As you may know, we are currently working on version 2.2. But we didn't want users to have to wait for 2.2 if important bugs were found. So we put in place a mechanism whereby we could release bug fixes, if important enough, immediately. Bug fix releases are sometimes called 'patches'. There have been various bugs that we have found and fixed. Individually probably none of them were serious enough to merit a separate release in their own right, but together they were. In any case we wanted to try out the new mechanism. So we have done a bug fix release.
The new version (the new bug fix release) is 2.1.8. You can download an upgrade to this version from http://www.family-historian.co.uk/downloads
If you want to know what version you are on, run Family Historian and click on 'About Family Historian...' on the Help menu. If you are confused about Family Historian version numbers (sometimes expressed using 3 digits and sometimes using just 2 digits), there is a short description of how they work at http://www.family-historian.co.uk/downloads. In a nutshell, you can convert a 3-digit version number to a 2-digit version number by just ignoring the last digit.
If you are currently on version 2.0 and you want to upgrade to 2.1, you should use the upgrade provided at http://www.family-historian.co.uk/downloads, which will take you to version 2.1.8 (the latest version). Anyone currently running 2.0 is strongly recommended to do this upgrade. There is information about the significant enhancements that 2.1 gives you on the downloads page.
If you are currently running version 2.1.6, is it worth upgrading to 2.1.8 or should you wait for 2.2? The answer is - its up to you. Version 2.1.8 fixes a large number of bugs, but most of them are pretty minor - like preventing toolbars changing position when you don't want them to. The most significant bugs fixed are probably the following:
(1 ) Accent characters were not previously handled correctly. If you typed an accent character into the Name field, e.g. ç, the ç would be replaced by a space char in Windows XP. Also, accent chars were not being capitalised correctly, and sorting did not work correctly with accent chars, and that happened on all versions of Windows. All now fixed.
(2 ) A few users previously had problems printing dotted lines. 2.1.8 should hopefully fix this.
(3) Family Historian previously wouldn't let you open files if the file name length
(including the full 'path' - i.e. including the folder names etc) were over 128 characters. That's now fixed
(the correct limit is 256 characters).
(4) Queries that showed relationship info
(such as the 'Relations and 5 Nearest Relationships' query) could appear to hang sometimes if one of the relatives had mutliple parents
(actually just took a very long to run and/or cancel). Also relations via multiple sets of parents were not always being properly accounted for.
(5) The sort order in the Records Window wasn't actually 100% correct, but now is I hope
(thank you to Brian Teece for pointing this one out).
(6) In rare circumstances, superscripts used to be able to cause the last parts of paragraphs in reports to be lost.
Other less significant bugs fixed include
(7) Previously was no visible indication when a dialog was resizable. Now there is a resizing area
(3 lines) that you can grab, at the bottom right corner of resizable dialogs
(can still resize by clicking and dragging on any edge of the dialog too, of course).
(8 ) Source pane always closed if you hit 'Go Back' in the Property Dialog.
(9) Toolbars tended to move around (esp. if you opened Print Preview).
(10) Auto-adding father's surname did not handle double-barrelled surnames correctly.
(11) Rare minor glitch when drag-adding children fixed.
(12) Re-ordering siblings in diagrams did not always work correctly for children with more than one parent family.
(13) Clicking on 'Help' button in the 'Work with External File Links' dialog showed wrong help page.
(14) The Delete Record/Delete Link advice dialog could show useless information if the relevant record had a very long name.
(15) Caption font was not listed in the Diagram Options dialog for records detail reports which show pictures. Now is.
(16) Dates and place for custom events were not displaying in the Records Window, and Property Dialog 'All' tab, as they would for ordinary events.
(17) Ages were not being calculated correctly for dates specified using 2 years - e.g. 12 February 1639/40.
(18 ) Previously was a fairly low limit on the number of picture files that could be inserted from one folder in one go. Hopefully you should now always be able to insert all pictures in a folder without reaching a limit.
(19) In complicated circumstances the scrollbar for children in the Property dialog could be disabled when it should be enabled.
(20) The dialog for editing notes or addresses did not let you select the whole text by pressing Ctrl-A.
Plus a number of other minor bug fixes.
Actually no bugs were involved in (2), (7) or (20) but they somehow got included anyway.
Simon Orde List Administrator and Family Historian designer