I appreciate your summary and comments to the forum.  I am in need of clarifying a few items to further make these issues clear to the forum community.

E-Prime 2.0 Interactions Between Editions
1) An .ebs2 file generated using either edition of E-Prime 2.0 will run under the E-Run dialog (or via double click) under either edition of E-Prime 2.0.
2) A (Standard) .es2 file will open using either edition of E-Prime 2.0. When opening a (Standard) .es2 in E-Prime 2.0 Professional, you will receive a prompt asking whether you would like to maintain the standard format (allowing you to continue to open the .es2 file using E-Prime 2.0), or to convert to E-Prime 2.0 Professional upon open. You must select the latter option to take advantage of Professional features, or you can perform a Save As to convert to Professional at a later time.  See attached screen grabs of each of these dialogs.
3) A Professional .es2 file will not open nor can it be edited in E-Prime 2.0 (Standard).  Experiment authors who wish to incorporate additional features into their experiments are encouraged to choose E-Prime 2.0 Professional. A Professional .es2 file will open and save w/o receiving the conversion prompt when using E-Prime 2.0 Professional. 
4) Packages and PackageCalls from industrial partners are available in both E-Prime 2.0 (Standard) and E-Prime 2.0 Professional es2 files.  Packages and PackageCalls created with the PackageFile editor are available only in E-Prime 2.0 Professional es2 files.  The script from a package is merged into the .ebs2 file at generation time with the experiment contents and can run under either edition (see #1).

E-Prime 2.0.1.104 (Professional) introduces a prompt when creating a new experiment with a listing of template files of which a blank version of each edition can be chosen (see attached).  We feel these steps will assist experiment authors in determining from which version to begin their experiments.  You recently posted a thread inquiring about the ability to save a Professional experiment into the standard file format that we are taking under advisement.  At this time, because this feature is not currently available, PST currently recommends opening two copies of E-Studio and copy/paste objects from one experiment to another to achieve similar results.

Through a number of requests from end users (E-Prime 2.0 Feature Survey, trade shows, web support, etc), PST is offering E-Prime 2.0 in two editions to permit a balance between labs who want a lower price point and those who want the additional features offered by a professional package.  PST provided this exact same approach a number of years ago with E-Prime's predecessor with MEL and MEL Professional 2.0 offering separate editions and price points.  With the introduction of the E-Prime 2.0 and E-Prime 2.0 Professional editions, E-Prime will have its first price increase in over a decade.

While both editions of E-Prime will provide the most requested new features (e.g., copy/paste, movies, etc.), PST encourages end users who wish to take advantage of additional features to choose E-Prime 2.0 Professional.  The development and marketing teams have taken great care to avoid a misunderstanding that users are required to use E-Prime 2.0 Professional or that E-Prime 2.0 is an inferior product to E-Prime 2.0 Professional.  They are distinct products offering a great deal of overlap, but which provide different focuses for different types of users.  The Sales and Marketing staff at PST encourage E-Prime 2.0 Professional when providing pre-sales information because of its added features, compatibility between editions, and because the path to upgrade to E-Prime 2.0 Professional at a later time will be a significantly greater investment than during initial purchase (hundreds of dollars).  I go into more detail about pricing issues in response to your thread at http://www.pstnet.com/forum/Topic915-13-1.aspx.

In regard to the technical reasons for why the E-Prime 2.0 Professional file format cannot be edited in E-Prime 2.0 (Standard), in some applications from other vendors, the differences between standard, professional, platinum, etc edition models may permit an end user additional functionality or easier ways to do things.  E-Prime 2.0 Professional has some of these same characteristics that would not affect the file format, such as the property tooltips, experiment advisor, and ScriptSense, but also provides  different methods of doing certain tasks. In these cases, the approaches are either not backwards-compatible or are difficult to determine.  Examples include commands and objects in the E-Basic language that may not exist, objects that do not exist, or behaviors that do not exist.  Because these technical challenges would make it either difficult or impossible to downgrade feature sets and to ease the support for end users, the split of two specific file formats are offered.

E-Prime 2.0 file formats have moved away from a direct text format towards a binary format for a number of reasons.  We received a number of support issues in regard to e-mailing .es files in E-Prime 1.x because some e-mail servers would add new line characters or truncate/wrap lines of text inappropriately, causing the experiments to load improperly after transfer.  Moving to a binary format ensures this compatibility while offering additional features such as compression, intellectual property protection, data integrity, and security that has been requested and required by a number of customers and service offerings.

I understand that some of the information may be confusing and we are rectifying those concerns via threads like this and informational web pages.  Thank you for your support of E-Prime 2.0 and please feel free to ask any additional questions as they will better help us serve the research community.
 

-Brandon

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Brandon Cernicky
Senior Software Engineer
Psychology Software Tools, Inc.

CreateFromTemplate.gif - The dialog prompt when creating a new experiment in E-Prime 2.0 Professional.  Choices for each edition are provided.  The blank provides and empty experiment akin to a new 1.x experiment.  The Basic offers a simple shell with Instruction and Goodbye screens.  Additional templates can be added upon request.  Available in E-Prime 2.0.1.104 or later.

ConvertPrompt.gif - The dialog shown when opening a standard es2 file.  The author has the option to maintain the format which would be useful in collaboration or when Professional features are not used.  Converting the file permits taking advantage of Professional functionality.

SaveAs.gif - This is a grab of the Save As dialog and how to choose the Professional option in the file type area.

ConvertConfirmation.gif - The confirmation dialog shown when perfoming a Save As opertion to take advantage of E-Prime 2.0 Professional features.

	Post Attachments
	CreateFromTemplate.gif (5 views, 11.14 KB) ConvertPrompt.gif (3 views, 11.89 KB) SaveAs.gif (3 views, 18.74 KB) ConvertConfirmation.gif (5 views, 10.38 KB)

-Brandon