AceText 4.3.0 is now available for download.
On the Appearance page in the Preferences you will find two additional text layout settings. One is the default text layout for clip labels and the other next to it is for the opposite text direction. One of these text layouts is used for the Label field on the AceText Editor. The Options|Right-to-Left menu item swaps between them. The one of these two that is a left-to-right text layout is also used for the URL field on the AceText editor. This text layout also determines the font for all controls on the AceText editor that are not edit controls.
This is the main purpose of the two new text layout configurations: all the controls on the AceText editor now have a configurable font. To change the font or its size, click the Edit button next to the text layout configuration drop-down list. All controls on the AceText editor automatically shift their size and position to accommodate the size of the font.
The list of text layout configurations has two new predefined text layout configurations “left-to-right label” and “right-to-left label“. The two new text layout settings default to these. If you upgrade from a previous version of AceText then these default to the font you’ve selected for the clip tree on the Appearance Preferences. So you may immediately notice a difference in appearance. If you want to restore the previous appearance then edit the new text layout configurations to select the Tahoma font with a size of 8 points. If you want everything on the Editor panel to use the same font then you can select the same text layout configurations for the clip contents, binary clips, and the clip labels.
For clips of type “plain text“, “rectangular text block“, and “before and after text“, you can select a syntax coloring scheme to automatically add colors or highlighting to your clips. AceText includes syntax coloring schemes for a variety of programming languages and other file formats. The schemes for C#, Delphi, JavaScript, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Transact-SQL have been updated significantly. There are new schemes for F#, GitHub Flavored Markdown, GoogleSQL, TypeScript, and YAML. There’s also a new scheme labeled “spreadsheet formula“. You can use this to highlight formulas copied from Excel or OpenOffice Calc or a similar application.
The ClipHistory has Auto Append and Auto Split features that allow you to automatically merge or split clips captured by the ClipHistory. These features affect both automatically captured clips and clips captured when you press the “hotkey to capture the text on the clipboard into the ClipHistory” which you can configure on the Hotkeys page in the Preferences. This hasn’t changed. But to better indicate this, the Auto Append and Auto Split features continue to indicate their status as being enabled when the hotkey is enabled even if Automatic Capture is disabled. Activating Auto Append or Auto Split no longer automatically activates Automatic Capture when the hotkey is enabled. If the hotkey is disabled in the Preferences, then turning off Automatic Capture automatically turns off Auto Append and Auto Split while turning on either of those two automatically turns on Automatic Capture. Previously, this happened regardless of whether the hotkey was enabled or disabled.
AcePure is an AceText feature that removes all clipboard formats except plain text from the clipboard. If you have copied a list of files in Windows Explorer then previously AcePure would leave the clipboard empty because Windows Explorer does not put a plain text representation of the list of files on the clipboard. Now, when AcePure sees a list of files without any plain text on the clipboard, it converts that file list to plain text in the same way that the ClipHistory captures the list of files as plain text.
AceText lets you type letters with various diacritics by first typing a punctuation character while holding down Ctrl and then typing the letter (without holding down Ctrl). Ctrl+@ T now types the ™ symbol and Ctrl+& supports additional ligatures. Ctrl+/ or Ctrl+: followed by a digit type additional vulgar fractions. Ctrl+. is a new combination that lets you type various letters with dot above as well as dotless ı and ȷ.
PowerGREP 5.3.6 is now available for download.
Files in proprietary file formats need to be converted to plain text before PowerGREP can search through them. PowerGREP has built-in converters for many such file formats. You can enable or disable each converter separately by editing the file format configuration on the File Selector panel.
A significant bug was fixed in PowerGREP’s converter for WordPerfect Documents. Previously, this converter could get stuck in an infinite loop on certain WPD files. This would cause the action to stall if the number of WPD files included in the action that triggered this bug exceeded the minimum number of execution threads configured in the preferences. You would then have to abort the action by clicking the Abort button on the Action or Results toolbar. To avoid the issue in the first place you had to select “always exclude files of this type” for the WordPerfect file format in the file format configuration.
Now PowerGREP correctly converts these WPD files. If you previously encountered this error then you may now get an error saying that another PowerGREP instance is stuck on those files. To avoid this, go into the Cache section in the Preferences and clear the cache to make PowerGREP forget it previously ran into trouble with those files.
After previewing or executing a search-and-replace, you can make and revert replacements on the Results panel. Changes you make on the Results panel are not saved immediately. This improves performance by not having to rewrite the file for each and every replacement you make or revert. Instead, each file is only saved when you make or revert a replacement in another file. The last file is saved when you clear the Results panel, run a new action, or close PowerGREP. Starting with version 5.3.6, PowerGREP will also save the last file you made or reverted replacements in when you tell PowerGREP to open a file in EditPad or in any other external editor or application (even if the file you’re opening is a different one). This ensures that the other application will see all your changes.
If you make or revert replacements on the Results panel in the same file that you have already open on the Editor panel then the changes are actually made to the contents of the Editor panel that are modified. Then it’s up to you to save the file using the Save button on the Editor panel or via the Editor panel’s prompt to save unsaved changes before closing the file.
If you make or revert replacements on the Results panel and then open the file on the Editor panel then the Results panel will first save the file and then the Editor panel will load the file. Previously this caused the Editor panel to prompt that the file was modified on disk and ask you to reload it. This prompt was false. The file was modified on disk by the Results panel before the Editor panel loaded the file. This release eliminates the false prompt.
The Results|Automatic Update menu item toggles whether PowerGREP updates the contents of the Results panel on a regular basis while an action is being executed. You can turn this off for better performance or to avoid matches scrolling by faster than you can check them. When the menu item is off you can click the Update button on the Results toolbar while an action is running to show the latest progress.
Previously the Results|Automatic Update menu item advertised Shift+F5 as its keyboard shortcut. But this shortcut actually did something else. When a multi-line editor control has keyboard focus, Shift+F5 cycles through the most recent editing positions. So if you make a change somewhere in a file on the Editor panel and then move the cursor somewhere else, then you can press Shift+F5 to go back to where you made the change. This is the same what the Go|Back in Editing Positions command does in EditPad, which also has Shift+F5 as its keyboard shortcut.
Now the Results|Automatic Update menu item has Ctrl+F5 as its keyboard shortcut. This combination was previously unused in PowerGREP. It now correctly toggles Automatic Update. The Shift+F5 key continues to work as it did before.
EditPad Lite 8.5.1 is now available for download.
First-time installations of EditPad Lite now include predefined file types for TypeScript and F# source code with syntax coloring. If you upgrade from a previous 8.x.x release then the TypeScript and F# syntax coloring schemes will be installed but the file types will not be added automatically. You can download a configuration file with the new file types or the one for the dark theme and import it via Options|Configure File Types to add the F#, Markdown, TypeScript, and YAML file types that were added or modified in EditPad Lite 8.5.0 and 8.5.1.
The JavaScript and C# syntax coloring schemes have been updated to support the latest features of these programming languages.
EditPad lets you type letters with various diacritics by first typing a punctuation character while holding down Ctrl and then typing the letter (without holding down Ctrl). Ctrl+@ T now types the ™ symbol and Ctrl+& supports additional ligatures. Ctrl+/ or Ctrl+: followed by a digit type additional vulgar fractions. Ctrl+. is a new combination that lets you type various letters with dot above as well as dotless ı and ȷ. Most of these new characters are only available if your file’s encoding is Unicode.
EditPad Pro 8.5.1 is now available for download.
Version 8.5.0 updated the connectivity that underpins EditPad Pro’s FTP panel. This was necessary to support additional SFTP encryption algorithms and protocols to enable connections with SFTP servers that only allow a limited set of modern algorithms and protocols. Unfortunately, the updated library had a bug in its TLS encryption handler which made it impossible to download files from FTP servers using TLS encryption. So we have now reverted to an earlier version of the FTP library which does not have the TLS bug but still includes the additional SFTP encryption support needed to connect with a private key to a server running a default configuration of Ubuntu 22.04. We also fixed an older bug that prevented the Connect to FTP dialog from showing previously imported private keys when using the dialog for the first time since starting EditPad Pro.
First-time installations of EditPad Pro now include predefined file types for TypeScript and F# source code with syntax coloring. The TypeScript file type also has a file navigation scheme. If you upgrade from a previous 8.x.x release then the syntax coloring and file navigation schemes will be installed but the file types will not be added automatically. You can download a configuration file with the new file types or the one for the dark theme and import it via Options|Configure File Types to add the F#, Markdown, TypeScript, and YAML file types that were added or modified in EditPad Pro 8.5.0 and 8.5.1.
The C# syntax coloring scheme and the JavaScript syntax coloring and file navigation schemes have been updated to support the latest features of these programming languages.
EditPad lets you type letters with various diacritics by first typing a punctuation character while holding down Ctrl and then typing the letter (without holding down Ctrl). Ctrl+@ T now types the ™ symbol and Ctrl+& supports additional ligatures. Ctrl+/ or Ctrl+: followed by a digit type additional vulgar fractions. Ctrl+. is a new combination that lets you type various letters with dot above as well as dotless ı and ȷ. Most of these new characters are only available if your file’s encoding is Unicode.
EditPad Pro 8.5.0 is now available for download.
EditPad Pro now includes a syntax coloring and file navigation schemes for GitHub Flavored Markdown. These support GitHub’s extensions to the syntax, including fenced code blocks and strikeout. GitHub’s flavor allows most syntax to be nested inside other syntax, such as headings inside list items. The existing Markdown schemes are now more clearly labeled as supporting the original syntax from Daring Fireball. They have been adjusted to more accurately reflect limitations and quirks of the original Markdown.pl, such as not allowing headers inside list items. First-time installations use the GitHub schemes by default for the Markdown file type. Upgrading from a previous 8.x.x release will install the new schemes but will not change your Markdown file type. If you want to use the new GFM schemes then you can select them in the file type configuration.
The Delphi, Java, R, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Transact-SQL syntax coloring and file navigation schemes have all been updated to (better) support the latest versions of these languages. There are also new regular and “fast” syntax coloring schemes for GoogleSQL which is the syntax used by BigQuery. You can select these for the SQL file type in Options|Configure File Types|Colors and Syntax.
First-time installations of EditPad now include a predefined file type for YAML data files with syntax coloring. If you upgrade from a previous 8.x.x release then the YAML syntax coloring scheme will be installed but the YAML file type will not be added automatically. You can add your own file type and select the YAML syntax coloring scheme in Options|Configure File Types.
The spell checker now only checks words that consist entirely of characters that occur in the dictionary. If a word contains a character that is not in the dictionary then it’s assumed to be in a different language.
When downloading syntax coloring scheme or spell check dictionaries EditPad now uses HTTP instead of HTTPS to connect to our server if you are running Windows 8.1 or earlier. This prevents connection issues if your Windows installation wasn’t updated to support TLS 1.2. Our server no longer supports TLS 1.1 or prior.
EditPad Pro now supports additional SFTP encryption algorithms and protocols. This allows EditPad’s FTP panel to establish connections with SFTP servers that only allow a limited set of modern algorithms and protocols. Connecting with a private key to a server running a default configuration of Ubuntu 22.04 now works, for example, while it previously said “authentication failed publickey“.
If your file is predominantly written in a right-to-left language such as Arabic or Hebrew then you can switch EditPad to a right-to-left text layout. This aligns the text to the right hand side and moves the vertical scrollbar to the left hand side. This left hand vertical scrollbar is now positioned and displayed correctly when using the dark theme that was added in EditPad 8.
EditPad Lite 8.5.0 is now available for download.
EditPad Lite now includes a syntax coloring scheme for GitHub Flavored Markdown. It supports GitHub’s extensions to the syntax, including fenced code blocks and strikeout. It allows most syntax to be nested inside other syntax, such as headings inside list items. The existing Markdown syntax coloring scheme is now more clearly labeled as supporting the original syntax from Daring Fireball. It has been adjusted to more accurately reflect limitations and quirks of the original Markdown.pl, such as not allowing headers inside list items. First-time installations use the GitHub scheme by default for the Markdown file type. Upgrading from a previous 8.x.x release will install the new syntax coloring scheme but will not change your Markdown file type. If you want to use the new GFM scheme then you can select it in Options|Configure File Types|Colors and Syntax.
The Delphi, Java, R, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Transact-SQL syntax coloring schemes have all been updated to (better) support the latest versions of these languages. There is also a new syntax coloring scheme for GoogleSQL which is the syntax used by BigQuery. You can select this for the SQL file type in Options|Configure File Types|Colors and Syntax.
First-time installations of EditPad now include a predefined file type for YAML data files with syntax coloring. If you upgrade from a previous 8.x.x release then the YAML syntax coloring scheme will be installed but the YAML file type will not be added automatically. You can add your own file type and select the YAML syntax coloring scheme in Options|Configure File Types.
The spell checker now only checks words that consist entirely of characters that occur in the dictionary. If a word contains a character that is not in the dictionary then it’s assumed to be in a different language.
When downloading syntax coloring scheme or spell check dictionaries EditPad now uses HTTP instead of HTTPS to connect to our server if you are running Windows 8.1 or earlier. This prevents connection issues if your Windows installation wasn’t updated to support TLS 1.2. Our server no longer supports TLS 1.1 or prior.
EditPad Lite 8 added the ability to apply syntax coloring just like EditPad Pro could already do in previous versions, including the ability to highlight matching brackets. EditPad Lite color palettes, which you can configure in Options|Configure File Types|Colors and Syntax, allowed you to configure the colors used by the syntax coloring schemes. But the colors for bracket matching were missing. The built-in palettes also didn’t apply their colors for bracket matching. This has been fixed. When customizing palettes you can find the 3 bracket matching colors near the bottom of the list of individual colors, above the regex colors.
If your file is predominantly written in a right-to-left language such as Arabic or Hebrew then you can switch EditPad to a right-to-left text layout. This aligns the text to the right hand side and moves the vertical scrollbar to the left hand side. This left hand vertical scrollbar is now positioned and displayed correctly when using the dark theme that was added in EditPad 8.
DeployMaster 7.3.0 is now available for download.
This release adds support for Windows 11 version 23H2 otherwise known as the 2023 Update. You can now select this version on the Platform page if you want to restrict your installer to specific Windows 11 versions.
DeployMaster 7.1.0 added the option to specify the full path to signtool.exe on the Media page to have DeployMaster run signtool.exe to sign the installer. We added this because DeployMaster’s built-in code signing (which calls the code singing functions in the Windows API) is unable to find Extended Validation (EV) code signing certificates stored on certain USB tokens such as the SafeNet USB token. But DeployMaster’s built-in code signing does work with EV certificates stored on certain other USB tokens such as the Sectigo eToken. We’ve updated the documentation to explain that to sign with an EV certificate stored on a USB token, you can first try to specify only the subject name of the certificate on the Media page. If that works it’ll save you the hassle of installing the Windows SDK just to get signtool.exe.
Version 7.3.0 now allows you to use a code signing application other than signtool.exe. To do so, specify a full command line (full path to the .exe plus command line parameters) to run that code signing application instead of the path to signtool.exe. You have to use the placeholder %FILE% on the command line to represent the file to be signed. DeployMaster checks whether you added %FILE% to the command line to distinguish between a full path to signtool.exe and a full command line to another code signing application. If you omit %FILE% then DeployMaster assumes the path points to signtool.exe and adds the command line parameters that signtool.exe expects. When you add %FILE% to the command line DeployMaster does not add any command line parameters. It only replaced the %FILE% placeholder plus six optional placeholders. %DESCRIPTION% represents the name and version number of the application specified on the Project page. %URL% is the application URL specified on the Project page. %SUBJECT% is the subject name of the code signing certificate specified on the Media page. %PFX% is the path to the PFX file specified on the Media page. %TSURL% is the time stamping service URL selected on the Media page. %PWD% tells DeployMaster to ask for a password. It will do so the first time it needs to run a specific command line to sign a file. DeployMaster will remember the password until it needs to sign with a different command line.
The list of time stamping service URLs on the Media page has been updated and expanded. The services higher in the list were faster and/or more reliable in our tests that those lower in the list. Your experience may vary depending on your location and the time of day you build your installers. DeployMaster remembers the time stamping URL that you select as a global preference. If you select a new URL then that is used for all future builds until you change it again.
HelpScribble 8.3.2 is now available for download.
HelpScribble’s HelpContext property editor now supports Delphi 12 Athens and C++Builder 12 Athens. HelpScribble’s installer will automatically install it if it detects that you have Delphi 12 Athens or C++Builder 12 Athens installed. HelpScribble’s HelpContext property editor can assign HelpContext properties to controls in VCL applications and Multi-Device applications.
HelpScribble’s documentation has been updated to explain that Windows 11 fully supports HTML Help and does not support WinHelp at all, just like Windows 10. HelpScribble itself required no changes to support Windows 11.
A bug has been fixed that caused HelpScribble to show a “list index out of bounds (0)” error when closing HelpScribble or switching to another application. It only happened after using the spell checker and you used one of but not both of the Learn and Learn Replace buttons in the spell checker since first downloading the spell check dictionary. These buttons add words to the user word list. The Learn button adds words to be considered as spelled correctly. The Learn Replace button adds words to be automatically replaced with other words. You can edit the list of learned words and replacements via the Word List button in the spell checker.
Back in version 8.0.0 we gave HelpScribble a fresh coat of paint by way of new toolbar icons. Since then the buttons with arrows in the Browse Sequence Editor had their arrows pointing the wrong way. We’ve flipped them back in the right direction now.
RegexMagic 2.13.1 is now available for download.
RegexMagic now officially supports .NET 7, Boost 1.83, Java 21, Python 3.12, and Ruby 3.2. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.
RegexBuddy 4.14.1 is now available for download.
RegexBuddy now officially supports .NET 7.0, Boost 1.83, Java 21, Python 3.12, and Ruby 3.2. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.
RegexBuddy now correctly emulates that the JGsoft flavor which is used in our own products PowerGREP, EditPad, and AceText is the only one that correctly matches a Unicode grapheme with \X when it is used inside a lookbehind. Java always fails to match \X when it’s inside a lookbehind, possibly causing a negative lookbehind to succeed. All other flavors either don’t support \X at all or don’t support lookbehind at all or treat \X as an error inside lookbehind because they don’t support tokens that match a variable number of characters inside lookbehind.
The behavior of \G differs between regex flavors. With some flavors it matches at the position where the previous match ended or at the start of the string if there is no previous match. With other flavors it matches at the position where the current match attempt began. The difference is important when the previous match was zero-length. Some flavors advance one character through the string after a zero-length match was found before starting the next match attempt. Then the end of the previous match and the start of the current attempt aren’t at the same position. RegexBuddy 4 has always correctly emulated this when highlighting matches and listing matches on the Test panel. But the Debug panel sometimes showed different results. This has been fixed. The Debug panel now correctly shows how \G behaves in your selected regex flavor regardless of whether you’re debugging a single match attempt or all match attempts. If you debug a match that is highlighted on the Test panel then the match attempt on the Debug panel takes into account what the preceding match was on the Test panel.
RegexBuddy now correctly handles conditionals inside lookbehind for the flavors that allow this. The direction of the conditional (lookahead or lookbehind) does not change when it’s inside another lookbehind.