JGsoft Newsfeed

Updated: RegexMagic 1.0.5

Tue, 2 Feb 2010 18:00:00 +0700

RegexMagic is a brand new product from Just Great Software. Its purpose is to make it easier to create regular expressions. While it serves the same purpose as RegexBuddy, its approach is totally different. As such, RegexMagic will certainly not replace RegexBuddy. Rather, it aims to serve the need of a different group of people. Some will wish to use both RegexBuddy and RegexMagic at the same time.

RegexMagic 1.0.5 is now available for download. This release fixes one bug that we missed in version 1.0.4. Loading a formula from a library did not properly update the Match panel, causing access violation errors if you tried to access something on the Match panel.

Tips & Tricks: Outlining Text Files with Leading Dots

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:50:54 +0700

A prospective customer asked if EditPad Pro had the ability to create an outline of text files like another editor he had used before. In that Editor, putting a dot (which normally goes at the end of a sentence) at the start of a line turned that line into a heading. Two dots at the start of a line creates a second-level heading. Up to six dots can be used in that editor for six levels of headings. The editor can show a tree with the headings in a sidebar. Text in the actual file can be folded under its headings.

That sounds exactly like what EditPad Pro's system of file navigation schemes is designed for. So I created a file navigation scheme that builds an outline based on the number of dots at the start of each line, with no limit to the nesting level. To use this file navigation scheme, select Options, Configure File Types in EditPad's menu. Select the file type you want to outline in the list. To outline .txt files, choose Text Document. On the Syntax & Navigation tab, click the Download button under the drop-down list with file navigation schemes. Find the "outline using leading dots" scheme in the list and click the Install button. Then click Close. Installed schemes are not automatically put to use. To use it, select "outline using leading dots" in the file type configuration screen after closing the download screen. Turn on the "add automatic folding points from the file navigation scheme" option and click OK.

Now, whenever you start a line with one or more dots, that line becomes a foldable heading. If you click the square with the minus symbol in it, all text up to the next heading at the same level is hidden. Temporarily hiding parts of the file you're not working with makes it easier to keep an overview of the file's structure. To work the other way around, select Fold All in the Fold menu. Then you can expand the headings you want to edit.

To get the tree view in a sidebar, simply open the File Navigator via the View menu. Click on a heading in the File Navigator to scroll the file to make it visible. Shift+Click on a heading to select the heading plus all the text up to the next heading at the same level.

Updated: EditPad Lite and Pro in Danish

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:00:00 +0700

Thanks to the hard work of Jørgen Larsen, the latest versions of EditPad Lite and Pro are now available in the Danish language. If you have previously purchased EditPad Pro 6, you can download the Danish version (or any other language version) with the user ID you already have. If you're using EditPad Pro 4 or 5, you can upgrade to version 6 at a discounted price.

As a small company, we do not have the resources to translate our software into many languages. We therefore rely on volunteers to make the translations for us. If you would like to translate EditPad into your language, please send a note to the EditPad technical support address.

Updated: EditPad Pro 6.6.1

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 18:00:00 +0700

EditPad Pro version 6.6.1 is now available for download.

EditPad Pro 6.6.1 fixes a few bugs that we missed in version 6.6.0 released last week. Keyboard shortcuts for macros were broken in 6.6.0. Three older bugs were also fixed. Importing a macro that contained search-and-replace commands failed if the search panel had not yet been used. Incremental search in hexadecimal mode failed with an access violation error if the search match could not be found and no incremental searches had been previously run in text mode. Block|Move Lines did not work correctly when wrapped lines occurred before or after the lines being moved.

Since none of these features are available in EditPad Lite, there's no new version of EditPad Lite. The latest is EditPad Lite 6.6.0. Both EditPad Lite 6.6.0 and EditPad Pro 6.6.1 are available in nine languages.

If you already purchased EditPad Pro 6.x.x, you can download this minor upgrade for free.
If you have EditPad Pro 4 or 5, you can upgrade to version 6 at a special price.
Buy EditPad Pro now.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

Updated: EditPad Lite and Pro 6.6.0

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 18:00:00 +0700

EditPad Lite and Pro version 6.6.0 are now available for download.

Version 6.6.0 brings improved compatibility with Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The most obvious change is that the open and save dialog boxes now use the new Vista-style dialogs. Running EditPad as administrator is now more reliable. EditPad no longer reuses existing instances when running as administrator. Instances with administrator rights show (as administrator) in the caption bar. Running EditPad as administrator is the only way that you can use EditPad to modify files in protected folders such as c:\Program Files. If you don't run EditPad as administrator, EditPad opens files in protected folders in read only mode. If you try to save them anyway you'll get "access denied" errors when trying to save the file.

On Windows 7, EditPad disables is icon next to the system clock by default, because Windows 7 hides all such icons by default. If you want to use the icon, first enable it in Options, Preferences, System in EditPad. Then click on the leftward pointing triangle next to icons near the system clock. In the popup screen that appears, click the Customize link. Select "show icon and notifications" for EditPad's icon. If you also use AceText, do the same for AceText's icon.

We have been receiving reports from some of our customers that EditPad takes a very long time (half a minute) to close, when it should close almost instantly. Some have blamed Windows 7, but we have received reports from people using XP and Vista as well. The problem doesn't occur on any of our test systems, so we're not sure what the exact cause is. With the help of some of our customers we have been able to determine that the problem cause EditPad's registry writes to become very slow. The workaround is to turn on the option to keep the registry clean in Opions, Preferences, System in EditPad. If you are upgrading from a previous version of EditPad, you'll need to turn on this option yourself if you're affected by this problem. If you are installing EditPad for the first time, the option is turned on by default starting with version 6.6.0. When the option is on, EditPad uses an .ini file that you can access via the (...) button next to this option.

FTP URLs without a username now use the existing connection to the FTP server instead of prompting for the username. Renaming a file on an FTP server now shows a warning if doing so causes another file to be overwritten.

Tools that you have configured to redirect standard output to EditPad now run minimized. This way there's no empty console window blocking your view of the tool's output in EditPad. At the same time there is still a taskbar button that indicates the tool is running and that allows you to access the tool in case it doesn't respond to standard I/O as you expected. Previously, some tools didn't run correctly when redirecting standard output while not redirecting standard input. EditPad now always redirects standard input when you tell it to redirect standard output. If you tell EditPad to send "nothing" to standard input, EditPad sends nothing but an EOF marker, indicating there's no input.

Due to a bug, EditPad needlessly checked at regular intervals whether the current file still exists on disk, without actually doing anything with that information. This resulted in bad performance when opening files via slow network connections. Now, EditPad only checks if the current file was modified when switching between files and when switching back from another application to EditPad if you have turned on that option in Options, Preferences, Files.

Several other minor bugs were fixed as well. You can find a complete list in the version history on EditPad's web site.

If you already purchased EditPad Pro 6.x.x, you can download this minor upgrade for free.
If you have EditPad Pro 4 or 5, you can upgrade to version 6 at a special price.
Buy EditPad Pro now.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

Updated: DeployMaster 3.3.0

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:00:00 +0700

DeployMaster 3.3.0 is now available for download. This release brings improved compatibility with Windows 7.

Windows 7 includes a new "feature" called the Program Compatibility Assistant (PCA), which attempts to determine if an application needs to be run with certain compatibility options enabled that make Windows 7 behave more like Vista or XP. If an application has "install" or "setup" in its name, the PCA treats it as an installation program and may display a "this program might not have installed correctly" window after the application closes. Occasionally, this screen appears after a setup program created with DeployMaster 3.2.0 or prior or its uninstaller completes its task, even though DeployMaster 2.8.1 and later were already fully compatible with Windows 7. As of DeployMaster 3.3.0, both the setup program and the uninstaller include a manifest that states they are compatible with Windows 7. This effectively disables the PCA and its false warning. To disable the PCA in your own setup programs, all you need to do is to upgrade to DeployMaster 3.3.0 and rebuild your setup program. There are no settings that you need to change.

The way DeployMaster saves its language files has been improved. A bug that caused DeployMaster to not always save changes you made on the Language tab has been fixed. The language files are now stored in the application data folder under your Windows user profile. On Windows Vista and 7 the folder is c:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\JGsoft\DeployMaster and on Windows NT, 2000, and XP the folder is c:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Application Data\JGsoft\DeployMaster. Windows 95, 98, and ME don't have user profiles, so language files are saved into c:\Windows\Application Data\JGsoft\DeployMaster. The reason for this change is that Windows Vista and Windows 7 do not allow you to modify files in c:\Program Files (where DeployMaster used to save its language files) unless you run the application with elevated rights. When upgrading from a previous version to DeployMaster 3.3.0, the installer automatically moves over all your language files to the new location. You won't notice the files have moved unless you go look for them (e.g. to edit them with a text editor).

A bug related to 3rd party setups was fixed. DeployMaster 3.2.0 added the ability to automatically skip 3rd party setups if no download link is specified and the 3rd party setup is not embedded in the setup.exe and not placed in the same folder as your setup.exe. If the last 3rd party setup was one to be skipped, Proceed and Abort buttons would remain visible for the remainder of the installation process, causing an error if the user clicked them. DeployMaster 3.3.0 properly removes the buttons when they are no longer needed.

If you have already purchased DeployMaster, you can download this free update for free.
Buy DeployMaster now.
Complete Version History.

Windows 7

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0700

Microsoft has released Windows 7 to the general public last week, so it's time to make the Just Great Software products compatible with Windows 7. Beyond testing them, all we really had to do is update our web pages to announce support for Windows 7. While the new (at the time) security features in Windows Vista broke a lot of applications that worked fine on XP, Windows 7 doesn't seem to break any applications that were updated to work correctly under Vista. At least this is true for the latest versions of AceText, DeployMaster, EditPad Pro, HelpScribble, PowerGREP, RegexBuddy, and RegexMagic. So we won't be releasing any new versions to add Windows 7 support. If you have the latest version, you're good to go. All our products are compatible with all editions (32-bit and 64-bit) of Windows 7.

Updated: RegexBuddy 3.4.1

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0700

RegexBuddy 3.4.1 is now available for download.

RegexBuddy 3.4.0 showed gray or black squares instead of the toolbar and menu icons on Windows 98, ME, and 2000. This made the toolbar buttons difficult to identify, even though they still worked and still showed their popup hints.

RegexBuddy's emulation of the limitations imposed by PCRE, Perl, and Python on lookbehind is now more accurate. Only the JGsoft and .NET flavors allow all regex features to be used inside lookbehind. Java allows alternation and finite repetition ({n,m} quantifiers). PCRE allows alternation of fixed-length strings only. Python and Perl allow alternation of fixed-length strings that must all have the same length. All other flavors supported by RegexBuddy do not support alternation at all.

Atomic groups as the first token inside a needless non-capturing group lost their "atomic" property when testing your regex on the Test panel, causing RegexBuddy to find matches when it shouldn't. POSIX equivalence classes for characters other than plain A to Z such as [[=à=]] are now indicated correctly on the Create panel and highlighted correctly in the regular expression. Since RegexBuddy is not a POSIX system, such equivalence classes only match the character itself on the Test tab when you select a flavor that supports them (Tcl, POSIX, and GNU flavors).

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 3, you can download this free update for free.
If you own RegexBuddy 2, you can upgrade to version 3 at a special price.
Buy RegexBuddy now.
Complete version history.

Updated: AceText 2.1.7

Fri, 9 Oct 2009 18:00:00 +0700

AceText 2.1.7 is now available for download. This version brings a number of minor fixes and improvements.

AceText's ClipHistory has been improved to more reliably capture text copied by applications that violate Microsoft's rules for the Windows clipboard by opening and closing the clipboard multiple times for a single copy operation. Microsoft's own Excel and Adobe Reader are such applications. Adobe reader would sometimes show an "internal error" message when copying text to the clipboard. This no longer happens with AceText 2.1.7. AceText will also no longer lose its ClipHistory when you protect it with a password and run and shut down AceText without unlocking the ClipHistory. The Save command in the Collection menu can now save a copy of the ClipHistory and Recycle Bin. To change the locations where AceText automatically saves the ClipHistory and Recycle Bin, you still need to go into the Preferences.

Pressing Enter when the Search box has keyboard focus now finds the next search match, as pressing F3 does. Searching using the search box on the AceText Tower no longer focuses the AceText Editor. This makes it possible to use Incremental Search on the AceText Tower, and makes sure no errors occur if the AceText Editor isn't visible.

Word wrapping now allows text to be wrapped after ideographs, even when there are no spaces between the ideographs. This improves editing of text in Far East languages, such as Chinese.

When explorer.exe crashes or is killed via the Task Manager and then restarted, AceText's icon next to the system clock did not reappear until AceText was restarted. Now, AceText will automatically recreate its icon when explorer.exe is restarted and the Windows taskbar is recreated.

If you have already purchased AceText, you can download this free update for free.
Buy AceText now.
Complete Version History.

Updated: PowerGREP 3.5.5

Sun, 6 Sep 2009 18:00:00 +0700

PowerGREP 3.5.5 is now available for download.

This release fixes one bug that was present in PowerGREP 3.5.3 and 3.5.4. It caused PowerGREP to lock up when loading the undo history if the most recent item in the undo history listed a very large number of files. This could happen when starting PowerGREP, or after executing any action that modifies a large number of files.

If you have already purchased PowerGREP, you can download this free update for free.
Upgrade from PowerGREP 2.x to 3.x.
Buy PowerGREP now.
Complete Version History.

Updated: HelpScribble 7.7.7

Thu, 3 Sep 2009 18:00:00 +0700

HelpScribble 7.7.7 is now available for download.

The only change in this release is that HelpScribble's HelpContext property editor now supports Delphi 2010 and C++Builder 2010. HelpScribble's installer will automatically install it if it detects that you have Delphi 2010 or C++Builder 2010 installed.

There are no changes to the help system in Delphi 2010 and C++Builder 2010 compared with the 2006, 2007, and 2009 versions of Delphi and C++Builder. Even the move to Unicode in Delphi 2009 has no impact. If you're migrating from older versions, follow the Delphi and C++Builder instructions on HelpScribble's web site.

If you don't use Delphi or C++Builder, you can continue using HelpScribble 7.7.6.

If you have already purchased helpscribble, you can download this update for free.
Buy helpscribble now.
Complete version history.

Updated: JGCSCSE 3.1.4

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:00:00 +0700

If you own EditPad Pro 6, PowerGREP 3, RegexBuddy 3, or RegexMagic, you can now download version 3.1.4 of the JGsoft Custom Syntax Coloring Scheme Editor. With this tool you can adapt the syntax coloring in these applications, and even create new schemes for previously unsupported programming languages and file formats.

When using EditPad Pro 6.5.0, if you click the Edit button in Options, Configure File Types, Syntax & Navigation to edit a syntax coloring scheme that is supplied with EditPad Pro, the scheme editor will now save that file type into your user profile folder instead of into the folder where EditPad Pro is installed. The reason is that on Windows Vista and Windows 7, applications cannot normally save files into c:\Program Files. If a scheme with the same file name exists in the user profile folder and in the application folder, the scheme in the user profile takes precedence. Portable installations of EditPad Pro do not use the user profile folder. They save all schemes into the same folder as EditPadPro.exe on your removable device.

Updated: JGFNSE 1.1.4

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:00:00 +0700

If you own EditPad Pro 6, you can now download version 1.1.4 of the JGsoft File Navigation Scheme Editor. This is the tool that you can use to create your own file navigation schemes. You can select them in Options, Configure File Types, Syntax & Navigation. A file navigation scheme is needed to bring the File Navigator in the View menu to life.

When using EditPad Pro 6.5.0, if you Edit button in Options, Configure File Types, Syntax & Navigation to edit a file navigation scheme that is supplied with EditPad Pro, the scheme editor will now save that file type into your user profile folder instead of into the folder where EditPad Pro is installed. The reason is that on Windows Vista and Windows 7, applications cannot normally save files into c:\Program Files. If a scheme with the same file name exists in the user profile folder and in the application folder, the scheme in the user profile takes precedence. Portable installations of EditPad Pro do not use the user profile folder. They save all schemes into the same folder as EditPadPro.exe on your removable device.

New: Regular Expressions Cookbook

Wed, 27 May 2009 18:00:00 +0700

Regular Expressions Cookbook, written by myself and Steven Levithan, is now shipping. The book covers the regular the regular expression flavors .NET, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PCRE, Python, and Ruby, and the programming languages C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and VB.NET. After a quick introduction, the book starts with a detailed regular expression tutorial which equally covers all 7 regex flavors. That chapter is followed by a detailed guide how to implement regular expressions in your source code, again covering the 8 programming languages equally. These chapters too are presented in cookbook format. You can easily pick out the task you want to accomplish when creating a regular expression of your own, and when you want to do something with a regex in your source code. While there's some repetition, particularly in the programming guide, because of our goal of equal coverage, the benefit is that you can easily skip the parts on programming languages you're not interested in, in true cookbook style.

The remaining chapters, over half of the book, present real-world problems, and how to solve them with regular expressions. These problems range from very simple problems and everyday regex tasks, to some complex problems that stretch the limits of what you can do with regular expressions, but show how a regex-based solution is often much quicker than doing the same in procedural code, particularly if you only need to do the job once. All the real-world problems also have solutions for all regex flavors. A few solutions add procedural code to make up for missing regex features, such as JavaScript lacking lookbehind. The book does not cover regex flavors with limited features such as the venerable POSIX standard. We didn't want to put those flavors on the cover and then disappoint readers by saying "can't be done with this limited flavor" for half of the recipes in the book.

If you use regular expressions with the latest versions of PowerGREP, EditPad Pro or AceText, you can use pretty much any of the regular expressions presented in the book. These products use a custom regex flavor that is a fusion of the features found in the flavors covered in Regular Expression Cookbook. RegexBuddy 3 emulates all the flavors in the book. Older versions of these products are based on PCRE 4, without Unicode support.

Regular Expression Cookbook targets people with regular expression skills ranging from zero to upper intermediate, who want to learn about regular expressions for the first time, or sharpen their skills to become experts. Except for the chapter on programming languages, most of the recipes in the book don't require programming skills to implement the solutions in EditPad Pro, PowerGREP, or any other text editor or search tool that uses one of the book's regular expression flavors. The programming chapter assumes you're familiar with all the basic features and syntax of your programming language, but it doesn't assume you've ever used regular expressions in your source code.

Order Regular Expressions Cookbook from Amazon.com. Free shipping to the USA.

Order Regular Expressions Cookbook from Amazon.co.uk. Free shipping to the UK.

Order Regular Expressions Cookbook from Amazon.fr. Free shipping to France and Belgium.

Order Regular Expressions Cookbook from Amazon.de. Free shipping to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Luxembourg.

More Generous Upgrade Policy

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:00:00 +0700

Previously, the upgrade policy for Just Great Software products was free minor upgrades for the version that you purchased (without a limit in time), and free major upgrades up to 3 months after your purchase. The 3-month period coincided with our 3-month money-back guarantee.

Now, the upgrade policy is still free minor upgrades for the version that you purchased (still without a time limit), but free major upgrades for up to 12 months after your purchase, instead of only 3 months. The 3-month money-back guarantee remains unchanged.

This change in policy is retroactive. If we were to release a major upgrade tomorrow 23 April 2009, anybody who purchased the product on or after 23 April 2008 would get the major upgrade for free.

What is also unchanged is that if you get a major upgrade for free, you also get all free minor updates that follow the major upgrade, just like people who purchase the major upgrade or buy the product for the first time do. And if we release a major upgrade less than 12 months after you buy a major upgrade, you also get the next major upgrade free, as people who buy the product for the first time do.

All in all, this makes the Just Great Software upgrade and money-back policies some of the most generous in the software industry, short of giving it all away for free.