Alpha-encoding file versions

When building installers the UpgradeVersion must have a unique property value that is an installer public property (upper-case alpha). So, what better way of adding uniqueness than making it have the form "product name + product version" with the version suitably encoded...

So, a script for turning a file version (4 x 16bit ints) encoded as a System.Version into a short alpha string, assuming that Major and Minor will be small, and that common approaches are to step Build, to use a stepped Build plus date-stamped Revision, or a timestamp Build and Revision --

where the first two facets are encoded as telescoped base-13 (with a bit to say "more to come"), and the second two are encoded as pairs of bytes -- Z for a zero byte or as a 2-character base-25 representation if non-zero, with a zero Revision being dropped. This gives 10 characters in a plausible worst case, or as low as 5 in some conventions (stepped build numbers only); as opposed to the naive 64-bit as all-base-26 which would give 11 characters always.