What's changed recently?

This page lists the main changes that have happened to the software as the different versions were finished.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b34

A few small bugs fixed, and the Sort card revised to allow numeric sorting as well as alphabetical sorting, and to allow sorting by particular columns.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b33

Corrected a number of small but significant problems involving screen resolution, which affected computers not using 1024 by 768.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b30

Its amazing - Hank really has been in "beta" state for four years now!! However, it seems we've only just found the "Blue Screen of Death" problem that was causing a fair bit of problems, and if this causes it to go away, and no new problems have become critical because of the new copy/paste support, this should be almost the last beta release. Hank now works fine on Windows XP and Windows 2000, which is the current development platform.

Copy and paste to external applications (e.g., Microsoft Word and Powerpoint) is now supported for the first time
Export in Windows enhanced metafiles is supported. EPS files can still be used, but are really intended when a high quality press is needed
An HTML version of the user guide now exists and has been linked to the Help menu
Preferences are now stored in the registry (rather than in "hank.ini")
A simple "Options" dialogue box - currently only used to enable checkpointing
A serious problem, apparently caused by the debugger, could lead to the "Blue Screen of Death"
Colour mapping changed to fit Windows 2000 - and possibly even Windows XP
Scripting code, which hasn't worked for ages, has been removed from the File menu, just in case...
File extensions didn't always default properly in standard file dialog

Changes in Hank version 1.0b30 (beta test version 30, 16th July 2003)

Copy and paste to external applications (e.g., Microsoft Word and Powerpoint) is now supported for the first time
Export in Windows enhanced metafiles is supported. EPS files can still be used, but are really intended when a high quality press is needed
An HTML version of the user guide now exists and has been linked to the Help menu
Preferences are now stored in the registry (rather than in "hank.ini")
A simple "Options" dialogue box - currently only used to enable checkpointing
A serious problem, apparently caused by the debugger, could lead to the "Blue Screen of Death"
Colour mapping changed to fit Windows 2000 - and possibly even Windows XP
Scripting code, which hasn't worked for ages, has been removed from the File menu, just in case...
File extensions didn't always default properly in standard file dialogs

Changes in Hank version 1.0b26 (beta test version 26, 19th December 2000)

Fixed various problems in the tracer step timing
Add a "note box" that you can use for adding comments to your models

Changes in Hank version 1.0b24 (beta test version 24, 15th November 1999)

New installer runs straight from the web. And it should avoid the problems of the previous one as well.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b23 (beta test version 23, 14th August 1999)

Lots of changes happened while we were away at summer school, and they happened so fast that I forgot which version they got into. These changes included:
Fixes to the step counter for Ask in Full.
Various printing bugs for large documents were fixed.
Fixed printing to file so that this now works as well and doesn't crash.
Creating a user query card with a selected link now works properly.
A few attempts to solve the "blue screen of death" problem. I think this is associated with checkpointing but I'm not sure. These seem to alleviate the problem.
The magical vanishing Cards menu doesn't vanish any more.
Links which went wonky when printing (because they were attached to the right of a box) no longer go wonky.
Added some DOS error handling, so that you get better error messages for saving to write-protected disks and so on.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b12 (beta test version 12, 10th July 1999)

The previous change caused problems with pasting into instruction cards, which created question boxes way off the screen, and which could ony be accessed by manually editing the text. This is now fixed.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b11 (beta test version 11, 3rd July 1999)

Fixed several problems to do with the clipboard, so that cards sometimes fell off the edge of a database window. If you got "card X defined twice" errors, when you only have one of them, this was probably the error.
The workaround for previous versions is to give yourself more pages, then scroll down a bit, and Select All, Cut, and Paste, which should paste the cards centred on the visible centre of the window.
In this new version, Save and Revert should now fix the problem, and Paste (which is probably where the problem lay) no longer pastes off the top left of the window.
Also, copying instruction cards with selected question boxes no longer means that paste will paste both the instruction card and a new set of question boxes.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b10 (beta test version 10, 2nd July 1999)

Fixed a serious problem with the Properties... command, which was missing a couple of files from the runtime build. Thanks, Allegro...

Changes in Hank version 1.0b9 (beta test version 9, 2nd July 1999)

Fixed a serious problem with error handling in the runtime. Errors no longer restart the system in a horrible way.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b8 (beta test version 8, 1st July 1999)

Lots of changes, probably too many for me to remember. Some of the more significant ones include:
Checkpointing and logging added.
New built in questions "Ask Without Errors", "Push", and "Pop".
DDE link implemented. You can now simply double-click .hnk files and it will open the files in Hank, even if Hank is already running.
Find Definition command removed from the Help menu. It didn't work anyway. It will come back when it works.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b5 (beta test version 5, 22nd June 1999)

Added the Same card back, as it's sometimes quite useful (it never does nasty things to variables without values.
Fixed a horrible bug in Ask All, which basically meant that it completely ignored the pattern it was given.
Suspicious things in the install script fixed.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b4 (beta test version 4, 21st June 1999)

The Same card didn't work, but then Match does everything that Same does and more besides. From now on, use Match because Same has been removed.
Problems with Exit and Set Status returning "(Fail)" and "(OK)" rather than "Fail" and "OK" status values have been fixed. Did you know that Exit doesn't actually necessarily exit, but is the same as Set Status?
Unnamed links didn't work properly, for several different reasons. They should now.
A new built in card, Do Nothing, has been added. It does nothing, but is pretty handy if you want to pick up the incoming status in an instruction card.
Speaking of which, instruction cards no longer start with a status of "OK", but inherit the caller's status. Usually you won't notice the difference, but instruction cards can now choose to follow different courses of action depending on the calling status.

Unreleased Hank version 1.0b3 (beta test version 3) was distributed to OU Summer School tutors only, at a training day on the 19th June.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b2 (beta test version 2, 18th June 1999)

There was a problem in the handling of the database built in questions: "Add To Card", "Remove From Card", "Get Cell Value", "Put Cell Value", "Shuffle", "Sort", and "Card Size". All these built in questions would remove all current variable values, which was not a good thing at all. This version corrects this problem.
Hank version 1.0b2 also introduces draw values, which are composite values Hank draws differently. For example "Draw: Colour: Green; Hello World" appears as "Hello World" in green text. "Draw: Background: Red; This is red" appears as "This is red" on a red background. "Draw: Background: Light Blue" simply draws the entire cell in light blue.

Changes in Hank version 1.0b1 (beta test version 1, 16th June 1999)

More changes to do with getting printing to work. All the windows should now print properly, and are integrated with the Windows stuff. This includes printing (and even the previously disabled page setup) on database windows, the workspace, and even the control panel transcript.
Complete rewrite of values in cards and questions. Composite values are now supported, so that (for example) ?Head? ?Rest? will match "1 2 3 4" with ?Head? becoming 1 and ?Rest "2 3 4". Composite values also support pattern matching, so constants can be sprinkled in too. "This is a ?type? day" will match "this is a nice day" or "this is a very very nice day", but not "this is a day". Composite values seem incredibly powerful, but even we aren't quite sure how powerful they are yet.
In an instruction card, you can now use variables in the title and column parts of questions, as well as in the values.
Whole bunch of new built in questions added. One of the nicest is Ask In Dialog, which prompts for a value and returns it.
Debugger more or less completed and integrated with the question processor.

Changes in Hank version 1.0d14 (development version 14, 19th January 1999)

Fixing the printing system so that it works with the underlying implementation language. Printing broke when a new release of the language was provided by our suppliers, which changed a few things without telling us.
Correcting the printing system to the print job's title is derived from the window being printed. It will now show up in the printer window for the operating system.
Adding two new preferences, default-columns and default-rows, to the hank.ini file. Both default to 2. You can change these settings to get more or less rows and columns by default to each card as created. The default settings are written automatically when Hank is first run. The file hank.ini is in the application directory.
Rewriting the question processor for brief questions. It's a bit slower, but now at least you can stop the process when it's running. It uses the workspace window in its reduced form.

Changes in version 1.0d13 (development release 13, 20th November 1998)

Fixed a bug in save and open, so that they now use (by default) the directory of the front most window, and only failing that do they use the application directory.
Changed card folding, so that instruction cards now fold horizontally as well as vertically.
Renamed the primitive "Empty" to "Make Empty" (which changes the variable), and added a new primitive "Is Empty" (which tests to see if the variable is empty).
Added a first version of the clipboard system. Copy and Paste now work, even between windows. To paste something as a question into an instruction card, use Paste Question. This will work even when the copied item was a fact or an instruction card; that is, copying a fact card and pasting it as a question pastes a question which talks to that fact card. The Cut command has also been implemented (at last).
Added a Find Definition menu command (in the Help menu), which calls up the Gallery's page for a primitive.
Added a new Say In Dialog primitive.
Fixed a bug in reading negative numbers. Basically, you couldn't do anything at all with negative numbers. How come this took so long to find? Thanks to Trevor Collins for finding this one.
Started to plan a few changes to the workspace. There's now a "shrink" button which makes the workspace small. This will probably get integrated into the Ask Briefly command, eventually, so that the bug of constantly running infinitely looping programs can be dealt with, at last!