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The Net Power 1997 October
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What’s New in BBEdit 4.0.4
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What's New in BBEdit 4.0.4
====== === == ====== =====
This document describes the feature enhancements and bug fixes that are
present in the current release of BBEdit, including features that
distinguish the current "major" (4.0) release from the previous (3.5)
release of BBEdit.
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.
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 equivalents to the BBEdit HTML tools.
Spell Checking
----- --------
BBEdit 4.0 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.
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.
What's Fixed in BBEdit 4.0.4
====== ===== == ====== =====
The following minor enhancements are new as of BBEdit 4.0.4:
+ When performing an "Open Selection" within an untitled document,
BBEdit will now detect the case in which the selection encompasses a
full pathname, and attempt to open the file directly.
+ When command-clicking on a URL, or using the "Resolve URL" menu
command, BBEdit will pass off "unknown" URLs to Internet Config for
resolution.
+ The Clipboard window is now searchable; you can also make selections
using the mouse or keyboard and drag them to other BBEdit windows
(or to other applications).
The following minor enhancements were new as of BBEdit 4.0.3:
+ BBEdit now accepts items that are dragged into editing windows (or
dialogs that accept folder and file drops) via the PopupFolder
utility, and from the Find File desk accessory.
+ If you choose the "Open Selection" command and there is no selection
in the front editing window, BBEdit will display a dialog that you
can use to type in the desired file name.
+ Various optimizations have been applied to the process of loading
BBEdit Extensions; the result is that in general, there is a
noticeable reduction in the amount of time BBEdit takes to start up.
+ BBEdit now requires much less transient memory when performing a Cut
or Copy operation, and now stores its clipboard data in system
memory. The net result is that you should be able to cut and copy
very large amounts of text without needing to increase BBEdit's
memory allocation size.
+ BBEdit is now much better at interpreting CodeWarrior projects
when opening them for multi-file searching or Find Differences,
to the effect that CodeWarrior projects are opened much more
quickly and with better accuracy in locating files than before.
+ the C++ scanner in the function popup now handles template-based
class declarations much better than in previous versions.
+ when navigating Object Pascal source files, the function popup
will now list the class name next to the method name.
+ BBEdit is now optimized for execution on PowerPC 603 and 604
machines. This should yield slight performance benefits throughout
when running on all Power Macintosh models.
The following reported problems are corrected in BBEdit 4.0.4:
- the OSA character accessor would return incorrect character
ranges when referencing characters contained within certain
container types.
- the controls for SIVC and Ada95 support have been removed from the
Preferences dialog. These items were nonfunctional; SIVC and Ada95
support are planned for future versions of BBEdit.
- BBEdit's OSA dictionary contained conflicting definitions of the
term "file"; this has been corrected. Although existing compiled
scripts should continue to work, we encourage script writers to
recompile their OSA scripts in order to ensure uninterrupted future
compatibility.
- when setting textual properties of a window via Apple Events, BBEdit
will now handle non-text specifiers more gracefully, to avoid
inserting raw Apple Event data into the window whenever possible.
- When bringing up the Find... dialog, BBEdit will turn on the
"Multi-File Search" option by default, if there are no windows open
or if the front window does not contain any searchable content. This
resolves the reported problem in which BBEdit would fail to turn on
Multi-File Search when the "Quick Search" window was in front.
- Fixed a problem in the Grep pattern matcher which would cause
available memory to decrease each time a Grep search is performed;
this would lead to BBEdit rapidly running out of memory during
Replace All operations using Grep.
- A syntax coloring bug which affected the coloring of strings in TeX
"math mode" has been corrected.
- when saving a modified document, BBEdit now ensures that sufficient
disk space is available -before- attempting to overwrite the old
document contents. This guards against the old document getting lost
in the event of a disk-full error.
- if BBEdit has to take its "emergency exit" due to an out-of-memory
condition, it will now use intrinsic MacOS notification services to
warn of this state of affairs. This prevents a hang which would
occur if BBEdit unexpectedly ran out of memory while performing an
operation in the background.
The following reported problems were corrected in BBEdit 4.0.3:
- the line number display will no longer flicker as you type in
editing windows.
- in some circumstances, BBEdit would be launched in the background
by another application, get brought forward, and end confused about
whether it was in the foreground or not. BBEdit now guards against
this situation.
- BBEdit will no longer try to execute invisible items in the "BBEdit
Startup Items" folder; this fixes the reported behavior in which an
error message is issued after giving the BBEdit Startup Items folder
a custom icon.
- the spelling checker will no longer occasionally include opening
HTML tag brackets when checking HTML documents.
- when printing soft-wrapped text documents, BBEdit will no longer
erroneously drop the last character.
- BBEdit now guards itself against corrupted resource files; this
prevents BBEdit from quitting unexpectedly when open files whose
state information may have been damaged.
- BBEdit will no longer crash in some situations when no suggestions
are available for a misspelled word.
- a bug which prevented some extensions from working with a floating
tool window (for example, the HTML Tools palette) in front has been
corrected.
- several long-standing bugs in the ToolServer interface have been
corrected, particularly regarding support for ToolServer running
on a remote machine.
- the "Un/Comment" extension now properly remembers its settings, and
the delimiter size limit has been extended from 3 to 15 characters,
making it usable for languages such as HTML.
- when multi-file searching after a reverse search, BBEdit will now
BBEdit will no longer occasionally try to search backwards in disk
files (resulting in no occurrences being found).
- when resolving references to character ranges within lines, BBEdit's
scripting support will now return the correct information.
- the HTML function popup now deals gracefully with very large amounts
of text in between heading tags.
The FTP tool (used to support the "Open from FTP Server" and "Save to
FTP Server" commands) has been updated to version 3.1, and features the
following fixes and improvements:
- a broader range of FTP servers is supported. In particular,
compatibility with Windows NT and VMS servers should be much
improved.
- if you attempt to open a link, the FTP tool will first try to treat
the link as a directory link; if that fails, the FTP tool will
assume it's a file. Previous versions would display a "directory not
found" error message when double-clicking on a file link.
- items in the file listing will now display their Finder document
icons, based on the file mappings specified in Internet Config.
(Exception: if the mappings indicate a text file, BBEdit will always
display its own text-file icon.)
The display of icons requires that Internet Config be installed, and
is controlled by the "Show Document Icons" switch in the FTP dialog.
Changes to this option will take effect the next time you list a
directory (as in connecting to an FTP server or changing directories
in an FTP server to which you're already connected).
- links are now displayed in italics (non-link files in normal type)
- the "Passive FTP" switch now determines whether the FTP tool opens
a passive or active connection.
In passive mode, the PASV command is used on all data transfers to
tell the FTP server to open a passive listening data stream for the
transfer using a unique port number. The FTP server sends a response
to the PASV command telling the Mac the port number to use. The Mac
connects to this port to establish the data stream connection.
In active mode, the Mac establishes the listening data stream for
the transfer and uses the PORT command to tell the FTP server the
port number. The FTP server connects to this port to establish the
data stream connection.
When transferring more than one file using a single control stream,
passive mode is recommended. In active mode, with some kinds of
servers, there can sometimes be significant delays (30-90 seconds)
in establishing the data stream connection.
If you have Internet Config 1.3 or later installed, the FTP tool
will use the Internet Config setting for passive FTP to establish
the factory default setting for the "Passive FTP" switch.
- the FTP tool now turns off MacBinary transfers when talking to a
server which supports MacBinary transfers (including FTPd and
NetPresenz). This corrects reported problems in which downloaded
files would arrive with "some binary junk" (the MacBinary header) at
the beginning of the file.
The BBEdit HTML tools have been updated to version 2.1.2, and feature the
following fixes and improvements:
- The "Update Site" tool will now work properly when scanning site
folders which reside on remote Unix file systems. In addition, the
"Update Site" command will also run much faster, and for
sufficiently long operations will present a progress dialog that you
can use to estimate the overall progress of a site update.
- Fixed bug which would render the "New Document" tool unable to
locate templates in some situations. (The visible symptom of this
would be that a document created with a template would open up
blank.)
- The "Format" tool will now make a post-pass to eliminate line
breaks (with leading whitespace) before closing anchor tags.
Although the result is not as pretty as before, this fixes several
situations in which anchors would appear with trailing whitespace
when displayed in a Web browser.
- The HTML Tools Palette will no longer crash when used on non-color
Macs (e.g. a Mac Plus or Mac Classic).
- The "Custom Markup" command is now disabled when no windows are
open (or if the front window isn't an editing window).
- The "Check Site Links" tool will now bring up a dialog to choose
the site directory, in the event that the "Root" setting in the HTML
prefs is unspecified or the directory has been lost. (Previously,
the tool would do nothing.)
- Fixed a bug in the HTML tools' centralized error gathering
mechanism which would cause crashes and/or sporadic behavior. As a
benefit, the error gathering is now much faster, and because error
data is accumulated in system memory, there's now room for a lot
more errors. This fix primarily benefits the "Check HTML", "Check
Links", and "Check Site Links" commands.
- Extensions that you save by using the "Save Extension..." button in
the "Custom Markup" tool now work (previously, they would just beep
and do nothing). Also, when saving custom markup extensions in this
fashion, BBEdit will by default offer to place the new extension in
a "Custom Markup" folder, so that when BBEdit is subsequently
restarted, the extension will appear under the "HTML Custom Markup"
submenu in the Extensions menu.
- the HTML comment tool inserts an extra space after the opening
comment delimiter and before the closing delimiter, to maintain
readability and protect the integrity of #include statements.
Old News
=== ====
The following minor enhancements were 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 were 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 following 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".
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
navigation 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=