Shoutbox

Let's open the discussion again about version numbers.....

People have discussed this before and tried to explain different views of version numbering.
However, there is only 1 way to look at it and at the same time be consistent with everything else which includes how Windows itself deals with it and how many other tools deal with it, etc. But also how version numbers were and are displayed on the sites.

Now, with Plus! 5.1, that different (and frankly incorrect) use of the version number will backfired again. And confusion will only grow later on when you have 5.10, 5.20, etc

A version number is NOT a decimal number!

A version number consists of some different individual numbers delimited with a decimal point. That decimal point does not have anything to do with the meaning of a decimal point in fractioned numbers. It is just a delimiter (you could use / or , or - or any other character for that matter).

On the site it is stated "Messenger Plus! 4.9".
This was discussed before and although some people didn't agreed with it, it was left alone and ignore with the excuse that 4.9 looks better than 4.90.
But now that there is a "5.01 (build 706)" version, the confusion will start again.

A 4.90 version number is NOT the same as 4.9.

As for Plus! 5.1: on the forums and in the wild, people will not refer to is as "5.01" but rather as "5.1" (which is correct).
However, if you keep the same (wrong) scheme as with 4.90 then you will get in trouble when you hit "5.10".
Note that a similar issue occurred with Plus! 4.10, which used the wrong scheme in its version resource and was shown by tools as "4.1" instead, exactly the same as the previous 4.1 version.

As such, I strongly suggest to change the hard coded strings in Messenger Plus! to "5.1" instead of "5.01", eventhough "5.01" is technically also correct. And/or revise the routines which make up the strings like "5.00.0.123" in such a way that leading zeros are removed (and thus it will become "5.0.0.123" as it should be).

Many professional tools which read the version numbers from files will not read the (often incorrect) strings from the version resource of a file, but instead will read the numerical version info in the version resource as set in the compiler. And thus, they will also (correctly) show "5.0.0.123" as in the example, or "5.1.0.706" in the case of this new Plus! version. Messenger Plus! should do the same in its setup windows and about window. And the same should be used on the websites and any other place where a string is used to show a version number (eg: (!VER) tag).

The only exception for this would be the use of the scripting function MsgPlus.Version. Because of its nature (it IS a decimal fractioned number), it needs to have a leading zero behind the decimal point so it can not be confused with the fractioned number 5.1 (which would depict Plus! "5.10"). But this is for scripts only, aka for "internal" programming purposes. It should not dictate the way version numbers are used otherwise (eg: displaying the version number, as a string, to the public).

It may seem insignificant now ("5.01" is technically the same as "5.1") but it sure will backfire later on. So, better to do it the correct way from the start than changing something later on.