages of Rustlings, 1,897 pages of Beer Cans Monthly, 440 pages of Brewery Collectibles, and most all BCCA cover pages!!! There are still some minor display issues (e.g. some characters in an author's name may get chopped in the featured articles display) but the few of these easily worked around by resizing the window slightly larger. While mouse scrolling and arrow keys now properly handle all displays, the arrow keys sometimes temporarily stop working (likely a focus issue). There is still an unfixed issue with scaling images larger than default, especially up to 200% zoom level. I have occasionally encountered Java "out of memory" errors even though I am fairly certain not out of memory. Still debugging this, but likely a rarely used feature and I may simply remove ability to zoom above default display resolution. There are still a number of magazine issues which need search keys and table of content, and I will be working on these leading up to Blue/Gray. Each magazine issue takes a fair amount of time for key generation, but will do what I can. The hope is that version 1.0 available by spring of 2006.

Version 0.1 Proof of concept release, distributed to several Rusty Bunch members prior to creation of the Rusty Bunch Rustlings archive. Copyright © 2003-2024, Randall Karasek, All Rights Reserved