IR 8.00 Release Candidate 7 posted
IR 8.00 Release Candidate 7 includes two fixes of bugs (not of my making
) and two new features. I know I said no more new features in IR 8.00, but I wasn't happy with IR 8.00 being released without them. But no more after this!
I wanted to make IR save the JP1/JP1.x interface type and restore it when IR was next opened. When I looked into this, I discovered that IR is always supposed to have done this. The saving was OK but a bug in the restoration code meant that if JP1.x was saved, IR would still open with JP1 set (unless the computer didn’t have a JP1 interface). I've now put this right. The other bug specifically concerns running ExtInstall from IR under MS Vista. See
this thread for more details.
The first new feature is that the panels on the General tab are now re-sizeable. There is a moveable vertical divider between the Device Buttons and Other Settings panels and a horizontal one just underneath these panels. The column widths in the grids have always been changeable (drag the dividers in the column headings), as has the size of the IR form itself. With this new capability, the user should now be able to set all the panels and their columns to any desired size (making me and the Capn very happy
).
The other is a display of the current interface type (just JP1 or JP1.x) on the toolbar, to the right of the Download and Upload buttons. But this is much more than just a display. If the computer supports both types of interface then this display is in blue and is actually a toggle button. If only JP1.x is supported then the display is in grey and is inactive. As a toggle button it switches between JP1.x and the last used setting for JP1 (i.e. whether Serial, Parallel or USB and whether EEPROM size is auto selected or forced to <= 2K or >= 4K). This memory of the last JP1 setting is preserved between invocations of IR, even if JP1.x was selected when IR was closed.
Doing this has made me really dislike the row of radio buttons for interface selection. They mix up two aspects of the interface that are correctly separated in the Interface pull-down menu. These are the computer aspect (JP1 Serial, Parallel, USB or JP1.x) and the remote aspect (EEPROM size). Moreover, they are incomplete. They neither allow choice for JP1 between Serial, Parallel or USB, nor do they remember and restore the last JP1 settings. My toggle button doesn't allow choice but it does have this memory. I feel that the vast majority of users will not use more than one JP1 cable in addition to one JP1.x cable so the simple toggle suffices. The Interface pull-down menu can be used to set the JP1 lead type and EEPROM choice. Unless these need to be changed, my toggle button will then remember these JP1 settings for evermore - even if, as I said above, JP1.x is selected when IR is closed. I've left the radio buttons for now but hope that now there is the toggle, there will be a consensus to remove them for IR 8.01. Please note that I have made no changes to the detection logic for the interface type. In particular I haven't tried to make an autoselect between JP1 and JP1.x and now no longer believe it a good idea because of the multiple leads issue.
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Graham
. There was a bug in my mod to deal with Liz's ModeName and other Special Protocols unknown to IR. It didn't handle SP user names, e.g.