Shoutbox

Thanks for the effort, Willz!! This will be of help to lots of people.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Its Messenger Plus! 4.50, not 4.5 ...

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Hmm check the home page of http://www.msgpluslive.net

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(both are correct, because that part of the version number would act like a decimal. Putting the zero or not would be optional.)

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Originally posted by Guido
Thanks for the effort, Willz!! This will be of help to lots of people.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Its Messenger Plus! 4.50, not 4.5 ...

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Hmm check the home page of http://www.msgpluslive.net

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(both are correct, because that part of the version number would act like a decimal. Putting the zero or not would be optional.)

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Well the sentence was:

"Messenger Plus! 4.50 has of course introduced a skinning feature which allows a skin to be made without the tedious process of hacking away files."

It was a better idea to put 4.50 since it was referring to the version where skinning first came out. Either way later on I don't mention versions and just refer to it as Plus! or Messenger Plus!.

Also when I post the next one ill migrate everything to the first post

I knew somebody would say this

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Originally posted by Guido
Thanks for the effort, Willz!! This will be of help to lots of people.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Its Messenger Plus! 4.50, not 4.5 ...

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Hmm check the home page of http://www.msgpluslive.net

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Which has already been reported...

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Originally posted by Guido

(both are correct, because that part of the version number would act like a decimal. Putting the zero or not would be optional.)

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Nope,

The "." in a version number is a delimiter, not a decimal point


Anyways, there are two ways to interpret a version number. Either interpret it as a whole number (which is very inlogical IMO). Which means 4,5 is 4,50 is 4,500 etc...

This is inlogical since version numbers exist of more than that! This way of interpreting a version number gets already flawed if you have a number like x . xxx . xxx

Because what is the decimal point? The first "." or the second "."? It is very inlogical.

Also because the individual parts of a version number have different names (major number, minor number, build number, revision number).

Also because the individual parts of a version number can contain text.

Also because they are treated as individual numbers in almost all development software.

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The other method of interpreting version numbers is more logical. You read a version number as individual numbers, seperated by a dot ".". This means that 4.5 means major number = 4, minor number = 5

This also means that 4.5 is NOT 4.50...

And with this method there is no confusion as to what part of the version to treat as a decimal number with stuff like x . xxx . xxx
Because each number stands on its own...

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Now take also in account that the version numbering of Plus! has always been like the second method.

Even in texts and tuts on the website 4.50 is used. It is also used as that in the about window.

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These three things together means that it might be possible that someone reads 4.5 as being just that: 4,5. And they may wonder how 4.5 is a newer version than 4.40.... (since that is what is listed everywhere else, not 4,4)

If you state 4.50. There can not be any confusion at all, no matter how you read it. Those who use the first method to interpret the number would read it correct, and those who use the second method would read it correct also.

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
This also means that 4.5 is NOT 4.50...

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I am no technical genius on such things but if its 4.50, I wouldn't call it 4.5 because unlike math, I consider version numbers to have significant digits.
In math 4.5 = 4.50. In version numbers, I'd like to think "50" is another number so 4.50 != 4.5
I might be wrong though I guess it all comes down to the creator and how he wants his softwares to be referred to as. Some how I highly doubt Patchy being too particular about the whole 4.5 and 4.50 interchangiability even though Plus! is his "daughter"


Now can we get back to the skinning guide and a link to every doc in the first post please?

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
This is inlogical since version numbers exist of more than that! This way of interpreting a version number gets already flawed if you have a number like x . xxx . xxx

Because what is the decimal point? The first "." or the second "."? It is very inlogical.

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None is a decimal point, I didn't say that. I said:

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Originally posted by Guido
that part of the version number would act like a decimal

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(in terms of the trailing zero being optional). I know 4.50.310 is not a decimal number, but 4.50 is rounded up at that nice "50" to be interpreted as 4 and a half, and this gets abbreviated on the official site's homepage as 4.5. 4.5 is not intended to be a version number, it's the name of a series of versions (and 4.50.310 is the first build of it)

I understood what you meant and know how version numbers are built (Including Plus!'s ones, there was a similar discussion here back in 3.5 IIRC). My point wasn't that you were wrong about suggesting using 4.50 (in fact it might be better in this context to avoid the confusions you mention), but just that you were wrong about 4.5 being incorrect/non-existant. Otherwise, you should consider it a bug in the website, not in Willz's skinning guide.

So, basically, don't run "4.5" through build numbering conventions, because it's not a build version number, it's the brand name of a series of releases. Still, if you make a poll, I believe most non-technical people will recognize 4.5 as an abbreviation of 4.50, and not as an early 4.00 series build -- major.minor.build version naming conventions aside.

(Sorry Willz for digressing so much )

Yeah um, maybe I will explain this better tomorrow, but:

For MP!L it makes pseudo-sense that 4.50 and 4.5 are interchangeable, since there are unlikely to be 50 iterations of a minor release.

But for larger projects, it does make sense. Like for the Linux kernel. If we skip the major release (ie 2) and look at the third number after the decimal, you will see that .2 refers to the second release of the 2.x kernel, whereas .20 refers to the twentieth release. (Sometimes the linux kernel includes a fourth point which includes bug fixes and stuffs).

Firefox is a good example, there was Firefox 1.5 for a long time. I reckon as long as you don't qualify it as a number (ie, Firefox 1.005) then it looks fine as 1.5.

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Originally posted by Guido
(in terms of the trailing zero being optional). I know 4.50.310 is not a decimal number, but 4.50 is rounded up at that nice "50" to be interpreted as 4 and a half, and this gets abbreviated on the official site's homepage as 4.5. 4.5 is not intended to be a version number, it's the name of a series of versions (and 4.50.310 is the first build of it)

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Isn't the brand name of the series 4.50 in that case?

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Originally posted by Guido
I understood what you meant and know how version numbers are built (Including Plus!'s ones, there was a similar discussion here back in 3.5 IIRC). My point wasn't that you were wrong about suggesting using 4.50 (in fact it might be better in this context to avoid the confusions you mention), but just that you were wrong about 4.5 being incorrect/non-existant.

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It was never my intention to say it is bluntly wrong. I said (I think) it was inlogical in one way of looking at it as a version number. And that way is also the way I personally use...

Neither 4.5 or 4.50 is wrong, if you look at it as just those two numbers.

But if you take in account how Plus! has always used the version numbers, the other text on the site, etc, then it would be wrong IMHO (even if you interpret it as the brand name of a series).

Series 4 isn't the same as series 40 either...(not the best argument, but blah)

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Otherwise, you should consider it a bug in the website, not in Willz's skinning guide.

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Which I actually did though (although I really don't consider this as a 'bug' bug). Willz probably got it from the 'bug' in the website, hence why I suggested it to him.

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So, basically, don't run "4.5" through build numbering conventions, because it's not a build version number, it's the brand name of a series of releases.

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Ok, fair point now that you explained it that way, but people looking at the site might not know that. Hence why I still think it would be better to make it 4.50, so there isn't any confussion in any way you look at it.

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Originally posted by andrewdodd13
For MP!L it makes pseudo-sense that 4.50 and 4.5 are interchangeable, since there are unlikely to be 50 iterations of a minor release.

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ermm... I think you just contradicted yourself (if I understood you correctly at least)....

There indeed were 50 (well a bit less) iterations of Plus! (the number counts on, it doesn't (always) reset with major builds*), that's exactly what that number means.

And 4 is the number of how many major changes there has been. So, 4.5 means (in my way) only 5 iterations, which is serisouly fault.

* if it wouldn't count on then your logic of iterations is completely fault, because otherwise that would even mean that Plus! 4.23.276 = 4.3 for example. since 4.23 was the third/fourth in the 4 series.

With version numbering, it acts as cookie says, differently to decimals.  You actually remove leading zeros rather than trailing zeros in version numbers.

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Originally posted by wikipedia @ [url
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning]As[/url] an example of surprising version number ordering implementation behavior, in Debian, leading zeroes are ignored in chunks, so that 5.0005 and 5.5 are considered as equal, and 5.5<5.0006

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Although this does not comply with numerical understandings and mathematics in general, it is very logical as you never know how many versions or builds a computer program is going to have.

Personally when I saw 4.5 on the main website I was a little disappointed.

Patchou uses a version similar system to WLM, however it is more like

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<major version> . <minor version> <revision> . <build>

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This method might not comply with the norm, but it is very easy to understand AND is still a very easy to understand and logical format.  You might say that only the major and minor version are needed, but Plus! has always been shown with it's revision number as well....

By the way, I just checked the one of the first Plus! Live's version number, which is 4.01.0.240, you know "0" is not needed in the number "1" in fact like "01" as well , so it may be intended to have two digits all the time in that area, so 4.50 is more true imho (agreed with Cookie)

* ahmetgns checks the website for seeing what the current case is

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Originally posted by ahmetgns
you know "0" is not needed in the number "1" in fact like "01" as well

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you can't magically dissapear zeros to the left?