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Text File | 1996-10-16 | 16.7 KB | 415 lines | [TEXT/R*ch]

What's New in BBEdit 4.0 ====== === == ====== === This document describes the feature enhancements and bug fixes that have been added since version 3.5. Feature Additions ======= ========= BBEdit 4.0 incorporates the following improvements: Syntax Coloring for Easier Reading ------ -------- --- ------ ------- With the release of version 4.0, users can have BBEdit automatically color keywords to make source code and HTML documents easier to read. Users can specify which colors BBEdit uses to highlight language keywords, comments, string constants, and HTML tags. BBEdit offers syntax coloring for all of its supported languages, now including Java as well as C, C++, Object Pascal, Rez, 68K assembler, Fortran, Tcl, Perl, HTML, ScriptX, GuideScript, and TeX. Java Support ---- ------- BBEdit 4.0 includes support for Java, making it an excellent companion for the Java development environments by Symantec, Metrowerks, Sun Microsystems, and Natural Intelligence. Web Site Scripting with Frontier 4.0 --- ---- --------- ---- -------- --- BBEdit now includes full integration with Frontier 4.0, the advanced scripting system from UserLand Software, which is supplied on the BBEdit CD-ROM. This combination of BBEdit and Frontier provides "Web Site Scripting", a powerful system for HTML authoring and web site management. Web Site Scripting features include: - an extensible Glossary database -- any keyword typed in "double quotes" is expanded to its glossary definition automatically. - automatic substitution of HTML escape sequences -- instead of having to write complicated HTML escape sequences to display special characters, simply type the characters as you would normally, and the appropriate escape sequences are inserted automatically. - URL and e-mail link generation -- when you type a URL or e-mail address, the macro processor will construct the correct HTML anchor tags for you. - one-key processing and previewing of pages. Even Newer Features! ==== ===== ========= In addition to the improvements listed above, BBEdit 4.0.2 features the following: Enhanced HTML Editing -------- ---- ------- BBEdit 4.0 includes version 2.1 of the "BBEdit HTML Tools". This improved version of the popular HTML authoring tools offers a floating tool palette for easy access to HTML markup tags, enhanced HTML checking and previewing capabilities, and the ability to insert image and anchor links by simply dropping the appropriate image or HTML file into an HTML document's window. The HTML Tools also feature "PageMill Cleaner", which is useful for correcting several errors in the HTML code generated by version 1.0 of Adobe PageMill. Editing via FTP ------- --- --- BBEdit 4.0.1 features two new commands on the File menu: "Open from FTP Server" and "Save to FTP Server". These commands make it easy to edit text files residing on a remote FTP server (including Web servers which are accessible via FTP). Multiple Undo -------- ---- BBEdit 4.0.1 gives you the ability to undo more than just the last change you made to a file. Because the "Undo" command no longer changes to "Redo" when you have undone an action, there is a new "Redo" command on the Edit menu. To reverse the effects of an Undo, choose the "Redo" command. Startup Items ------- ----- When it starts up, BBEdit 4.0.2 will look for a folder named “BBEdit Startup Items” in the same folder as the BBEdit application file. If it finds such a folder, BBEdit will open any documents it finds in that folder. If you place a text file, picture file, or BBEdit file group in this folder, BBEdit will open a document window appropriate to that document. If you place a compiled OSA (AppleScript, or any other OSA-compliant scripting language) script in this folder, BBEdit will execute the script. If you place any other type of document in this folder, BBEdit will ask the Finder to open the document. If you wish, you may place the actual BBEdit Startup Items folder in any convenient location, create an alias to it, and place the resulting alias in the same folder as the BBEdit application file. Having done so, be sure to change the name of the alias to "BBEdit Startup Items" so that BBEdit can properly locate it. New “Set Keys…” Dialog --- ----------- ------ The "Set Keys..." dialog has been redesigned so that it is easier to assign key equivalents to extensions that are stored in folders within the main "BBEdit Extensions" folder. This is particularly convenient when assigning key equivanlents to the BBEdit HTML tools. And a Host of Other Changes === = ==== == ===== ======= The BBEdit 4.0 package encompasses a number of other enhancements over previous versions, including: - Support for Metrowerks' CodeWarrior 9 and 10 - Even more Drag & Drop capabilities - Support for PowerTalk 1.5. Additionally, BBEdit 4.0 is even faster than previous versions, thanks to several internal performance enhancements. Other Improvements Since BBEdit 3.5 ===== ============ ===== ====== === Spell Checking ----- -------- BBEdit now offers integrated spell checking, via the "SpellWright" spell-check engine. By using the "Check Spelling" command under the Text menu, you can locate and correct duplicate words and incorrect spellings. In addition, the built-in spell checking is HTML-aware: when checking an HTML document, the spell-check system will skip over HTML markup tags, allowing you to easily check your Web page content. In addition to the integrated spell checking, BBEdit can also interact with external spell checkers which support the "Word Services Suite", such as "Spellswell", by Working Software, Inc. <http://www.webcom.com/~working/>. Enhanced Extensions -------- ---------- As of version 3.5.2, BBEdit features significant enhancements to its extension interface. These enhancements make it possible for properly written BBEdit extensions to offer floating tool windows for easier access to plug-in functionality. These enhancements are documented in the newest version of the BBEdit Extension Developer's Kit, which is included on the BBEdit CD-ROM, and which is available from our Web site <http://www.barebones.com/updates.html#tools>. Improved Scripting Support -------- --------- ------- BBEdit now supports the Apple Event Object Model conventions for referring to text in an editing window. In general terms, the object model provides access to items in an application as individual objects, or "elements". In the context of BBEdit, support for the Object Model makes it possible for you to refer to the contents of an editing window as individual elements: characters, words, and lines. Previous versions of BBEdit (3.5.1 and earlier) did not offer this level of access to the text, and so performing script-based text transformations with BBEdit was difficult. With support for the object model, the possibilities are greatly expanded. As always, you should refer to BBEdit's script dictionary for the details about what objects and commands are supported. The changes described below will be of special interest to script writers who have already written scripts to control BBEdit. As the result of Object Model support, your scripts may require some changes in order to work with BBEdit 4.0. - Words, lines, and characters within a specific window can now be individually accessed, as in: get character 1 of line 3 of window 1 set line 3 of window "untitled" to "abcdef" - the "window" class has been split into two classes: "window" and "document". The "document" class is a superset of the "window" class: in addition to the properties specific to a window on the screen, the document class contains the properties describing an open editing or browsing document window. In most cases, you can use "window" and "document" interchangeably. - The following window properties are obsolete and are no longer supported: character count (use "count of characters in document 1") word count (use "count of words in document 1") line count (use "count of lines in document 1") - the "send to back" and "exchange with next" events are no longer supported. Instead, set the "index" property of the given window: set the index of window 1 to (count of windows) -- send to back set the index of window 2 to 1 -- exchange with next - the "get search string" event is no longer supported. Instead, access the "search string" property of the application: get the search string -- gets the search string set the search string to "my new string" -- sets the search string (the "replace string" property of the application carries over from BBEdit 3.5.1.) - In the current scripting implementation, most of BBEdit's transformation commands still operate on the front document window, and do not accept a window or text reference. In the future, this will be expanded so that you can, for example, Zap Gremlins on a specific range of text. What's Fixed in BBEdit 4.0.2 ====== ===== == ====== ===== The following minor enhancements are new as of BBEdit 4.0.2: + the "select current paragraph" command has been added to BBEdit's OSA vocabulary. This scripting command performs the same function as the "Select Paragraph" command from the Edit menu, specifically, it extends the selection range to include the paragraph surrounding the current insertion point. + BBEdit will now cache the list of files from a project document, to improve turnaround time when performing multi-file searches on a THINK or Metrowerks project. + BBEdit now gives special treatment to text clippings; if you drag a text clipping onto BBEdit, or open it with the "Open..." command, BBEdit create an untitled editing window with the clipping's contents. + If you choose the "Open Selection" command in a Pascal source file, and the selected file name does not map to a Pascal suffix, then BBEdit will append a ".p" suffix and then search for the file. This is particularly useful when searching for Pascal interfaces specified in a USES clause: USES Memory, Quickdraw, TextUtils; All you have to do is double-click on a unit name and hit Cmd-D when you're in a Pascal source file. + BBEdit will now automatically turn on the "Multi-File Search" check box when you bring up the "Find..." dialog and no windows are open. + changes have been made in BBEdit to improve compatibility with system-level utilities such as Quickeys, Keyquencer, Spell Catcher, Thunder 7, and Apollo. The following reported problems have been corrected in BBEdit 4.0.2: - the Apple Guide help for the Find... dialog now circles the items in that dialog in the proper order. - BBEdit now (correctly) includes files opened from an FTP server when you perform a multi-file search on currently open windows. - The "Update" HTML tool should now work correctly in a variety of circumstances where it didn't before. - the human-interface conformance of the Command and Option keys as applied to the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys has been corrected. - the spelling checker will no longer hang when it encounters a word-break character followed by a digit, for example, the string "(40)". - BBEdit will no longer crash when starting up on a Mac Classic (or PowerBook 100) and creating its preferences for the first time. - BBEdit will no longer signal a file system error when opening via FTP files whose names are longer than 23 (or so) characters. - the "Prefix/Suffix Lines" extension will now function correctly in situations in which it did not previously do so. - the HTML tools palette will now properly remember its position when placed on a monitor other than the one containing the menu bar. - the HTML tools palette will no longer draw black-on-black when it's placed on a secondary black & white monitor. - when performing a "Hard Wrap" with Indent All Lines selected, BBEdit will no longer indent the line followin the last line of the selection range. - BBEdit now uses the "standard" 'cfil' identifier as the property code for a document's file property; this should correct problems when trying to do file coercions in AppleScript. - the HTML syntax checker will no longer erroneously complain about legitimate usages of the <BIG> and <SMALL> tags. - corrected the HTML Format tool's tendency to insert random text in some circumstances. - fixed bug which would incorrectly enable some buttons in the HTML tools palette when a non-text-editing window (such as a file group) was the front document. - The PageMill Cleaner tool no longer puts an "XXX" inside of empty anchors, but instead will bring up an errors window listing any empty anchors that it finds. - The HTML syntax checker now allows the use of an ampersand when inside of an HTML tag (as can occur when using queries constructed for CGI calls, etc.) - fixed bug in coloring of HTML comments, in which an HTML comment consisting entirely of dashes would cause the rest of the document to be considered part of the comment. - BBEdit will no longer crash on Power Macs when you try to use the "Export..." command on the File menu. - BBEdit's floating windows now use the standard system window definition whenever possible. This corrects the occasional refusal to resize floating windows, as well as cosmetic problems observed under beta versions of MacOS 8. - BBEdit will no longer crash or unexpectedly quit after printing under Quickdraw GX. - a malfunction while typing into Apple Guide's "Search For" text field on older machines has been corrected. - dynamic scrolling now works correctly on files with more than 64K lines. - BBEdit will bring the affected range of text into view when performing an Undo or Redo. - BBEdit now properly applies property data when creating a new document window through the scripting interface. - when scripting BBEdit, words can now be accessed relative to other words, as in "word before word 3 of window 1". Old News === ==== The following minor enhancements were new as of BBEdit 4.0.1: + BBEdit's scripting implementation now supports the 'exists' event. + BBEdit now recognizes files written in TeX (Donald Knuth's typesetting language), and provides syntax coloring and PopupFuncs navigaton for those files. If you are updating from BBEdit 4.0, you will need to go to the "Function Popup" section of the Preferences dialog and add a file suffix mapping for TeX source files. + When performing a multi-file Compare, BBEdit now offers the option to suppress the listing of files which are byte-for-byte identical. If you choose not to suppress these files, BBEdit 4.0.1 will dim those files' entries in the Differences window. + The performance of multi-file Compare options should be somewhat improved, thanks to internal optimizations. + BBEdit now uses a more up-to-date interface to Internet Config, so that it can correctly detect when Internet Config has not been properly installed or configured. + The obsolete "Hot List" setting has been removed from the "HTML" section of the Preferences dialog, and settings have been added to control whether HTML tags are inserted in upper or lower case. + BBEdit no longer discards Undo information after a document is saved; this is useful for undoing changes to an HTML document after previewing it (for example). + We have changed the way that BBEdit stores information when dragging documents to other applications. This should improve the ability of other applications to recognize items that are dragged from within BBEdit. The following reported problems were corrected in BBEdit 4.0.1: - We have integrated new software from Aladdin Systems, which fixes a crash when trying to perform multi-file searches when StuffIt SpaceSaver is installed. - BBEdit no longer attempts to open a printer driver until it's actually ready to print. This works around several third-party printer and fax driver bugs which would cause crashes or performance problems (particularly with Virtual Memory turned on). - the Fortran function scanner should no longer be confused by parentheses in quoted strings inside of FORMAT statements. - The list of saved Grep patterns will no longer become scrambled after deleting patterns from the list. - BBEdit's scripting dictionary has been updated to correct problems with the syntax of the "Zap Gremlins" scripting command, and to correct problems with accessing the 'selection start line' and 'selection end line' properties of a window. - BBEdit's syntax coloring no longer gets confused by HTML comments containing multiple dashes at the end of the comment. - Fixed a bug which would cause BBEdit to crash when trying to print on Power Macs running Quickdraw GX. - You will no longer see a "Directory Not Found" message when trying to insert a glossary entry from the keyboard while File Sharing is running. =end=