Bundle of updates

I was planning on following the new format for the release announcements, but since almost every single app has the same changes, it would be quite repetitive. I updated basically every single program to have better installers on Windows and the Mac, and fixed the compile process to not have extra warnings during release builds.

The important thing is that I updated to Qt 5.11, and this means that FocusWriter should be able to save to Dropbox! I say should because the bug report is closed as fixed, but I don’t use Dropbox so I can’t test for myself. Enjoy!

More releases!

I just realized I forgot to announce the releases I made at the beginning of the month! Oops. This poor, neglected blog.

I updated all of my projects, and for the most part it was a very minor release that fixed an installation bug in Linux or updated the translations. Of course, FocusWriter had a few more fixes than the rest, but that is to be expected as it is a much more complicated program. And Tanglet actually had a feature release, thanks to Markus Enzenberger. If you have not yet updated, enjoy!

Releases galore!

Over the past week and a half, I have made releases for all of my projects. Most of them were pretty minor, and just amounted to updating the translations (and fixing an issue where the Qt-supplied translations were not being properly loaded). Packagers will now need to depend on lrelease, because I no longer include the precompiled binary .qm files.

The projects with actual feature releases were CuteMaze, Hexalate, Tanglet, and Tetzle. For the most part, the features added will not be obvious unless you have a 4K monitor, because the biggest thing I added was support for high-DPI displays. I did also finish moving my projects to be Qt 5 only, and to use C++11.

As usual, report any issues you have. Enjoy!

Some minor releases

Kapow

I have released a minor update to Kapow, version 1.4.4. This release is mostly to add an automatic backup system for the time data that I have been working on. A few users have experienced data loss, and this will hopefully prevent anybody else suffering that. Kapow now makes logarithmic backups (one backup a day for a week, then one backup a week for a month, then one backup a month for a year, and finally one backup a year after that) as well as a temporary backup that gets overwritten with each save. This release also adds support for building with Qt 5, although it is still released with Qt 4 as that is the primary development platform for now.

Longer term I am planning on making it easier for users to store the data file and backups in a location of their choosing, which will default to their documents folder. I have not settled on how I want to expose it in the interface (although you can already do this by using passing an XML file to the program).

Hexalate, Peg-E, and Simsu

I have also made a few other minor releases (Hexalate 1.0.2, Peg-E 1.1.2, and Simsu 1.2.3) over the past two weeks that I have not felt justify a blog post on their own. These releases mainly just add translations and support for building with Qt 5. I plan on making minor releases of the rest of my programs over the next few weeks to also update their translations, and to add support for building with Qt 5.

Development version numbers

Now that I am switching to release branches I am finally going to also tackle something that has always bothered me but I’ve never taken the time to solve: the development source code has the same version number as the most recent release. I have always wanted it to be some sort of automated number, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to be. And I didn’t want to have to update it myself with every single commit.

At first I had wondered about a number that gets incremented every time you compile the project, but I quickly realized that was a pointless thing to track. I may build a project 5,000 times and have a huge build number, but someone else might download the source and compile it only twice. Same source code, different version number. That’s frankly pretty silly.

Instead, I got inspired by the idea of using the git revision ID. It is obviously unique for each commit, and it identifies the specific source code for everyone. Of course, you can’t embed the revision ID because it is a hash that is created of the source code that you’re trying to embed it in. A hash that contains itself? Impossible! Of course, all you have to do instead is simply ask git for the revision ID, and pass that as a definition to the compiler:

VERSION = $$system(git rev-parse --short HEAD)
DEFINES += VERSIONSTR=\\\"git.$${VERSION}\\\"

The source code also needs to make use of the new compiler definition:

QCoreApplication::setApplicationVersion(VERSIONSTR);

This means that I finally have an automated version number for the development source code. I’ve only updated Kapow so far, but I am going to make this change to all of my projects.

The end of PowerPC support

I should have announced this sooner, but better late than never I suppose. I will no longer be creating new PowerPC builds of my programs. There are many reasons, but the biggest two are that my iBook G3 finally gave up the ghost, and that Qt has dropped support for PowerPC. I know that this is an inconvenience for some of my users, and I am sorry about that. Still, I hung in there as long as I could, but Apple has moved on.

A new Simsu release

I released Simsu 1.2.0 today. It all started innocently enough. Just a few tweaks to the interface, which ended up as a new layout so that it looks good maximized on widescreen displays. Before I knew it, I had replaced the solution generator because it was just too slow. And then added an easier puzzle solver based on the original puzzle generator. From there I decided it would be nice to support all of the different types of symmetry. I stopped myself before I could do anything else. Who knows what the future will hold for my “basic” Sudoku game? 😛

New Simsu release

I took another small break from my current projects and made some improvements to Simsu. Upon request, I added a row of number entry buttons so that it would be easier to play on a touchscreen device. Inspired by this change, I modified the interface to mimic KSudoku’s behavior: left-clicking a cell toggles the values, and right-clicking a cell toggles the notes. I also added the option to highlight all instances of a number. Last but not least, I added undo/redo support*. Enjoy!

*Because of this addition, old saves will no longer work. You should finish whatever game you are playing before you upgrade.

A minor distraction

Sometimes I need to take a break from my current projects, and write something simple to clear my head. I decided that although there are a lot of computer Sudoku games, making one would be a nice distraction for a few days. So I wrote a quick version that I have named Simsu. With how many Sudoku games are available, I don’t know know how many people will be interested in mine. For those who are, enjoy!