Lang Switcher’s “From the author” window: letters and the feed switch

How to open it

Tray menu → “About” → the “From the author…” button. The top of the window is the same as in “About”: the icon, the name, the version and two lines about what the program does. Clicking the name opens the program’s page on my site. Below that are three panels.

1. The author

A few words from me and two buttons. “Support the author” opens the support page on my site, which lists a few ways to say thank you, and “Open the channel” opens my channel. Both pages open in your browser, and both are in Russian.

2. News and updates

• What the program reads: once every 15 days, one file from my site with letters and the latest version number. It sends nothing else and downloads nothing.
• When it last read it: the panel shows the date, whether my signature checked out and how many days are left until the next reading. Below that is your version: “Version … is installed, and it is the latest.” or “Version … is installed, … is available.”
• “Open the download page” opens the download page, which always has the latest version.
• “Recent letters” keeps the three latest news items, plus the update letter until you install the new version. As the window puts it, “The three latest news items are kept. When a fourth arrives, the oldest goes, read or not.”

If my site doesn’t respond, the program tries again the next day. The request carries nothing about you or your computer: the site sees only your IP address and the time of the request.

The feed switch

• For the first 90 days, there’s no switch in the window. Instead, a line says where to turn the feed off: “Can be turned off in the settings file: [letters] feed = false.”
• Later, once the first letter from the feed has arrived, but no earlier than 90 days after the program first started, the panel gets a switch: “Tell me about the author's updates and news”.
• To turn it off sooner, use the file: exit the program (tray menu → “Exit”), set feed = false in the [letters] section of %APPDATA%\Lang_Switcher\config.toml, and start it again.

Without the feed, there are no news letters and no update letters, so check the download page for new versions yourself.

3. Feedback

“Found a bug or have an idea? The wizard puts a message together in five steps. Nothing is sent by itself: the text goes to the clipboard, and you paste it.” The “Write to the author…” button opens that wizard. You’ll also find it in the tray menu and in the “Diagnostics” section of the settings window.

On the last step, the wizard shows the whole text of your message, and you can edit it. What happens next depends on what the message is about:

• A bug (“The program did the wrong thing”, “Nothing happened”): the text can include the program’s journal and details of your computer, so it goes to me by email. The wizard shows the email address and two buttons, “Copy the text” and “Copy the address”.
• An idea (“I would like to suggest an improvement”): just your text and the program’s version. “Copy and open GitHub Issues” copies the text and opens the program’s GitHub Issues.
• Either way, “Save to the journal folder” saves the text to a file.

Lang Switcher doesn’t open your email app and doesn’t send anything by itself.

Which letters arrive

• “Hello! My name is Panda.” when the program starts for the first time: what it does, and “Three things for the first day”.
• “A month has passed. Thank you!” once, a month after the program first starts. “Open GitHub Issues” takes you to the program’s GitHub Issues, and you can choose “Remind me in a week”.
• The update letter when the feed has a newer version than yours: what’s changed, and “How to update” (more in How to update).
• “News from the author”. “Mark as read” closes the letter for good. “Later” or the cross gets you a reminder in a week and once more in two weeks; after that, there’s only a dot on the tray icon.

No more than one letter a day, and only at a quiet moment: first a notification by the tray icon, then the letter itself, which opens when you click the notification or on its own. The welcome letter opens right away. Letters don’t steal focus, so you can keep typing.