The guide

Updating

How new versions are installed, what an update never touches, and the one manual step if you are coming from 1.0 or 1.1.

How an update happens

From version 1.2 the program can update itself. Settings → Updates → Check for updates: it tells you what is available, and downloads only the parts that actually changed — usually a few megabytes rather than the whole program.

Nothing is installed while you are using it. A download waits until the next time you start the program, which takes a second or two longer than usual and then opens as normal. There is no dialog in the middle of a service, ever.

What an update never touches

Three things belong to your church rather than to the program, and no update contains them:

• Your settings — screens, colours, fonts, languages, everyone who may connect from a tablet
• Your Bible library — every translation you have downloaded or imported
• The cached list of available translations

This is not carefulness on the part of whoever packages a release: the program that arrives contains no file with the same name as your library, so an update has nothing it could put in its place.

Checking, quietly

Left switched on, the program looks once a day, in the background, and says nothing unless there is something to say. When there is, a small dot appears on the settings button. It never interrupts, never steals focus, and never pops up over what you are doing.

To stop it looking at all, untick Check for updates when the program starts on the same tab. You can still check by hand whenever you like.

If something goes wrong

What happens	What you are left with
The download is interrupted or arrives damaged	It is refused. Nothing is installed and nothing is changed
The computer is turned off mid-install	The previous files are put back, and the program starts as it did before
The new version misbehaves	The build you were on is still on the website's history — ask and it can be put back

For a day or so after an update you may see files ending in .old-sc in the program folder. They are the previous version, kept until the program next starts, and then removed. Leave them alone; they cost nothing.

Coming from 1.0 or 1.1

Those versions have no updater, so the first move is by hand — once.

1. Download the new version from the download page.
2. Unzip it over your existing folder, replacing what is there. Your settings and your Bibles are not in the new zip, so they stay exactly as they are.
3. Start the program. From then on, updates are handled inside it.

If you would rather keep the old folder intact, unzip the new version somewhere else and copy two things across from the old one: scripturecaster.ini and data\bibles.sqlite. Do not copy data\seed.sqlite — that is the empty starting library the new version brings with it.

Computers you do not control

If the program lives somewhere it cannot write to — Program Files, a network share, a managed PC — it will say so on the Updates tab and will not try. Updating is then whoever administers that computer's job, and unzipping the new version over the folder is all it takes.