plugins that work under 97.7 and specifically Weather plugin

[Jim_]

Ok, it'll remain broken then. I suggest you remove it from the wiki to stop any people from downloading it in the future.

I’m all for removing things from the wiki that just don’t work, and in some cases never did. But I hope people will “always” leave their latest & greatest <= 96.xx compatible plugins at the bottom of their wiki page. Adding their new 97.xx plugins “when available” to the top of their wiki page.

When I look through the wiki I can only imagine the amount of work that went into the plugins, skins, and utilities. It may be quite sometime before everyone converts to the new version, and some people may never, if they are perfectly happy with what they have now and a utility or plugin they need isnt supported.

[sub]

I'm happy with that aswell, but if developers know that their plugin isnt compatible with v0.97, and wont be fixing it any time soon, they either need to update the wiki to make it very clear so new users dont download it, or delete the plugin altogether.

[Jim_]

I'm happy with that aswell, but if developers know that their plugin isnt compatible with v0.97, and wont be fixing it any time soon, they either need to update the wiki to make it very clear so new users dont download it, or delete the plugin altogether.

I agree, everything in the wiki should include the last date it was tested by the author, and the version(s) it supports.

Another thing that is very needed is a "report broken (utility/plugin/skin)" link in the wiki page that sends a notification to the author and to you, and also displays a hit counter for the poor unknowing user that's about to waste their time. :mad:
There are threads floating around on this forum reporting things that just don’t work at all. They don’t work for anyone because they are broken, but people are still installing them.

One last thing.
Many years ago, I was a consultant and wrote plugins for a cad-cam program I was selling. Major updates are needed if a program is going to progress, but every month they would break everyone’s plugins because they’d make an insignificant change at the request of a single (big) customer. Eventually most people just quit updating their 3-rd party utilities because they didn’t see an end to it.

Not that this has anything to do with the latest release because it looks like your taking GBPVR in a very good direction. But it did give me flashbacks, and backwards compatibility is never a bad thing.

[ubu]

I’m all for removing things from the wiki that just don’t work, and in some cases never did. But I hope people will “always” leave their latest & greatest <= 96.xx compatible plugins at the bottom of their wiki page. Adding their new 97.xx plugins “when available” to the top of their wiki page.

There's this wonderful euphemism that software companies use when they discontinue support for a specific release or a product: "stabilized code". I suggest that after a reasonable period of time (say a couple of GBPVR releases) all plugin, utility and skin pages that do not specifically say that they work with 97.7 and above should be moved to a "stabilized code" area with a link that says something like "Legacy GBPVR software". That way everybody will be happy (but new users won't be confused and frustrated by downloading stuff that won't work with their shiny new copy of GBPVR ). This is a pretty common approach on a lot of software/hardware web sites.

[Jim_]

"stabilized code"

LMAO!

[KingArgyle]

I've updated the following wiki entries to indicate that there may be problems or are known problems with version 97.7.

XRecord
CDK Scheduler
RenameRecording
RecTracker

XRecord is being worked on, but it may be a bit before a new release is out.

Again, I'm still debating on updating or staying with what I have. The 96 series works fine for what I use it for, so it's a difficult call for me to make. If I don't upgrade then I probably won't update the programs I created, but the good thing is, that all of source for my plugins and utilities is available so that others can continue the work if they want.

[sub]

I suggest that after a reasonable period of time (say a couple of GBPVR releases) all plugin, utility and skin pages that do not specifically say that they work with 97.7 and above should be moved to a "stabilized code" area with a link that says something like "Legacy GBPVR software".

I think this is a good idea, particularly with the big changes in this release. I think it would be very useful to identify the old crap that is not actively maintained, and push it into some well identified legacy area of wiki.

We'll do this in a month or so.

[ubu]

Is there any chance that someone (NormanR?) is planning on fixing the External Recorder plugin in the near future. My plugin (UbuStream) is dependant on it for a good chunk of it's functionality so I'm a bit anxious about its future.

If its a time issue, I would be glad to take a crack at fixing it if someone could point me in the right direction. I know the main problem is a change that sub made to the IRecordingSourceConfiguration so I'm wondering if a minor code change and a compile in VS2005 might be all that's needed.

[sub]

The only thing that needs to be changed, is in two places it says 'OleDbConnection'. These need to be changed to 'DbConnection'. Pretty easy change.

[ubu]

The only thing that needs to be changed, is in two places it says 'OleDbConnection'. These need to be changed to 'DbConnection'. Pretty easy change.

That's all? I've already made those changes to UbuStream so I'll give it a whirl.