Happy New Year,
I have been doing a lot of coding on-and-off during the last couple of
weeks. The good news is that new DX4WIN Data Updater is almost ready
to test! I've coded all the hard parts, and have just a dozen small
things left to clean up. I should have something ready to release by
the weekend, if not sooner.
Here is an updated screenshot. If you don't see checked boxes,
refresh your browser window:
http://dx4win.ad1c.us/new_updater.png
1. Windows XP is supported. I just tested this on an old laptop I
had in the closet.
2. The -auto (window-less) and -quick (fast exit) features are both
there and working.
3. You can still download the keep-alive version of the Telnet (DX
Cluster) node list.
4. There is a new Reset button, which makes it easier to get a fresh
copy of everything, without having to manually delete files yourself.
5. There are no annoying pop-ups during the download (update)
process, unless something is truly wrong, like installed in wrong
directory or not Internet access. I'll have some additional error
checking turned on initially during early testing, in case I missed
something.
6. Startup is much faster. The delay was mainly due to checking
whether DX4WIN was still running. Checking this is much faster using
native Windows function calls built directly into the operating
system!
The best news is that the new program is *tiny* compared to the old one:
Old:
7/10/2016 14:02 5,398,620 dx4wupd.exe
New:
1/10/2017 7:16 93,696 dx4wupd.exe
Yes, it's really 98% smaller! The final size should still be under
100K. You will have to download a run-time library from Microsoft to
use the program. That's a one-time thing, and Windows Update will
keep that library up-to-date for you.
I'm thinking of getting rid of the check-box for updating the Updater
itself, and to have it check for a new version each time you run it.
This is because the program checks for a valid Internet connection
each time you start it, and it needs to access *some* file on the
Internet to do that. It's just as easy to turn this into a new
version checker.
For the curious:
The original program was written in Perl, and was 4100 lines of code,
including blank lines and comments. The new program, written in C/C++
is about 4700 lines of code, including blank lines and comments (but
not including header files). The flow of the program is essentially
the same, though I have simplified things a bit in going through all
the code again.
Let me know if you have any questions, comments or feature requests.
73 - Jim AD1C
--
Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreis...@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us
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