SB4 to SB5

[NewsArchive]

I purchase the SB5 upgrade quite awhile ago and worked with it a bit but
I have kept most of my projects in SB4. Why? Because with about a
dozen somewhat complicated setup projects it is going to take me weeks
of learning, building and testing, JUST TO GET WHERE I AM IN SB4. This
is a huge barrier to adoption, many times higher than the upgrade fee
was. I kept hoping that a conversion utility eventually be developed
much like the documentation was eventually done.

I have never understood how why there wasn't a conversion utility
between SB4 and SB5 when both products were developed in Clarion and
under the complete control of the developer. Going from a simpler to
more complicated product might have required some assumptions about
where to place things or what values to put in the new parameters. Fine,
let the users know what they are and the users can modify the converted
projects as required.

Like documentation, conversion utilities are dull, detailed, zero
learning, pain in *** task, for developers and I have a sneaking
suspicion that that as much to do with their absence as technical
incompatiblity. But they are essential for users. I know that if I
told my customers that they would have to redo all the work they did
with my applications I would never see another upgrade fee regardless of
the new features I provided.

SB5 is a good product, but before taking on the daunting task of
converting all my projects manually, I have to ask 'Is the same thing
going to happen with SB6?'

Casey Rippon

[NewsArchive]

Hi Casey,

I know your pain but I'm afraid that in this instance it was (and
always will be) an impossibility for Friedrich to create such a
conversion utility. For you to understand the inappropriateness of
your suggestion that there is no conversion utility because it is a
"pain in *** task" please read on.

You see, SB5 was not just an "improved version" of SB4 or even a
"greatly added to version" of SB4. Friedrich had come to the
realization that the underlying structure and methodology of SB4 had
limited the ability of the product to meet the requirements of new
technologies, and the expectataions of the capabilities of a modern
installer. So Friedrich literally threw out the code for SB4 and
started again.

He knew that scripting needed to be at the core of the product but
that it needed to be very easy to use. To this end he decided to
design his own from scratch.

There were 4 important aspects to this:
1. It needed to support IF..THEN..ELSE and LOOP control
structures to provide looping and conditional execution of
installation components.
2. It needed to be intuitive and not require someone to learn yet
another language and its syntax. He therefore listed all the functions
on the right-hand side of the Script Editor and made them all
drag-n-drop with easy to follow dialog windows. Moreover every
function has immediate access to context sensitive help via the F1
key. Thus no need to know the scripting language or the syntax.
3. That it not be a pre-requisite to use the Script Editor every
time you wanted to author a new installation file. To this end much of
the regular details used for an install are entered via wizards,
checkboxes and radio buttons. The Script Editor is merely there to add
more power and versatility when required.
4. Finally that you didn't have to re-invent the wheel for every
single project. As a result you can create templates from any existing
project and you can create "Include" scripts that you can utilize with
any of your projects as needed. In other words. Create it once; use it
as many times as you want.

To emphasise the complexity of what Friedrich undertook you only have
to look at how long it has taken to get it to where it is today. It
took him 1,244 days before it was ready for release and during that
time he worked on nothing else than that project. It is now up to
1,501 days since development begaon on it and he still strives to add
the features that people request.

We all know Friedrich's work ethic and abilities. We also know that he
has poured a huge amount of money into this project yet he saw fit to
reward the support of existing SB4 users by giving them a free upgrade
to SB5. He has been adding features to SB5 at a rate never seen by any
of the major installer software developers. If you add in all the
extra things that the others actually charge for, his price is
literally thousands of dollars less than the main competitors. With
all that Friedrich has done do you really think that Friedrich hasn't
created a conversion utility simply because it was a "pain in ***
task"?

You have admitted that you have only worked with SB5 a bit. I would
suggest that if you spend just a little time with it, you would find
that whilst it does things very differently to SB4 it is still very
intuitive and one huge advantage you have over other such products is
Friedtrich himself. Ask a question here and if someone else doesn't
beat him to it, he will have answer for you by the next day. When you
are really stuck he will offer to look at your script. To this end I
would suggest that the effort required to remodel your installs using
SB5 is not really that huge.

Best Regards,
Geoff Spillane
Data Down Under

[NewsArchive]

>
> I have to ask 'Is the same thing going to happen with SB6?'
>

No. SB5 and SB6 are based on the same scripting technology
(SetupScript).

--
Friedrich Linder
CEO, Lindersoft
www.lindersoft.com
+1.954.252.3910

"point. click. ship" - that's SetupBuilder 5

[NewsArchive]

Hi, Geoff

I know how good SB5 is, how hard Friedrich has worked on SB5 and his
solid support for users on a day to day basis. And that SB5 is a
complete rethink of how to do setups with a very different set of data
elements. But still most if not all the data elements that went into SB4
Project must have similar elements in an SB5 Project. Sure, there will
be many new elements that will have to be filled by assumption, user
query, or entered by user later before the setup file can be generated.
Fine.

I would be more understanding if that other great 'pain in the ***
task', documentation, hadn't been delayed for so long.

Anyway, it is all water under the bridge. I just have to get on with it.

[NewsArchive]

> I would be more understanding if that other great 'pain in the *** task',
> documentation, hadn't been delayed for so long.

Hmm, I fear I don't understand this. The complete documentation (full
featured online help and 400 pages PDF manual) was part of the 5.00
Gold version (release date: August 31, 2005, build #1244).

Regards,

--
Friedrich Linder
CEO, Lindersoft
www.lindersoft.com
+1.954.252.3910

"point. click. ship" - that's SetupBuilder 5

[NewsArchive]

Sorry Casey,

You've lost me again. Firstly such an assignment of similar elements
could barely be possible for the most elementary of installs yet you
profess to have a series of complicated projects. What would be the
point? I have already stated that SB5 does things entirely different
to SB4 and uses a totally different mind set to its approach.
Therefore even if a utility assigned the basic elements then you are
going to have to do the complicated stuff through design and now
you're back to where you were complaining about before, that you would
have to spend time to learn the new system.

Secondly, it appears that you haven't made much of an attempt to do
anything with SB5 because you would have seen that the documentation
and on-line help is massive, exhaustive and well constructed, and has
been this way since SB5 was launched some 9 or more months back.
Moreover the design and development of same was primarily the project
of one Russell Eggen who is a veritable master in such documentation.

Finally the massive use of context sensitive help is exceptional.
Combine this with the news forum and Friedrich's help and you can't
possibly lose.

Come on Casey, forget the conversion utility nonsense and jump right
in. The water's fine :)

Honestly, you won't regret it. If you need a hand with changing some
of the things you did in SB4 to the way you need to do it in Sb5 then
just holler. I'm quite happy to help and I'm sure there's a lot
brighter folks around than me who'd be happy to as well.

Best Regards,
Geoff Spillane
Data Down Under

[NewsArchive]

I saw the documentation within a couple of days of its release. What I
meant by documentation delay was that the SB5 Beta was used by most
users as a production product for a couple of years without
documentation. You can call it a beta, but when you have already
announced that any new work done in the old version will be lost (can't
say I wasn't warned) and the beta lasts more than a year users are
pretty much forced to use the new version for production. And for that
they needed documentation. Sure, updating documentation for a quickly
evolving product is a nuisance, but with the great help tools available
it is practical. Doesn't have to be pretty or exhaustive.

Casey Rippon