WriteLog Version numbering and packaging
Writelog is packaged for distribution in an exe file. The name of the exe file reflects the version of WriteLog it contains. For example, WL1028dmsiupg.exe contains WriteLog version 10.28D, as an upgrade package. The same version, 10.28D, is also distributed as a full package and its name is wl1028dFull-xxxx.exe. The xxxx is a code that is used to limit the distribution of the full package.
The upgrade packages are posted on the downloads page for general distribution, but the full packages are made available to customers at the time of purchase. So when you pay for a registration key–whether you are a first time customer or are paying the reduced “upgrade” price, we send you the information necessary to obtain the full package that is current at the time of your purchse.
The form of the version number is:
NN.nnX
Where “NN” is the major version number, “nn” is the minor version number, and “X” is a release letter. The major version number changes only when major functionality changes are released. The first WriteLog version than ran on Windows was version 6 in 1993, and the current version is 10, so 5 versions have appeared in 10 years.
The minor version number changes with every release of WriteLog that is made to general distribution. This happens roughly 6 to 12 times per year.
The release letter is changed with every beta test version. If you are not a beta tester, you need not be concerned with this letter, as you will never see two releases of WriteLog that are different only in the release letter. The WriteLog beta test team is a group of WriteLog users that agree to exercise new releases of WriteLog and take the risk of dealing with errors or bugs newly introduced in a new version. They also put up with lots of incremental changes where features appear and disappear from one download to the next.
After we are satisfied with the reports from the beta testers, the version is posted on the download page. However, before the download posting, the revision history is usually posted in hopes the knowledge of what is coming will reduce the number of questions about new features on the WriteLog reflector. This practice may change, as it appears to have generated more “where is the new version?” questions than it has reduced.
Components
When you install WriteLog by invoking its .exe, the installer places a number of files on your disk. Each executable file has its own version number with the same major.minor convention as the package it is in. (Executable files can be identified by their file extension of .exe, .dll, and .ocx). The Windows Explorer can be used to open the “Properties” dialog for the executable files (with a right mouse click), and if you choose the “Version” tab, you will see the version number of the file.
For new versions that change just the minor version number, we rebuild only the executables that change in that version. So if you check the version numbers of the various files in WriteLog’s \programs folder, you will find many files that older version number stamps than the current version. That stamp tells you the WriteLog version number when that component last changed. As of this writing, the file snapshot.exe is the oldest executable file in the package, and its version stamp is 10.0.0.1. (The “release letter” becomes a digit in the file version number–so this is 10.00A).
When you run WriteLog itself, or the RttyRite window, there is a Help About box that displays a version number as well. The version number displayed by those menu entries, is actually the version number of Writel32.exe and rttyrite9.exe, respectively. Those files tend to change with every single distribution, so installing version NN.nnX generally results in a Help About that identifies itself with the same number, but it sometimes happens that writel32.exe, for example, was not updated from one beta version to the next, so the release letter in Help About sometimes does not match the release letter in the name of the zip file package. The number that “counts” is the one on the zip file package.