RegexMagic 2.13.2 is now available for download.
RegexMagic now officially supports .NET 8, Boost 1.85, Java 22, and Ruby 3.3. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.
The pattern for VAT numbers has been updated to support new Belgian VAT numbers that start with the digit 1.
You can use the Insert key on the keyboard to toggle between insert and overwrite mode in the edit controls on RegexMagic’s main window. In overwrite mode, these edit controls now use the overwrite cursor specified in the text layout configuration in the Preferences. By default this is a block cursor that covers the bottom half of the character that will be overwritten.
RegexBuddy 4.14.2 is now available for download.
RegexBuddy now officially supports .NET 8.0, Boost 1.85, and Java 22, and Ruby 3.3. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.
Perl 5.22 and later support the /n flag to turn unnamed groups into non-capturing groups. RegexBuddy emulates this by adding a regex option that you can switch between “numbered capture” (equivalent to omitting /n in Perl) and “named capture only” (equivalent to specifying /n in Perl). But when you copied the regular expression as a Perl operator via the Copy button on the main toolbar or generated a Perl source code snippet on the Use panel, RegexBuddy never added the /n flag. This has been fixed. RegexBuddy now adds /n to the Perl operator it generates when you select “named capture only“.
RegexBuddy now also sets the “named capture only” regex option when you select Paste Regex from Perl Operator under the Paste button on the main toolbar and the Perl operator on the clipboard includes the /n flag. It will also change the application to Perl 5.22 if you had selected Perl 5.20 or prior as the application prior to pasting a Perl operator that includes the /n flag.
You can use the Insert key on the keyboard to toggle between insert and overwrite mode in the edit controls on RegexBuddy’s main window. In overwrite mode, these edit controls now use the overwrite cursor specified in the text layout configuration in the Preferences. By default this is a block cursor that covers the bottom half of the character that will be overwritten.
On the Create panel you can export the regex tree into various formats, including HTML. The HTML export now properly preserves whitespace and line breaks in the regular expression.
On the Test panel, the List All menu has an option to show non-participating groups. This makes test results that show the matches of capturing groups show n/a for a group that did not participate in the regex match instead of showing nothing for such groups. This allows you to distinguish between groups that didn’t participate and groups that did participate but captured a zero-length match, for which the test results always show nothing as the match. Toggling this menu item now immediately updates the test results if Update Automatically is active or clears the test results if not. This way you won’t end up looking at test results that don’t correspond with the state of this option.
RegexBuddy includes a library with many sample regular expressions. The samples for matching VAT numbers for Belgium, Ireland, and Northern Ireland have been updated to match the latest VAT number formats.
EditPad Pro 8.5.2 is now available for download.
EditPad’s windows always have standard title bars and window borders. So Windows itself determines their color and appearance. You have some control over this in the personalization settings in Windows. If you are running Windows 11 then EditPad now requests dark title bars and window borders when you use EditPad’s dark theme. This provides a more harmonious look. Windows 10 and prior do not support this.
The Copy as HTML and Copy as RTF menu items in the Edit menu are toggles that tell EditPad to make any text you copy available on the clipboard in HTML and/or RTF format. This allows you to paste text with syntax coloring in web editors or word processors or any application that can paste HTML or RTF. Any method of copying text, including pressing Ctrl+C, will copy HTML and/or RTF as long as these menu items remain active. You need to use the Copy as HTML and Copy as RTF menu items again to turn them off. If both are off then EditPad copies only plain text.
If you turn off “copy active line when nothing is selected” on the Editor page in the Preferences then all the Copy items in the Edit menu are grayed out when nothing is selected. Previously, the Copy as HTML and Copy as RTF items would also fail to show their checkbox when nothing is selected, giving the impression that these options were off. Now, these items show their checkbox even when they are grayed out to make it clear that next time you select some text and copy it then it will be copied as HTML and/or RTF.
In EditPad 8.5.0 and 8.5.1 the toolbar buttons and menu items for the Undo and Redo commands worked on the active editor control, which could be the Search or Replace box. This was contrary to the documentation and the actual behavior in all previous releases EditPad Pro. The previous behavior has been restored. The Undo and Redo menu items and toolbar buttons always work on the file you’re editing.
The reason for the change in EditPad 8.5.0 was an incorrect bug fix. In EditPad 8.0.0 to 8.4.2 the keyboard shortcuts for the Undo and Redo commands (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y by default) worked on the file you’re editing when the small Search or Replace box had keyboard focus. The keyboard shortcuts are supposed to work on the editor that has keyboard focus. This works with the multi-line Search and Replace boxes in all versions of EditPad Pro. It worked with the single-line Search and Replace boxes in EditPad 7 but was broken in EditPad 8.0.0. This was (improperly) fixed in 8.5.0. Now a proper fix has been applied so that the keyboard shortcuts for Undo and Redo work on the editor with keyboard focus, while the toolbar buttons and menu items work in the file you’re editing.
The Search|Multi-Line Search Panel command lets you switch between using EditPad’s full search panel with multi-line Search and Replace boxes and using just the Search toolbar with small Search and Replace boxes that only allow a single-line search term. When you switch from the multi-line panel to the single-line toolbar, EditPad 8 retains only the first line of the search term. But in EditPad 8.4.2 and prior it actually continued to use the previous multi-line search term until you made a change to the search term. EditPad 8.5.0 fixed this so that the single-line search term being displayed in the small Search box is the actual search term being used.
But it is possible to disable the Search toolbar by right-clicking any toolbar and selecting Search. When you do this, closing the multi-line search panel does not switch to the single-line toolbar. So then there is no reason to reduce the search term to just a single line. EditPad 8.5.0 and 8.5.1 did this. EditPad 8.5.2 restores the previous behavior of keeping the multi-line search term when closing the search panel entirely. You can continue to search using the previously entered search term using the items in the Search menu or their keyboard shortcuts.
EditPad Lite 8.5.2 is now available for download.
EditPad’s windows always have standard title bars and window borders. So Windows itself determines their color and appearance. You have some control over this in the personalization settings in Windows. If you are running Windows 11 then EditPad now requests dark title bars and window borders when you use EditPad’s dark theme. This provides a more harmonious look. Windows 10 and prior do not support this.
In EditPad 8.5.0 and 8.5.1 the toolbar buttons and menu items for the Undo and Redo commands worked on the active editor control, which could be the Search or Replace box. This was contrary to the documentation and the actual behavior in all previous releases EditPad Lite. The previous behavior has been restored. The Undo and Redo menu items and toolbar buttons always work on the file you’re editing.
The reason for the change in EditPad 8.5.0 was an incorrect bug fix. In EditPad 8.0.0 to 8.4.2 the keyboard shortcuts for the Undo and Redo commands (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y by default) worked on the file you’re editing when the small Search or Replace box had keyboard focus. The keyboard shortcuts are supposed to work on the editor that has keyboard focus. This works with the multi-line Search and Replace boxes in all versions of EditPad Lite. It worked with the single-line Search and Replace boxes in EditPad 7 but was broken in EditPad 8.0.0. This was (improperly) fixed in 8.5.0. Now a proper fix has been applied so that the keyboard shortcuts for Undo and Redo work on the editor with keyboard focus, while the toolbar buttons and menu items work in the file you’re editing.
The Search|Multi-Line Search Panel command lets you switch between using EditPad’s full search panel with multi-line Search and Replace boxes and using just the Search toolbar with small Search and Replace boxes that only allow a single-line search term. When you switch from the multi-line panel to the single-line toolbar, EditPad 8 retains only the first line of the search term. But in EditPad 8.4.2 and prior it actually continued to use the previous multi-line search term until you made a change to the search term. EditPad 8.5.0 fixed this so that the single-line search term being displayed in the small Search box is the actual search term being used.
But it is possible to disable the Search toolbar by right-clicking any toolbar and selecting Search. When you do this, closing the multi-line search panel does not switch to the single-line toolbar. So then there is no reason to reduce the search term to just a single line. EditPad 8.5.0 and 8.5.1 did this. EditPad 8.5.2 restores the previous behavior of keeping the multi-line search term when closing the search panel entirely. You can continue to search using the previously entered search term using the items in the Search menu or their keyboard shortcuts.
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.
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.