Started work on the cover for volume 18, which needs the usual changes to date and volume number, but also requires adding HT to the cover as book review editor. Since this was all done in Windows, and the master volume is being built in Windows because that's where I have my working desktop XEP, I'm working in Illustrator CS2 on XP in my VM. I started following my own instructions elsewhere in the blog, changing the text where required, and remembering that there are knockouts for the years at the bottom, so you have to change the year twice, once in the black top layer and once in the white layer below it (send the top layer back one in the z-order to get at the white layer, then send the white layer below it when you're done).

I have a lot of work to do once the TOC and page numbers are finalized (this will depend on the final proofing, which can't be done until the translated abstracts are in, so I have to wait a bit). When everything else is ready, I'll follow these steps to produce the final cover. A more detailed description of the process is here. In the meantime, I wanted to do a test print, so I tried to export from Illustrator as a PDF; Illustrator froze every time I tried it. After reboots didn't help, I did some Googling and found that this is a symptom of a corrupted preferences file, so I deleted c:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS2 Settings\AIPrefs. That did the trick, and I was able to save a PDF. Then after reconfiguring my printer in XP (the IP has changed since I last printed from the VM), I was able to do a quick test print on 8x11, which looks OK.