QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.9 Public beta now available

I just opened up the beta for the upcoming 3.9 release. The goal now is to flush out any remaining bugs before releasing the product into general use. This latest build slays the two remaining bugs that I wanted to get rid of before opening up the beta: the CTRL-DEL was not producing the correct Workfile status after the deletion of the archive file, and the 'Compare' button on the overwrite dialog was not working at all. This build also fixes the long-standing problem with .ini files getting wiped.

The only other remaining bug (that I know of) that I'll fix before the general release is to fix the Workfile status value for the case where you delete the tip revision from an archive file.

Open QVCS/QVCS 3.9 beta starting next week.

I'm getting closer to the public beta for the upcoming 3.9 release -- it will likely begin late today, or early next week. The docs still need a little more work, but code is complete and I've just been knocking out bugs this past week. One I was happy to finally fix was where the QVCS .ini files would get wiped out occasionally. This is a long standing, rarely reported problem.... Now fixed. I'll probably back-port the fix to some of the earlier releases -- for sure for 3.8.

QVCS/QVCS-Pro 3.9 beta under way

We're into week 2 of the closed beta for the upcoming 3.9 release. I'll probably open the beta toward the end of August. I'm actually pretty happy with the code at this point, but the docs still need to be updated for the changes in 3.9. If you'd like an early peak at 3.9, and don't mind the lack of documentation, let me know. Meanwhile, I'll be working on the docs, and fixing any bugs we find along the way. This is my round-about way of saying that 3.9 is now feature complete... that 5 pound bag is full of 10 pounds of stuff... it won't hold any more.

And just to reiterate the obvious, you can buy now and 3.9 will be a free update for you.

QVCS product family newsletter

One of the recurring suggestions from the SIC conference: create and publish a newsletter to help keep your user community informed. This 'communicate with your users/customers' is an area where I need to improve -- so I decided to take the SIC lesson to heart, and begin the process of creating a monthly newsletter.

It will be available to anyone who wants to subscribe.... (see the Quma home page (top right of the page) for the link to add yourself to the mailing list). It's a double opt-in list, meaning that you have to send a confirming e-mail to actually get added to the list. All the standard privacy stuff applies -- I won't share your e-mail address with anyone else, etc., etc.. The plan is to publish once a month, probably around mid-month. The newsletter will be brief, and contain tips and tricks, product update information, and pointers to forum and blog topics that may be of interest to the QVCS user community.

For tools, I'm using Mail List King Professional. I've only had it for a day, but it seems pretty easy to use, and will make maintaining the newsletter mailing list pretty painless. It's got its own embedded SMTP server, so outbound traffic doesn't even hit my ISP, which is good. ISP's are pretty gun-shy about anything that looks like spam, and sending out a newsletter could look like spam to some folks.