Properly surface version information both inside and outside of the application

[oleestar]

I couldn't find a way to tell inside the app, which version of October I have currently on my windows system. The only way I found is to go to the Windows Settings \ Apps and features menu. However, it says it is installed "20/11/2022", and version is "1.0.0", while I made sure I have installed 1.1.2.

I would add the following features:

• show the version information in the app somewhere
• show a link to the latest releases - download page in the app
• make sure the windows version information is reported correctly in the Apps & Features page
• optionally: check if there is a new version, either triggered manually or automatically
• this could be hidden under a small "?" icon

[marcus-crane]

Ah, thanks for letting me know.

The macOS version has a little about popup (as all applications do) but I don't know if Windows has a similar concept natively. If it doesn't, it would probably explain why Wails (the underlying framework I use) doesn't seem to have an obvious spot to define that for Windows builds.

Historically, I've also not used Wails too much but I have a Windows desktop nowadays (I didn't when I started) so I can put some more emphasis on reviewing Windows builds in more detail.

As for the Windows Settings / Apps menu, if I had to guess, it's because I haven't properly configured this part of the manifest (https://github.com/marcus-crane/october/blob/main/build/windows/October.exe.manifest#L3) which I hadn't spotted before so I'll see if that does the trick and push an update.

Having it in app though to standardise it cross platform does make sense. Perhaps even a little build information footer when starting up?

As you can probably tell, October is something I pick up here and there. I had taken a few stabs at a much larger v2 but they quickly sprawl a bit out of control. Your comment on another issue about the small scope of it was a nice reminder and there's probably a better balance to be hit where most of the heavy lifting should be saved for a tool like Calibre which October is not at all intending to replace.

Also, I totally missed that you had decided to use the Github sponsorship function! While I do technically lose money on October (I pay a yearly fee for macOS + Windows codesigning certificates among other things), it's a handy project for myself personally so knowing that someone gets enough value from it to want to use it 🙂

[oleestar]

I started to use Readwise after taking the course for Building a Second Brain. It is way too expensive, better read the book. It is a personal knowledge management system, PKM. At the moment, I think this is the most popular/advertised approach in the media.

The concept in BASB is that we migrate most/all content into a central app, Evernote/OneNote, Notion, Obsidian or similar (or video version). For ebooks, we need to highlight important passages, and then use Readwise to review it and also to move it to Evernote.

Most participants were living in the Amazon ecosystem on the course, but there is an important number of people who don't, and use Kobo readers. For myself, the ebooks for all the other languages I read, are downloadable files from the bookstores, which I need to side load, and Kobo is the clear choice for this. Your sync utility is the missing piece of the puzzle to make the workflow complete, and Reading an ebook on Kobo - highlighting - October - Readwise - Evernote - reviewing

I would say go for a more frequent, small tweaking approach, than accumulating a lot of changes for a future build.

[marcus-crane]

Ah yeah, I follow a similar setup with Kobo -> Readwise -> Obsidian as my workflow of choice.

For most other things these days, I use Readwise Reader which also does has epub support but it's still pretty early days so I can't say I've adopted it over my plain Kobo usage although I'm interested to see how it works out.

The Readwise team did also have an official Kobo integration to cover Kobo store bought books (with October covering the other side) but unfortunately it got shut down by Kobo pretty quickly so as far as I know, there aren't many other tools around in the space that October covers 🙁

As far as the Windows versioning under Apps & Features, I've got a fix that I haven't tested on my desktop just yet but I expect it'll work. I'll probably look at adding a version identifier this weekend as well.

[marcus-crane]

I've just released v1.2.0 (release notes available at #67) which fixes up versioning and publisher metadata in a bunch of places across Windows and macOS.

There is still some work to be done as far as bringing that information into the application itself though.

[oleestar]

I uninstalled the old October (Windows), installed the new one. It shows the version information as 1.2.0 both in Settings \ Apps & Features, and Control Panel \ Programs and features. Thanks for this!

[marcus-crane]

v1.3.0 now displays build information (version, platform, architecture) in the Settings page (among some other things) which leaves the ability to jump to the downloads page and/or auto update

That would be a bigger piece of work but it would be nice to remove the friction in having to unzip an installer every time. I'm not entirely sure how it would work though given you're replacing an entire .exe/.app rather than just a binary. I would think plenty of stuff could break if you just tried to modify the already existing install 🤔

[marcus-crane]

Version information should really be visible on the boot page since I often launch October and wonder if I'm on the latest version. I forget to check the About menu on macOS (which doesn't have an equivalent on Windows/Linux) and end up navigating through to settings so I should just surface that on the initial device selector page.