admin's blog

Hot off the disk comes the latest, and probably the last, Beta release of WaterSums. This has been a week of delays, so some of the functionality expected for this last Beta has not been included. However, the software still includes some major steps forward in interaction with network maps. Selecting of junctions, tanks and reservoirs in the project tree or map now displays a red circle around the selected object. Selection of pipes, valves or pumps now displays an animated arrow moving from the start node to the end node.

Have you ever been irritated by spelling? For those of us unfortunate enough to care about it, spelling is a tricky subject. WaterSums is developed in Australia and the spelling used is English Australian. If you find any spelling or grammatical errors in the website or software, please let us know - we care about these things.

Another Friday, another Beta. This release adds functionality to improve various features including drag and drop and selection handling in the project tree and network map tabs. Happily, it also fixes many bugs and generally speeds up the network map display. Overall, a valuable update. WaterSums is quickly moving towards its commercial release.

New advances are being made with tools for reviewing network analysis and these should be ready for release next week (God willing).

WaterSums Beta 1 is out! This release improves the display of maps and linking between the project tree and the map view. Select a pipe, pump or valve in the project tree and it will be highlighted in red on the map. Select an item on the map view and it will be highlighted on the map and selected in the tree. The limitation stopping the use of Adobe SVG Viewer 3.0.3 should also have been fixed in this release, but this has not been tested yet. This will be done before the next beta release.

This latest release comes after a wonderful holiday spent in the beautiful Grampians in western Victoria (in Australia). Most of the new functionality in this release relates to the completion of the integration of undo/redo support. All project edits can now be undone and then redone, including project and network edits, changes made in the curve editor and in pulldown menus. A few bug fixes are included.

Another bundle of new features released today. The File menu now includes up to 10 of the most recently opened project files for quick and easy opening. In a future release, the path will be summarised if necessary so that the menu doesn't get too wide!

The Revert option in the file menu now allows the user to cancel all edits made in a project.

After a few hiccups, the second WaterSums alpha release is now available. This release 0.1.1 adds more basic features for working with projects; creating projects, save as and save a copy.

Another success was the find feature which now works well. A small sub-panel is displayed at the bottom of the Project tree with a text box for the search text. The search is done progressively once more than two letters are entered and the first node to match the text will be highlighted in the tree. Pressing Enter will make this node the selected node while Escape will hide the search box without changing the current selection or the expansion of the tree.

Developing software is one of these tasks that never has an end. WaterSums software continues to be developed and the first alpha release is a major development milestone; however, the work continues. This release is still very preliminary software, but it should not cause any damage or be too badly behaved. The log uploader may behave badly if major errors occur or if the uploading does not work properly. Please have patience and press Cancel as often as you need to if you are prompted to upload the file more than once.

Another piece falls into place. The first version of the WaterSums website is ready for visitors. Work on the software continues...