Apply material to curve segment

I am following this tutorial and have gotten to the material part. The problem is, the material is applying itself to the entire curve rather than just the curve segments I select. I want to apply to certain curve segments only that I select. I am using Blender 2.49b.

Use a separate curve object for each letter so you can apply a different material to each one.

Richard

Andrew didn’t exactly seem to mention you needed to create a new curve object for each letter. I’m assuming there’s no way around this other than to do it all over again?

Convert the curve to a mesh Alt+C. Then select the vertices from a letter and use P to separate them into individual objects.

Richard