The Program in Detail
Version History
This page summarises the changes that have been made in the various versions of Virtual Belfry so far released. For versions 1.0c onwards you can
download a patch to upgrade your copy to the latest release. If you have an earlier copy than 1.0c and would like to upgrade, please
contact the author.
Version 1.1b
Version 1.1b differs from version 1.1a in the following ways:
- Function keys F1, F3 and F4 have been reconfigured to display Help, Full Screen and Ropes respectively.
- An option has been added to the File menu allowing you to restore the collection of methods and compositions to the originals supplied with the program.
Version 1.1a
Version 1.1a differs from version 1.1 in the following ways:
- The ropes window has been given an off-white background, and it now refreshes itself properly when the window is being resized and when the bells are not ringing.
- The ropes window can be opened or closed by pressing F1.
Version 1.1
Version 1.1 differs from version 1.0c in the following ways:
- The rope window has been introduced.
- Options on the Ringing menu have been re-grouped to improve useability.
- The setup process for "Full Installation" was not replacing the method and composition files as it should. In effect both installation options were the same: installing the method and composition files the first time, then leaving them untouched thereafter. This has been fixed (but may not be fixed for users who originally bought 1.0c and have upgraded to the later versions by downloading a patch).
- Dragging the moving numbers or the manual control window until the window was partially off the screen caused animation in those windows to cease. This has been fixed.
- In some cases, dragging or moving the windows could cause them to vanish altogether and be difficult to get back. This has been fixed.
Version 1.0c
Version 1.0c differs from version 1.0b in the following ways:
- A bug in the menus has been fixed that caused the program to display a particular method menu (say the doubles methods) regardless of which stage was requested.
- The status bar now includes a progress bar while images are being loaded. If a subset of the bells are raised and ringing is begun before loading has finished the bar will be hidden, but it will reappear once ringing stops and loading recommences.
Version 1.0b
Version 1.0b differs from version 1.0a (the first released version) in the following ways:
- The Moving Numbers window was preventing the main window from detecting keystrokes (such as 'b' for bob). This has been fixed. The Manual Control window has been altered similarly.
- It is now possible to raise and lower bells or issue call changes by typing the numbers of the appropriate bells using the keyboard.
- The '+' key can be used to call "go again".
- The tab key can be used to pause and resume ringing.
- The online help for keyboard shortcuts has been corrected (it used to claim that pressing the Enter key would start the bells ringing and perform other functions, whereas it is the space bar that does these things).
- The RAM limitation has been removed. Apart from computers with rock-bottom memory configurations for their particular version of Windows, Virtual Belfry should run. If memory is short, the images are scaled down appropriately when they are loaded from disc into RAM (so a very low memory configuration might result in some pixellation).
- A question mark can be typed to discover the amount of RAM scaling that has been applied to fit available memory. A value of 1.0 means no scaling was necessary and the images have been loaded at their full size. A value of 0.7 would mean that the width and height of all the images have been reduced to 70% of their actual values, implying that the available memory is approximately half that required for full-scale operation (0.7 x 0.7 = 0.49).
