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However, the main difference between 1.0.6 and 1.0.7 is something you will not notice yet. 1.0.7 can talk to BBO, but the version of BBO that you have cannot talk to FD. I will release a (beta) version of BBO that can talk to FD as soon as I am comfortable about doing so. Hopefully that will be within a few days, but I can't make any promises.
For now you will have to take my word for it that this is very cool! I have a version of BBO that allows me to log in, go to a table in play, load a FD file, and see automatic explanations for all the bids that have taken place (and those that take place after I arrive). If you move your mouse over a bid in the auction diagram, a little popup window (just like the one you see in FD) will display the info that FD has provided about that bid.
Of course the explanations I see do not necessarily match the meanings of the bids that were made (since the people at the table are unlikely to be playing a system like the one represented by the FD file that I arbitrarily load), but I still found it exciting the first time my BBO displayed an "FD popup explanation"
In response to some of the concerns people have expressed:
1) Don't worry about the file format changing anymore. Probably the format will change at some point, but I will provide a mechanism whereby you can easily convert your old files. Most likely you won't even have to do anything - I will just make it so that FD can read files in both the new and old formats (but only writes to the new format of course).
2) Don't worry about the size of your files. I was concerned about this too, but Uday has convinced me that it is not really a problem
3) I realize there are various things I can do with the editor to speed up the data entry process ("macros" for example), but I am probably not going to do any work in this area for a least another week or so. Sorry.
4) Currently FD is not especially careful about validating the files it tries to open. If someone edits an FD file using a text editor and makes a mistake, it is hard to predict how FD might respond. Eventually I will have to make this part of the program bulletproof so that it will be impossible to send messed up files to BBO (and possibly create problems for other people at your table). In the mean time, all I can suggest is that you be very careful if you edit your files outside of FD itself.
Please make backups of all the files you care about before you try each new version!
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Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com