Beta versions!

I don't often blog about my software, but I know a lot of you are using yWriter.

Over the past week I've been altering chunks of yWriter3 to make the file storage a bit less extreme. Right now it sprouts text files like weeds whenever you do anything, and I wanted to tidy things up a bit. So, I wrote a version which consolidates all these additional files into the main chapters.ini, scenes.ini and so on. I also added features to the characters sheet, and tweaked a few other things.

Then I went much further, and rewrote the entire storage system to use XML files. This was a major change, so last night I dubbed THIS version yWriter 4, keeping just the smaller improvements for yWriter 3.

yW4 isn't available yet, but you can grab a beta of new improved yWriter 3 here. A couple of points: 1, you need yWriter 3 installed before you can run the beta - instructions on the page I just linked to. 2, make a backup of your current project folder, all of it, before running the new beta. Just drag and drop the folder to create 'Copy of ---'. Then, if this version of yW3 messes up on your system, you just reinstall the original, rename the messed-up project to 'Messed up ---' and rename 'Copy of ---' back to just '---' Once you've confirmed it's all running smoothly again, you can then delete 'Messed up ---' (In all of these examples, --- is the project folder, not the yWriter folder.)

Also, if you want to hold off messing with betas until AFTER NanoWrimo, that's probably a good idea.


There's another beta I've made available too: RMP. That one's here, and the same warnings apply. (Although in this case events.dat is all you need to back up, and RMP2 won't harm the original.)


As for yWriter 4... I'm now using it myself instead of yWriter3. What that means is that future development of yWriter 3 has ceased, and all improvements and extra features will go into yWriter 4 from this point on. I'm expecting to release a beta soon .. it's working fine, but I really have to deal with Hal 4 and 5 before I take on more work.

Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)