Just Great Software Newsfeed

RegexBuddy 5.0.6

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 5.0.6 is now available for download.

This release fixes a few more issues that we missed in earlier 5.0.x releases. Opening a file on the Test panel no longer triggers a harmless access violation error if there is no (valid) regular expression to test with.

When RegexBuddy 5 runs for the first time, it looks for settings and history saved by RegexBuddy 4. If found, it asks if you want to import them. This failed when “custom configuration” was selected on the Use Colors page in the Preferences in RegexBuddy 4. This has been fixed. The custom color configuration for the Use panel now appears as a palette named “RegexBuddy 4” in RegexBuddy 5 when you click the Use button on the Editors page in the Preferences dialog.

When importing RegexBuddy 4 preferences failed, regardless of the reason, RegexBuddy 5 got stuck on the dialog box asking whether you want to import preferences. This too has been fixed. Should importing fail for any reason, RegexBuddy 5 will now import what it can and then start, without asking again and without showing any error messages.

The drop-down menus of the Copy and Paste buttons on the main toolbar allow you to convert your regex from and to the string styles used by the various programming languages supported by RegexBuddy. This enables you to easily copy and paste regexes from and to your source code. RegexBuddy now knows that PowerShell strings requires smart quotes or typographic quotes in the contents of strings to be doubled just like straight quotes. RegexBuddy now does this when formatting your regex or replacement text as a PowerShell string. It also un-doubles smart quotes when pasting a regex or replacement from a PowerShell string.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 5 then you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 5 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Pro 8.6.1

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Pro 8.6.1 is now available for download.

This release fixes one serious but rare issue that was introduced in EditPad 8.5.0. Opening a small file that was less than 512 KB in size of a file type for which you had word wrap enabled and that had at least one line long enough to require wrapping and that had a total number of lines after wrapping that was an exact multiple of 256 would cause EditPad to crash when you started to edit the file. Because the crash only happens in these very specific circumstances, the issue slipped through our quality control. It has now been fixed. If you are using EditPad Lite 8.5.x or 8.6.0 then upgrading to 8.6.1 is strongly recommended.

The Block|Move Lines & Columns submenu has commands for moving the line under the cursor or the selected lines up or down by one line or by any number of lines. These commands now better handle situations in which the final line in the file does not have a line break and that line is either being moved or the selected lines are moved to or beyond the end of the file. These commands are designed to preserve the presence or absence of a terminating line break.

On the Save Files you can configure EditPad to save working copies of files with unsaved changes every few minutes. These working copies are left behind if EditPad or your entire PC crashes, allowing you to recover unsaved files. If you open a file for which a working copy exists then EditPad automatically opens the working copy along with the file. If for some reason the working copy was already open but the original file was not then this would result in two tabs for the working copy. This has been fixed. EditPad now checks whether the working copy is already open to prevent the duplicate tab, just as it prevents duplicate tabs for all other files. When you close a working copy without deleting it, the working copy is no longer added to the File|Open submenu with recently closed files. The original file is already added to that menu when you close it and reopening that also reopens the working copy until you delete it.

EditPad 8.5.1 included a new predefined file type for F# with a syntax coloring scheme. This scheme has been improved to handle the fact that F# allows strings to be nested inside comments, in addition to allowing comments to be nested inside comments. In the F# code snippet (* " *) " eof is an unterminated comment that contains a string and a word rather than a comment that contains a double quote followed by an unterminated string that contains a word. The scheme still highlights strings nested inside comments as comments. It now applies bracket matching to the nested string to make it more obvious why the *) doesn’t end the comment.

If you have already purchased EditPad Pro 8, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to EditPad Pro 8 from any previous version.
Buy EditPad Pro now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Lite 8.6.1

Wed, 8 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Lite 8.6.1 is now available for download.

EditPad Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

AceText 4.4.1

Mon, 2 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0400

AceText 4.4.1 is now available for download.

A recent update for Windows 11 for ARM PCs caused previous AceText 4.x.x releases to crash with an access violation on startup. This bug has been fixed. Installing AceText 4.4.1 on top of your previous AceText 4.x.x install will allow AceText to run again. All your settings and collections will be preserved.

If you want your current AceText 4.x.x version to work again then right-click AceText’s desktop shortcut and select Properties. On the Compatibility tab, click the Change emulation settings button. Check the box to “hide newer emulated CPU features (x64 apps only)“. OK the dialogs. You should now be able to start your older version of AceText.

Windows 11 for ARM PCs is a special version of Windows 11 that runs on computers with ARM-based CPUs such as Snapdragon instead of the Intel and AMD CPUs that Windows normally runs on. It is capable of running software such as AceText that is compiled for Intel and AMD CPUs. This works very well. Generally, you don’t need to worry whether an application is compiled for ARM or not.

Apple Silicon is also ARM-based. If you want to run AceText on a Mac with Apple Silicon then first install virtual machine software such as Parallels, UTM, or VMware Fusion on your Mac. Parallels requires a subscription, while UTM (if downloaded from the UTM website) and VMware Fusion are free. Then create a Windows 11 virtual machine. Parallels can automate the whole process. For UTM and VMware, first download the Windows 11 for ARM-based PCs ISO from Microsoft. Then create a new virtual machine in UTM or VMware, selecting the ISO as the installation disc. You can use the ISO to install Windows in the VM without a product key, but you will need a Windows license to activate Windows inside the virtual machine. With Windows 11 running inside the VM, you can download and install AceText like you would on an actual PC.

If you have already purchased AceText 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to AceText 4 from any previous version.
Buy AceText now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 5.0.5

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 5.0.5 is now available for download.

This release fixes several more issues that we missed in earlier 5.0.x releases. The Print button on the Create panel once again works correctly. The List All Matches of Group menu items under the List All button on the Test panel once again list the matches of the group that you actually selected.

We’ve also started testing RegexBuddy 5 on Wine, which allows Linux users to run Windows applications. While we do not officially support Wine, we try to make our products work on Wine as well as we can. Previous 5.0.x releases crashed on Wine at startup if fonts like Segoe UI that are standard on Windows 7 and later are not available. RegexBuddy 5.0.5 starts correctly if either Segoe UI or Tahoma is available. If not then you get an error message saying you need one of those fonts instead of the access violation error. A basic install of Ubuntu and the bundled version of Wine provides a version of Tahoma that allows RegexBuddy 5 to run correctly. Help|Support and Feedback now indicates the version of Wine that is running RegexBuddy in addition to the Windows version that Wine is pretending to be. We have tested RegexBuddy 5.0.5 with Wine 9.0 on Ubuntu 24.4.

This release also brings improvements to RegexBuddy’s ability to accurately emulate the syntax and behavior of all the applications it supports.

Perl does not allow lookbehind that may need to look back more than 255 characters. PCRE does not allow this if the lookbehind contains a quantifier that has different upper and lower bounds. RegexBuddy now imposes the same limitations if you select Perl or PCRE or an application based on PCRE as your target application.

RegexBuddy is now aware that the Unicode property White_Space has a second short alias space in addition to the already supported short alias WSpace. Unless the regex flavor supports \p{Space} as a POSIX class, RegexBuddy now interprets \p{space} as the Unicode property. This allows RegexBuddy to correctly emulate that all flavors that support \p{WSpace} also support \p{space} instead of saying that they don’t support the POSIX classes with the \p syntax.

If you convert a regex that has both start/end-of-string and start/end-of-line anchors to a flavor such as JavaScript that only supports the anchors ^ and $ but that does provide a mode modifier to toggle these between matching or not matching at line breaks then the converted regex now uses these mode modifiers so that all anchors can be converted correctly.

Some regex flavors support \K to keep the text matched by the regex so far out of the overall regex match. It allows you to write before\Kmatch instead of using the lookbehind (?<=before)match when the before part uses features that the regex flavor does not allow inside lookbehind.

If \K itself is used inside lookaround then complications can arise. Recent versions of Perl and PCRE2 sidestep these issues by making \K a syntax error inside lookaround. RegexBuddy now does so too for these versions of Perl and PCRE2 and other flavors based on these versions of PCRE2.

Inside a lookbehind it could cause the regex match to begin at a position before the start of the match attempt. Inside lookahead it could cause the regex match to begin at a position after the end of the match, resulting in a backwards match. This can cause errors when retrieving the match, which it does in PHP, for example. If the regex consists entirely of a lookahead containing \K then that results in a non-zero-length match that does not advance through the string. This can result in an infinite loop, which it does in Perl and R. RegexBuddy’s own regex engine implements \K in the same way as Perl, including the infinite loops and errors. But emulating these problems, while accurate, is not useful. RegexBuddy still allows \K inside lookaround it if the application you’re targeting allows it. But to prevent infinite loops and crashes, if the regex ends up finding a match that begins before the start of the match attempt or beings after the end of the match then RegexBuddy aborts the matching process with an error explaining why it did so and why your regex may cause problems in your actual application.

RegexBuddy is now also aware of whether the application supports or ignores \K if it is encountered during a subroutine call or recursion of the entire regex.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 5 then you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 5 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 5.0.4

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 5.0.4 is now available for download.

This release fixes one bug that we missed in RegexBuddy 5.0.3. This version was likely to crash upon startup with a “runtime error 217” on Windows 11 if “Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support” is enabled in the regional settings in Windows. What this setting really does is to force UTF-8 on non-Unicode applications. In principle, this setting does not impact applications such as RegexBuddy that are Unicode applications. But, RegexBuddy uses the system code page when it emulates non-Unicode regex engines. RegexBuddy 5.0.3 erroneously tried to use UTF-8 for non-Unicode regex engines when “Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support” was enabled in Windows 11. RegexBuddy 5.0.4 falls back on the thread locale to determine which Windows encoding to use for non-Unicode regex engines just like RegexBuddy 5.0.2 and prior did. That means code page 1252 when a Western European language such as English is selected in the regional settings in Windows.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 5 then you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 5 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 5.0.3

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 5.0.3 is now available for download.

RegexBuddy 5’s regex engine fully supports all Unicode characters and all versions of Unicode so that it can use the same version of Unicode as the application or programming language you’re targeting. RegexBuddy 5 also knows and emulates that this application may have flaws or limitations in its Unicode support. Regex engines such as Boost, .NET, JavaScript without /u, and Python 2.x work with 16-bit characters. This creates issues with “astral characters” (code points U+10000 and beyond) that are represented by surrogate pairs in UTF-16. Now, the Create panel explains how this affects quantifiers on literal astral characters. For example, it will say that ?+ “repeats only the low surrogate U+DE0E instead of the whole surrogate pair U+D83D U+DE0E that represents the astral character “?” (U+1F60E)“. With these engines the regex ^?+$ cannot match ?? but would match the invalid sequence U+D83D U+DE0E U+DE0E U+DE0E. In Helpful mode, RegexBuddy now treats such quantifiers as an error. The workaround is to use ^(?:?)+$ so the surrogate pair is repeated as a whole. RegexBuddy automatically makes this change for you if you double-click the regex tree node that says only the low surrogate is repeated.

This release also fixes a bunch of bugs. All of these were introduced in RegexBuddy 5.0.0. Selecting Paste Regex from XML or Paste Replacement from XML under the Paste button on the main toolbar now once again correctly handles numeric character references in the XML. The hide files and folders settings on the GREP page in the Preferences are once again applied correctly. The Test panel once again highlights visualized line breaks when they are part of regex matches. Several fixes were made to complex script text layouts that are needed to support right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew and syllabic scripts such as the various Indic scripts. A regex such as (?x) (?i)a| (?i)b in which the first alternative starts with free whitespace and a local mode modifier no longer cause RegexBuddy to become unresponsive.

When you select PostgreSQL as your application in RegexBuddy 5, it gives you “default“, “extended“, and “basic” flavor choices. The “advanced” flavor choice was removed. PostgreSQL uses the “advanced” flavor by default and does not provide a way to explicitly set it. Selecting “advanced” causes errors on the Use panel in RegexBuddy. You can now select “default” to use the advanced flavor and get correct code snippets. RegexBuddy 4 did not offer a flavor choice for PostgreSQL. It only supported the “advanced” flavor.

One older bug was also fixed. The regex (?(DEFINE)([a-z]+))(?1)(?![0-9]) has a subroutine call to a group that is inside a DEFINE group. The subroutine ends with a quantifier. On the Test panel this regex failed to backtrack this trailing quantifier when the part after the subroutine call failed to match and the chosen regex flavor allows backtracking into subroutine calls. As a result, the Test panel did not highlight the match ab that this regex should find in the string abc4.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 5 then you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 5 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

DeployMaster 7.6.0

Wed, 5 Nov 2025 07:00:00 -0400

DeployMaster 7.6.0 is now available for download.

This release adds support for Windows 11 version 25H2 otherwise known as the 2025 Update. You can now select this version on the Platform page if you want to restrict your installer to specific Windows 11 versions.

DeployMaster has always had the option to completely cover the screen background on the Appearance page. This gives your installer the gradient-filled background that was typical for installation software on the Windows platform in the 1990s and 2000s. The feature is off by default as it has gone out of fashion, but it remains available if that is still your style.

But covering the whole screen with a background image is still common for installers for games and other entertainment software. DeployMaster now supports this. After ticking the checkbox to completely cover the screen background, click the new Change Wallpaper button to select your background image. After selecting the wallpaper image you have 4 options to determine how it should fill the screen: fill, fit, stretch, or tile. These work the same as the options that Windows itself gives for its desktop wallpaper. Note that your installer’s wallpaper is only displayed by the installer. The user’s desktop wallpaper is never changed.

The Change Logo Image replaces the Change Bitmap button. It still allows you to select an image file to be displayed in the top left corner of your installer’s background. We renamed it because you can now use an image in PNG, JPEG, GIF, or TIFF format when building installers targeting Windows XP or later. You can still use a bitmap in BMP format when targeting any version of Windows. But the modern image formats are more efficient and PNG and GIF allow for proper transparency. Your installer overlays the logo on the gradient background or wallpaper image. The wallpaper image can use these same file formats. If the wallpaper image has transparent areas or if you choose the “fit” method that leaves horizontal or vertical bars then the color gradient will appear in the areas not covered by the wallpaper. You can change the top and bottom colors to both be black (or any other color) to remove the gradient (or use a solid color).

Deep in the regional settings in Windows 11 there is a checkbox that Microsoft labeled “Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support“. If this is checked on the user’s installation of Windows then your installer would crash at startup on the user’s system if you built it with Windows 98 and/or Windows ME checked on the Platform page and at the same time added one or more file associations on the File Types page. Rebuilding your installer with DeployMaster 7.6.0 fixes this issue.

What the option “Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support” really does is to change the system code page for non-Unicode applications to UTF-8. This can break applications that assume the system code page to be one of the single-byte or double-byte Windows code pages. When you select Windows 98 or Windows ME on the Platform page, DeployMaster generates an installer that is a non-Unicode application because Windows 98 and ME do not support Unicode applications. When such an installer is run on a later version of Windows, including Windows 11, it runs as a non-Unicode application.

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

RegexBuddy 5.0.2

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 5.0.2 is now available for download.

Just a month ago we released RegexBuddy 5.0.0 which is a major upgrade from previous versions. The release has gone very smoothly. RegexBuddy 5.0.2 is a free minor update for those who have already purchased the upgrade, purchased a new RegexBuddy 5 license, or received the upgrade for free per our policy of one year of free major upgrades. All future RegexBuddy 5.x.x releases will also be free for all RegexBuddy 5 users, just like all RegexBuddy 4.x.x releases were free for all RegexBuddy 4 users.

RegexBuddy 5.0.1 (this version only) sometimes showed an access violation error upon startup; RegexBuddy worked correctly after dismissing the AV. This has been fixed.

RegexBuddy 5.0.0 replaced the Insert Token|Mode Modifier submenu with a dialog box. The dialog box supports all options that can be toggled via mode modifiers by any of the regular expression flavors supported by RegexBuddy, rather than just the main ones supported by most flavors. Unsupported options are grayed out. The dialog box is also aware of which options are already active, so it only adds the option letters that actually change any options to the mode modifier, instead of blindly setting the option chosen in the submenu. But this prevented from adding a mode modifier to the start of the regex with all the options to make it independent of any external regex options that you may not have control over in your actual application. To support this the dialog box now has an additional option “set all options at the start of the regex” to make this possible. This choice is available for regex flavors that support global mode modifiers that can turn options on and off. Some flavors, like Python, only allow a global mode modifier to turn options on. Both choices to set options at the start of the regex are now disabled for JavaScript because JavaScript only supports mode modifier groups.

Opening a sample file on the Test panel is now more efficient when the line break style of the file you’re loading is different from the line break style selected in the Test toolbar. The line break style is now converted before loading the file onto the Test panel instead of afterwards. If the Test panel is in hexadecimal mode (which you can toggle via the right-click menu) and you open a file in an encoding that does not use a constant number of bytes per character then the Test panel now automatically switches back to text mode. You can right-click the Test panel and select Encoding to convert the file to a different encoding or to interpret it with a different encoding. Scroll bars on the Test panel are now updated correctly when word wrap is off.

Windows 7 SP1 the oldest version of Windows that RegexBuddy 5 will run on. Versions 5.0.0 and 5.0.1 complained about a missing DLL api-ms-win-crt-string-l1-1-0.dll on Windows 7 systems on which no updates other than SP1 were installed. RegexBuddy 5.0.2 no longer depends on this DLL.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 5 then you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 5 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Lite 8.6.0

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Lite 8.6.0 is now available for download.

The RegexBuddy icon on the Search toolbar, which opens RegexBuddy to edit the regular expression you’re using in EditPad, now shows the new icon for RegexBuddy 5. The actual integration is fully compatible with RegexBuddy 4 and 5.

On the Save Files you can configure EditPad to save working copies of files with unsaved changes every few minutes. The default setting is to save them every 5 minutes. Previously the actual interval was one minute longer than you specified. So by default working copies were actually saved every 6 minutes. Now actual interval is the one you specify. The minimum interval you can specify is still 1 minute. This now saves working copies every minute instead of every 2 minutes. If a file is empty in EditPad when the interval elapses, EditPad now deletes the working copy instead of saving an empty working copy.

The benefit of working copies is that they are left behind when your system crashes. When you open the file again after restarting, EditPad opens both the original file and the working copy. You can then decide whether you want to keep the unsaved changes preserved by the working copy or if you want to keep the original file. But an empty working copy doesn’t really prevent any data loss. Not saving empty working copies can reduce the number of working copies you have to deal with if your system crashes while you had a lot of files open in EditPad.

EditPad now includes two syntax coloring schemes for Visual Basic. The “Visual Basic.NET” scheme is unchanged. It works great with source code for Visual Basic 2013 and prior, including the legacy Visual Basic 6. The “Visual Basic 14 and later” scheme is new. The only difference between the two schemes is that the new scheme allows literal line breaks in strings. Visual Basic 14 changed the language specification to allow strings to span across lines. A side effect is that while you’re editing your code, any unterminated string affects the highlighting until the end of the file rather than just the remainder of the line it’s on. The same happens in Visual Studio 2015 and later. If you use literal line breaks in strings in your Visual Basic code then you can make EditPad do the same by selecting the “Visual Basic 14 and later” scheme for the “Visual Basic source code” file type on the Colors and Syntax page in the file type configuration. The original “Visual Basic.NET” scheme is still the default.

EditPad Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

EditPad Pro 8.6.0

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Pro 8.6.0 is now available for download.

The Editor page in the file type configuration has two options to automatically trim trailing whitespace. The “trim trailing whitespace” option trims trailing whitespace from a line you’ve edited when you move the cursor away from that line. So this happens while you’re editing your file and only affects lines that you’ve edited. The “trim all trailing whitespace upon save” trims trailing whitespace from all lines in the file, regardless of whether that whitespace was already there when you opened the file, when you save the file to disk. New in this release is that this option now also trims all trailing whitespace when you upload a file via FTP and when you save a file that was opened via FTP.

If you have already purchased EditPad Pro 8, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to EditPad Pro 8 from any previous version.
Buy EditPad Pro now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

PowerGREP 5.4.0

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0400

PowerGREP 5.4.0 is now available for download.

The File Selector panel has an option to use regular expressions to define file masks instead of traditional wildcards. The hide files and folders configuration dialog has a similar option to use regular expressions to hide files and folders. All the predefined configurations for hiding files and folders use this option. These regular expressions are now case insensitive. This is more appropriate for the Windows file system which is also case insensitive. If you had actions that relied on these regular expressions being case sensitive then you can use the mode modifier (?-i) at the start of a regex to make it case sensitive.

The RegexBuddy icon on the Action toolbar, which opens RegexBuddy to edit the regex you have on the Action panel in PowerGREP, now shows the new icon for RegexBuddy 5. The actual integration is fully compatible with RegexBuddy 4 and 5.

The converter for Excel spreadsheets have been updated to fix some bugs that caused the converter to crash on a small number of .xlsx files. By default, PowerGREP remembers if it could not convert certain files and won’t try to convert those files again unless they have been changed on disk. This way PowerGREP doesn’t waste time trying to repeatedly convert files that it can’t, whether that is due to a bug in PowerGREP’s converter or a corrupt file. If you previously got errors when trying to search through Excel spreadsheets then after installing 5.4.0, go into the Cache section in the Preferences and clear the cache to make PowerGREP forget that it could not convert certain files in the past.

The list of steps in the Sequence panel allows you to change the width of its columns by dragging the gap between the column headers with the mouse. These widths are now preserved when you close and restart PowerGREP.

If you have already purchased PowerGREP 5, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to PowerGREP 5 from any previous version.
Buy PowerGREP now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

AceText 4.4.0

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0400

AceText 4.4.0 is now available for download.

This release adds new settings to the Preferences dialog. There is a whole new Syntax page. There you can associate each of the syntax coloring schemes that is available to AceText with one or more file masks. The Clip|Create Clip from Text File command uses these file masks to automatically assign a syntax coloring scheme to each clip it adds based on the name of the file that the clip’s text was loaded from. If you drag-and-drop a file from another application onto the clip tree in AceText then the file’s contents are added as a new clip. Such a clip too is now automatically assigned a syntax coloring scheme based on the file’s name. You should review the file masks. AceText comes with several sets of syntax coloring schemes that use the same file masks by default. For example, there are separate schemes for various SQL dialects. Even Visual Basic now has two schemes. The new one allows line breaks in strings like Visual Basic 14 (Visual Studio 2015) and later do. You should pick a preferred scheme and remove the file masks from the other to stop it from being assigned automatically. You can still manually assign schemes without file masks to clips and you can still select those schemes as defaults on the Applications and Windows pages in the Preferences.

The buttons for downloading syntax coloring schemes and spell check dictionaries and the buttons for customizing palettes were moved from the Appearance page to the new Syntax page in the Preferences.

If you use both AceText 4 and RegexBuddy 5 and you’ve customized the Regex and/or Use palettes in RegexBuddy 5 then you can now import those as Search and Editor palettes into AceText 4.4.0 after exporting them in RegexBuddy 5. RegexBuddy 5 can also import Search and Editor palettes exported by any AceText 4.x.x release as Regex and Use palettes. AceText is now also correctly imports palettes that it exported itself. Previously, trying to import a palette would add a palette with all colors set to “default“. The RegexBuddy icon on the Search toolbar in AceText now shows the new icon for RegexBuddy 5. The actual integration is fully compatible with RegexBuddy 4 and 5.

The Files page adds a third option to the ClipHistory group. In addition to completely purging the ClipHistory when closing AceText and to save the full ClipHistory, you can now choose to purge clips from the ClipHistory after a certain number of days. Previously, this option existed only for the Recycle Bin. When you select this option, AceText still saves the full ClipHistory at regular intervals and when you shut it down. But when you restart AceText it purges clips that have become stale. The option to purge clips after a certain number of days is independent of the limit for the maximum number of clips in the ClipHistory that you can set on the Operation page. That limit is enforced each time AceText automatically captures something into the ClipHistory. That limit cannot be disabled, but you can set it as high as 100,000 clips since AceText 4.3.1.

On the Hotkeys page you can enable the AcePure hotkey. When you press this hotkey, AceText removes all formats except plain text from the Windows clipboard. This hotkey now performs that task if you press it while AceText has keyboard focus instead of showing a message saying that it is intended to be used when another application has keyboard focus.

Pressing Ctrl+A when the list of clips or clip tree has keyboard focus selects all the clips in the collection. New is that Ctrl+A now deselects all clips if you press it when all clips are already selected. This makes it much easier to undo an accidental Ctrl+A.

If you have already purchased AceText 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to AceText 4 from any previous version.
Buy AceText now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 5.0.1

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 5.0.1 is now available for download.

At the end of last month we released RegexBuddy 5.0.0 which is a major upgrade from previous versions. The release has gone very smoothly. RegexBuddy 5.0.1 is the first free minor update for those who have already purchased the upgrade, purchased a new RegexBuddy 5 license, or received the upgrade for free per our policy of one year of free major upgrades. All future RegexBuddy 5.x.x releases will also be free for all RegexBuddy 5 users, just like all RegexBuddy 4.x.x releases were free for all RegexBuddy 4 users.

RegexBuddy 5.0.0 added support for JavaScript’s /u flag. You can set this by selecting “Unicode flavor” instead of “default flavor” on the toolbar with regex options. This flag adds support for Unicode properties to JavaScript’s regex flavor. RegexBuddy 5.0.1 improves this support in a few ways. If you use Unicode properties in a JavaScript regex with “default flavor” selected, error messages on the Create and Test panels now say that JavaScript only supports Unicode properties when you select its Unicode flavor instead of saying that JavaScript does not support Unicode properties. If you enable tips on the Create panel then these error messages get an extra tip that explains that you need to select “Unicode flavor” instead of “default flavor“. Double-clicking the tip automatically changes this option. When you convert a regex to JavaScript, the conversion now automatically uses JavaScript’s Unicode flavor if the original regex flavor supports astral characters or if the regex uses any Unicode properties. This ensures your JavaScript regex also supports astral characters and that Unicode properties are converted without any errors (if the specific properties used by the regex are supported by JavaScript).

If you had a regex that set used start-of-string or end-of-string anchors like \A or \z and you set the option “^ and $ match at line breaks” (or the application forces this option) then converting the regex to a flavor such as JavaScript that supports the option “^ and $ match at line breaks” but not the anchors \A or \z resulted in a confusing error saying the target flavor does not have a mode modifier to turn off multi-line matching. Now the conversion is smarter about this. If the original regex does not use ^ or $ then the conversion turns off “^ and $ match at line breaks” so that \A and \z can be converted into ^ and $. If the original regex uses both sets of anchors then you now get a clearer error saying that the target application does not have anchors that can match only the start or end of the string when ^ and $ match at the start and end of each line.

RegexBuddy’s debugger is now clearly shows the matching steps of reversed matches. This happens with lookbehind with the .NET, JavaScript, and JGsoft regex engines because they process the part of the regex inside lookbehind from right to left. It also happens with lookahead with the .NET engine when using .NET’s right to left mode. This mode is newly supported in RegexBuddy 5. In RegexBuddy 4, the debugger didn’t retain the part of the text matched by lookbehind from one step to the next when the lookbehind needed multiple steps. RegexBuddy 5 does show the full matching process of the lookbehind. But version 5.0.0 had a bug that carried over the lookbehind’s match after the engine exits the lookbehind. Now, RegexBuddy 5.0.1 shows the full matching process of the lookbehind and discards that part of the match when the lookbehnid fails or succeeds, properly reflecting the fact that text matched by the lookbehind does not become part of the final match.

The debugger now properly updates its scroll bars when you scroll it using a mouse wheel or a two-finger gesture on a touchpad.

If you used RegexBuddy’s COM interface to integrate RegexBuddy 4 or prior with your application then this integration works unchanged with RegexBuddy 5. But if you want to support RegexBuddy 5’s expanded set of regular expression options then you’ll need to update your integration. The documentation now links to a set of three sample applications that demonstrate the integration with RegexBuddy 5. They are written in C#, Delphi, and Python.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 5 then you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 5 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 5.0.0

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 5 is a major upgrade from previous versions. Nevertheless, when you start RegexBuddy 5, you’ll feel right at home. The user interface is basically the same as in previous versions. The most obvious changes are cosmetic. The new toolbar icons give RegexBuddy 5 the same fresh look as PowerGREP 5 and EditPad 8. But their main benefit is that they come in 10 different sizes that cover all the scaling increments from 100% to 400% available in the basic display settings in Windows. RegexBuddy can now correctly scale its toolbars on all PC and laptop displays, including small laptops with 4K screens. In the View menu you can now select a dark theme and a black theme. The black theme is the same theme that EditPad 8 uses as its dark theme. It uses pure black for window backgrounds. Its style fits well with Windows 10. The dark theme in RegexBuddy is a new theme that is less contrasty with dark gray backgrounds. Its style fits better with Windows 11. You can select either theme on any version of Windows. Or select the light theme to get the same look as RegexBuddy 4 (but with new toolbar icons).

Speaking of Windows versions, Windows XP and Windows Vista are no longer supported. The installer will check if you have Windows 7 or later and refuse installation if you don’t. If you upgrade to RegexBuddy 5 you will still be able to download RegexBuddy 4 in case you ever need it for a job on a legacy system that still runs Windows XP.

The most significant change in functionality is the significantly expanded list of supported applications. To see the full list of 530 applications (up from 292), select “more applications and languages” in the drop-down list in the top left corner. Maximize the dialog box to get a better overview. The list now gains columns if you make the dialog box wider. Tick your favorite applications to put them directly in the drop-down list. Different versions of the same application are listed and counted separately if there is any difference between their regex support.

Major new regex engines are RE2 and ICU. RE2 is developed by Google and used by Google Sheets and Google BigQuery which RegexBuddy 5 has built-in support for. Select RE2 directly to create regexes for any other application using RE2 or to generate code snippets to use the RE2 C++ classes directly. All versions going back to RE2 2017-05-01 are supported.

ICU stands for International Components for Unicode. It is used in many applications and frameworks to provide comprehensive support for Unicode and also regular expressions. RegexBuddy now supports ICU 55 and later. You can select “ICU C” or “ICU C++” to generate C or C++ code snippets to use the ICU library directly. Select either of these to generate regexes for any other application that is built using ICU. RegexBuddy has built-in support for LibreOffice, MySQL 8, and the R stringi package. For LibreOffice, select your LibreOffice version and RegexBuddy emulate the correct version of ICU. For MySQL and stringi, select “MySQL ICU” or “R stringi” with the ICU version that your MySQL or R installation was built against. Both “MySQL ICU” or “R stringi” provide a function labeled “check regex library version” on the Use panel to generate a code snippet to check which ICU version that should be.

Other newly supported programming languages with support for generating code snippets are F#, Python.NET and IronPython which are all based on the .NET regex flavor. TypeScript is based on JavaScript. wxWidgets uses Tcl’s ARE engine or PCRE2. Other newly supported applications are Google Sheets (JavaScript) and Notepad++ (Boost).

All previously supported applications and languages are now up-to-date with the latest releases. This includes C++Builder 12 Modern which is based on the libc++ instead of the Dinkumware implementation of std::regex. Oracle 18c and 21c are now supported, as are the latest Perl 5.40, PHP 8.3, and R 4.4.1. XML Schema and XPath are now based on the actual implementation in Saxon 10 to 12 rather than following our reading of the W3C recommendations. Saxon has its own ideas about a few things. XPath 2 and XPath 3 are now separate flavors. For JavaScript RegexBuddy 4 emulated only the latest version due to automatic browser updates. Now we’ve added support for Firefox 52 (the last version to support Windows XP or Vista) and Firefox 12 (the last to support Windows 2000 and similar to the original Firefox flavor in RegexBuddy 4.0.0) to provide a sampling of legacy JavaScript implementations. This can be helpful in porting old JavaScript applications to modern browsers. RegexBuddy is still capable of comparing and converting between all the regex flavors that it supports even though the number of combinations keeps increasing dramatically.

To keep things manageable, RegexBuddy 5 does drop support for some older versions. The reason is not so much that these flavors are all about two decades old now, but that we simply ran into to many issues (bugs and odd behavior) with these old flavors that they were getting in the way of properly supporting new flavors and more accurately emulating all flavors. Removed versions include Perl 5.8 to 5.12, PCRE 4.0 to 4.4, the PHP 4.x.x preg functions based on PCRE 4.x, Visual C++ 2008, and Oracle 10g. XRegExp support has been reduced to the latest version for modern browsers and the last version to support MSIE. If you load a library created with RegexBuddy 4.x.x that contains regexes using some of these removed versions then RegexBuddy 5 automatically changes those regexes to the oldest version of the same flavor that it still supports. This will cause those regexes to be interpreted (slightly) differently.

There are also two important changes to the ability to define custom applications in the “more applications and languages” dialog. The radio buttons to indicate support for making replacements and splitting strings were removed. Only the drop-down lists remain. You can select “application cannot search-and-replace” and “application cannot split strings” at the top of the drop-down list. Or you can select a search-and-replace flavor or split flavor that RegexBuddy knows to be compatible with your chosen regex flavor. The ability to select any replacement flavor or split flavor (compatible or not) was removed. This dramatically reduces the number of combinations we need to test and avoids problems with combinations that really don’t work together.

The other change is a new drop-down list labeled “external options flavor”. Most regex engines have options such as /s in Perl or RegexOptions.SingleLine in .NET that are set outside the regular expression. RegexBuddy 4 already knew which options are actually available in each application. It defined that as part of the regular expression flavor. RegexBuddy 5 now puts that information in a new type of “flavor” dedicated to just those external options. This makes it much easier to add proper support applications that are based on an existing regex flavor but don’t expose all of its options. This allowed us to easily add Notepad++ and LibreOffice, for example, using the Boost and ICU regex flavors. We only had to add two new “external” flavors specific to Notepad++ and LibreOffice. It also simplified some implementations. JavaScript and HTML5 are now based on the same JavaScript regex flavor, but with separate “external” flavors to indicate that HTML5 patterns don’t have external options and can’t find partial matches. Similarly, Delphi (TRegEx) and Delphi (TPerlRegEx) are now based on the same Delphi regex flavor as they only differ in which options you can set outside the regex.

RegexBuddy’s emulation of the syntactic and particularly the behavioral differences of all the regex flavors that it supports is now even more detailed and accurate than before. This is all based on very extensive testing of the actual regex libraries. Our test suite has ballooned from some 15,000 regexes for RegexBuddy 4.14 to over 98,000 regexes for RegexBuddy 5.0. In total, RegexBuddy 5 is aware of 1362 different aspects (syntactic and behavioral differences, up from 873) of 418 regular expression flavors (up from 295), and 221 aspects (up from 186) of 85 replacement text flavors (up from 67). If you thought most modern regex flavors were all pretty much the same: think again!

You can find the most important improvements listed as “aspects” in the version history. The majority of them are related to Unicode. RegexBuddy now fully supports all versions of Unicode from Unicode 3.0.0 until the latest 16.0.0, all of which are used by at least one application that RegexBuddy supports. RegexBuddy even knows that some regex flavors have inconsistent Unicode support. For example, .NET 4.8 was mostly based on Unicode 8.0.0, but its case folding tables were still based on Unicode 5.1.0. The list of Unicode blocks in .NET seems forever stuck at Unicode 4.0.1. Because of all these Unicode-related issues, if different versions an application are based on a different version of Unicode then RegexBuddy now treats those as separate regular expression flavors, even if there are no changes to the regex syntax. For example, RegexBuddy 4.14 has a single flavor for “Python 3.11–3.13”. But RegexBuddy 5 lists Python 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13 separately because it knows that these are based on Unicode 14.0.0, 15.0.0, and 15.1.0, respectively. New versions of Unicode do not just add more characters. Then can and often do change certain properties of existing characters as well. If you have a library saved with RegexBuddy 4 and load it into RegexBuddy 5 then regexes that used a flavor that has been separated into multiple flavors will be changed to use the oldest version. So a regex saved for “Python 3.11–3.13” in RegexBuddy 4 will be loaded using the “Python 3.11” flavor in RegexBuddy 5.

RegexBuddy itself now fully supports Unicode characters beyond U+FFFF. These are the Unicode characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plate. RegexBuddy now accurately emulates how each regex flavor deals with such characters. Some major regex engines, such as Boost and .NET, or JavaScript without /u, treat such characters as surrogate pairs. To allow you to properly test this, the Test panel now supports UCS-2 and UTF-16 as separate encodings. Switching between the two does not change the contents of your file. The UCS-2 encoding allows the Test panel to show if your regex matches half a surrogate pair, while the UTF-16 encoding allows supplemental plane characters to be matched properly as individual characters. The Operation page in the Preferences has new options to automatically change the encoding of the test subject to correspond with how your application works, be that 8-bit, surrogate pairs, or full Unicode. In hexadecimal mode, the Test panel now supports UCS-2 and UCS-4, allowing you to easily inspect 2-byte or 4-byte Unicode code points and see their corresponding characters.

The Create panel has gained a new level called “Precise” in addition to “Detailed” and “Brief”. This level explains everything RegexBuddy knows about each regex token. For anything related to Unicode that includes the Unicode version. Previously the “detailed” level did that. Now, the detailed level omits information that doesn’t really teach you how the regex works, such as the specific Unicode version. The “brief” level still keeps things simple, as before. For the regex \d, for example, the brief explanation may be (depending on the flavor) that this matches a digit. The detailed explanation would add whether that is an ASCII digit or a Unicode digit, which is an important distinction. The precise explanation adds the Unicode version, which doesn’t really matter if your application only needs to work with modern languages spoken by millions of people, which were all covered by Unicode 3.0.0 (the oldest version used by any flavor supported by RegexBuddy).

The Create panel can add extra nodes with tips to certain regular expressions. If your regex has a named capturing group, for example, then it can add a tip to unnamed capturing groups that mixing named and numbered groups is not recommended. RegexBuddy 4 added no tips to a brief tree, some tips to a detailed tree in strict mode, and all tips to a detailed tree in helpful mode. RegexBuddy 5 has a separate setting for the tips that you can set to “No tips”, “Key tips”, or “All tips” independent of the tree’s level of detail and the emulation mode. Key tips are tips that point to things that are more likely to be a problem or unintended. The tip about mixing named and numbered groups only appears if you select “All tips”.

Exporting the regex tree to HTML has been significantly improved and you can export the replacement tree as well. Syntax coloring is now preserved. The CSS needed for syntax coloring and the JavaScript needed for highlighting corresponding tokens and explanations can now be put into separate CSS and JS files. You can now export the regex or replacement tree as a PNG image or copy it to the clipboard as a bitmap. This includes the regex tree icons.

On the Convert panel you can now select an encoding or Unicode version to indicate which characters your regex will actually work with. This can reduce the number of warnings you get. For example, if you convert \d between two flavors that support it to match Unicode digits but one flavor uses a newer Unicode version that defines additional digits, then the Convert panel warns about that. You can suppress the warning by selecting an encoding or an older Unicode version that does not include those newer digits. It can also change the result of the conversion. If you set the encoding to “US ASCII”, for example, then \d is always converted into \d if both flavors support it to match a digit. RegexBuddy assumes that any Unicode-issues were ignored when the original regex was created and does the same for its conversion. But if you select one of the Unicode options, and the original flavor matches only ASCII digits with \d and the target flavor matches Unicode digits with \d then RegexBuddy converts the regex into [0-9] instead to preserve the fact that the original regex only matched ASCII digits.

The Convert panel has a new Test button which compares the results of the original regex using the original regex flavor and the converted regex using the conversion flavor on the Test panel. If they find the same matches in your sample text then you get a message saying so. If they find different matches then the differences are highlighted in the test subject.

The Test panel can now highlight zero-length matches by highlighting the space between two characters. Capturing groups inside lookaround that extends beyond the overall regex matches are now highlighted as long as they don’t overlap with the preceding or following match. There is a new option to highlight the first match only for those who want to emulate not setting the “global” flag in their regex engine. When the test subject and test result have the same number of lines, such as after a search-and-replace, scrolling one of them automatically scrolls the other to the same line, making it much easier to compare them.

The test results are shown in an editor control. This makes the results easy to work with, but can cause issues when the results include tabs or line breaks as those are also used to arrange the results in columns. RegexBuddy now substitutes tabs or line breaks representing tabs and line breaks when adding matches or replacements to test results that use tabs and line breaks to arrange the results. Test results listing multiple matches but not in columns now let you specify a custom delimiter. Choose something that does not occur in your matches to properly separate them.

Debugging a regular expression is now a lot more interesting when you have the Debug and Test panels arranged side by side. While the Debug panel has keyboard focus the Test panel shows the same highlighting as the line in the debugger that the cursor is on. Moving the cursor down on the Debug panel lets you see how the match attempt advances on the Test panel.

The GREP panel now has a Fold All button that folds all file headers, hiding all the matches. Unfold All does the opposite. Turning on “invert results” no longer automatically turns on “line-based”. Turning on only “invert results” produces a list of files in which your regex cannot find any matches.

Finally, to return to cosmetic features, many more predefined color palettes and many more palette customization options are now available. There are “Solarized” and “Harmonized” palettes with reduced contrast and monochrome palettes for which the color picker only shows a limited set of colors. For these palettes, the picker shows all the colors used in the selected palette in the order that they are first used so you can easily use exactly the same color for multiple elements. There are also new palettes optimized for the most common types of color blindness.

The regex palettes have additional named colors which make it possible to separately configure the appearance of alternation, anchors, quantifiers, character escapes, lookaround, and capturing groups. Groups no longer need to use all five nesting levels. The default palette has been updated to use several of these new features for more distinct highlighting and is overall a little less saturated. The new Visual Studio palettes rely on the new named colors to mimic how Visual Studio’s code editor highlights regular expressions. New RegexBuddy 4 and RegexBuddy 3 palettes enable RegexBuddy 5 to highlight regexes in the same way previous versions of RegexBuddy did.

You now have more options to customize individual colors. Many different underlining styles are now available, including a wavy underline. Underline can now use a different color than the font. You can now add a strikeout, which can have the same or a different color as the font. Bold and italic now offer an “unchanged” choice that uses the style selected in the text layout configuration; this allows the “off” choice to force bold or italic to be off. The new Copy and Paste buttons make it easy to apply the same settings to the another named color. Selecting “default” as the background, text, or underline color for selected text now leaves that color unchanged when text is selected instead of using the highlighting colors of the Windows theme. This allows syntax coloring to remain visible when text is selected.

RegexMagic 2.13.4

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexMagic 2.13.4 is now available for download.

RegexMagic now officially supports Boost 1.89, Java 24, and Delphi 13. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.

To add a literal regular expression or replacement text to your source code, you typically need to format it as a literal string, which usually requires quotation characters and possibly other characters to be doubled or escaped. RegexMagic knows the rules for literal strings or literal regular expressions for all the programming languages that it supports. It uses them when adding your regex to a source code snippet on the Use panel. It also lets you convert your regex and replacement into a literal string via the Copy button on toolbar on the Regex panel. It has a drop-down menu that list all the available string styles.

For this release we’ve thoroughly retested RegexMagic’s code for converting regular expressions and replacements into source code strings. We fixed an issue with formatting a replacement text that ends with a single quote as a Groovy string. We fixed another issue with formatting a replacement text text that contains backslashes as a Tcl string.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexMagic 2, you can download this update for free.
If you own RegexMagic 1, you can upgrade to version 2 at a special price.
Buy RegexMagic now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 4.14.4

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 4.14.4 is now available for download.

RegexBuddy now officially supports Boost 1.89, Java 24, and Delphi 13. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.

To add a literal regular expression or replacement text to your source code, you typically need to format it as a literal string, which usually requires quotation characters and possibly other characters to be doubled or escaped. RegexBuddy knows the rules for literal strings or literal regular expressions for all the programming languages that it supports. It uses them when adding your regex to a source code snippet on the Use panel. It also lets you convert your regex and replacement to and from a literal string via the Copy and Paste buttons on the top toolbar. These have drop-down menus that list all the available string styles.

For this release we’ve thoroughly retested RegexBuddy’s code for converting regular expressions and replacements to and from source code strings. We’ve found a whole bunch of issues that are now fixed. Most of them were corner case issues. The version history has the complete list. One big omission was that Scala string was not listed under the Copy and Paste buttons. This has now been added. Though Scala can use Java strings, the dedicated Scala string style in RegexBuddy can use triple-quoted Scala strings for regular expressions that contain literal line breaks.

This release also fixes one bug in RegexBuddy’s own regex engine. If a regular expression had a subroutine call to a capturing group that in turn recurses into a parent group or the entire regular expression, then an access violation occurred if the capturing group was entered during the recursion while it was still being evaluated by the subroutine call. This happened with the regexes a((?R)|b)c(?1) and (a((?1)|b)c(?2)) when they needed to match the string abcabcb. Now they do so correctly in RegexBuddy for all flavors that support subroutine calls.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 4 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

HelpScribble 8.3.4

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0400

HelpScribble 8.3.4 is now available for download.

HelpScribble’s HelpContext property editor now supports Delphi 13 Florence and C++Builder 13 Florence. HelpScribble’s installer will automatically install it into both the 32-bit IDE and the 64-bit IDE if it detects that you have Delphi 13 Florence or C++Builder 13 Florence installed. HelpScribble’s HelpContext property editor can assign HelpContext properties to controls in VCL applications and Multi-Device applications.

With the Import Help Project command you can import old WinHelp projects from a pair of HPJ and RTF files. WinHelp requires topic properties such as the context string (topic identifier), titles, and keywords to be stored in footnotes. HelpScribble’s importer had a bug that caused it to ignore footnotes that consist of a single letter. Because of this, topics with single-letter context strings were not imported at all. Topics with single-letter titles or keywords were imported without their title or keyword. Single-letter context strings are extremely rare. The WinHelp decompiler assigns an 8-character context string to each topic. So if you imported a decompiled HLP file then you did not lose any topics due to this bug.

If you have already purchased HelpScribble, you can download this update for free.
Buy HelpScribble now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

PowerGREP 5.3.8

Wed, 2 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0400

PowerGREP 5.3.8 is now available for download.

In the File Selector and Results menus there are submenus for copying, moving, and deleting files and folders that are selected or that were involved in the most recently executed action. They show a dialog box that lets you specify where you want to copy or move the files to or that asks to confirm that you really want to delete the file. When you click the Copy, Move, or Delete button on the dialog it now shows a progress meter while the files are being copied, moved, or deleted along with an Abort button that lets you stop the operation. Previously, PowerGREP would appear unresponsive if copying, moving, or deleting the files took a long time. Aborting the operation does not undo what has already been done. Copy and Move operations are added to the Undo History where they can be undone if no files were overwritten or if you enabled backup copies in the dialog box.

In the folders and files tree on the File Selector panel you can mark the Clipboard and/or Editor nodes with the green tick mark to include them in your action. This makes your PowerGREP Action search through or otherwise process the contents of the Windows clipboard and/or the contents of the Editor panel in PowerGREP. Now you can explicitly exclude the clipboard and editor from your action by marking these nodes with the red X. In previous versions of PowerGREP marking them with the red X caused the action to fail. Not marking the nodes at all still excludes them from the action, as it correctly did in previous versions too.

If you mark the Editor node with the green tick and set the search type on the Action panel to binary data then the Editor panel now automatically switches to hexadecimal mode when you execute the action if the Editor panel has a file open that uses an encoding that may use more than one byte per character. That includes all Unicode encodings and all “double byte” Windows code pages. This ensures that the action can correctly search for the binary data on the Editor panel. Previous versions of PowerGREP did not switch the Editor panel to hexadecimal mode when they needed to search it using binary data, causing the action to fail.

PowerGREP’s installer has long supported the /silent command line parameter to automate the installation. Previously, this would install PowerGREP for the current user if the installer was run without administrator rights, or for all users if it was run with administrator rights. Now, the licensed installer (but not the free trial installer) allows you to add the /portable parameter to create a portable installation instead. You can specify the installation folder after /portable separated with a space. Put double quotes around the path to the installation folder if it contains spaces. So SetupPowerGREP.exe /silent /portable D:\PowerGREP creates a portable installation into D:\PowerGREP without any prompts or any progress indicators.

If you have already purchased PowerGREP 5, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to PowerGREP 5 from any previous version.
Buy PowerGREP now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Pro 8.5.4

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Pro 8.5.4 is now available for download.

The tool configuration lets you restrict tools to certain file types. This can make the Tools menu easier to use if you have a lot of tools. It also allows you to add identical tools for different file types. You could have a “Compile” tool for both Java and C++, for example, with one only visible for Java files and the other only visible for C++ files. When you use this feature, the tool configuration dialog now grays out tools that will not be visible in the menu for the active file. When the tool configuration dialog first appears, it now preselects the tool you most recently ran or the tool you most recently edited instead of preselecting the first tool. If there is no previous tool or if the previous tool is grayed out then the dialog now preselects the first tool that is not grayed out. Combined, these small improvements make the tool configuration dialog easier to work with when you have many tools with similar or identical names for different file types.

When an error occurs on the FTP panel, EditPad Pro displays the error message it receives from the FTP server. But FTP servers don’t always include important details such as the file name in their error messages. Now, EditPad Pro adds the file name to the error message if the FTP server didn’t already do so. This is particularly helpful when opening or saving many files at the same time on the same server.

If enable the option to save the workspace in the Save Files Preferences then EditPad Pro automatically reloads the files you had open during your previous session when it starts. It could happen that the File Navigator appeared blank upon startup even if the file that was activated by loading the workspace uses a file navigation scheme. This was a timing issue that depended on the size of the file and the complexity of the scheme. Switching to another file and back always fixed it. Now EditPad Pro makes sure the File Navigator is shows the file navigation tree for the active file upon startup. If the file is very large then it may take a moment for the tree to appear as it is built in the background.

On the Open Files page in the Preferences you can configure EditPad Pro to treat files larger than a certain size as huge files. EditPad Pro always keeps a lock on such files to be able to swap them out to disk. There is also an option to keep a lock on all open files, regardless of their size. Previously, the File|Reload on Disk menu item was disabled when EditPad has a lock on the active file. Now, File|Reload on Disk menu item is only disabled when the locked file does not have any unsaved changes in EditPad. When EditPad has a lock on a file it cannot be modified by another application, so there is no point in reloading it if it does not have any unsaved changes. When the file does have unsaved changes, reloading it can be a quick way to undo all those changes.

EditPad’s installer has long supported the /silent command line parameter to automate the installation. Previously, this would install EditPad for the current user if the installer was run without administrator rights, or for all users if it was run with administrator rights. Now, the licensed installer (but not the free trial installer) allows you to add the /portable parameter to create a portable installation instead. You can specify the installation folder after /portable separated with a space. Put double quotes around the path to the installation folder if it contains spaces. So SetupEditPadPro.exe /silent /portable D:\EditPadPro creates a portable installation into D:\EditPadPro without any prompts or any progress indicators.

EditPad Pro 8.0.0 was a major release that brought many new features. This release improves some of those and fixes some issues with a few others.

EditPad Pro 8.0.0 added the ability to automatically reformat files with line breaks and indentation if they do not have any line breaks at all when you open them. By default it can do this for XML, JSON, and CSS files. This makes it much more comfortable to inspect or edit such files that are written by automated tools that don’t care to make their files human-readable. Now, this feature ignores trailing line breaks when checking if the file already has trailing line breaks. So it will prompt to reformat an XML file, for example, that was written with everything on a single line and a line break at the end. If you choose to have the file reformatted then the trailing line breaks are stripped first. Reformatting may or many not add a new trailing line break, depending on the scheme and the file’s contents.

In EditPad Pro 8.0.0, Go|Sort File Tabs Alphanumerically and Go|Sort Project Tabs Alphanumerically replaced Go|Sort File Tabs Alphabetically and Go|Sort Project Tabs Alphabetically. On the Files Panel, the Alphanumerically option replaced the Alphabetically option under the Sort button. These put “Chapter2.txt” before “Chapter10.txt” and “Book2.epp” before “Book10.epp” because 2 is less than 10. Alphabetic sort did it the other way around because 1 appears before 2. When EditPad Pro receives files from the command line or via drag-and-drop it now opens them in alphanumeric order as well. Previously it opened them in alphabetic order. Project|Open Folder and Project|Import File Listing now open files in alphanumeric rather than alphabetic order as well.

The Go|Go to Position command replaced the Go to Line command in EditPad 8.0.0, allowing you to move the cursor to a specific column, among other options. Previously, this moved the cursor one position further to the right than the column that you specified unless you enabled the option to use zero-based line and column numbers. This has been fixed. The Go to Position command now works correctly with zero-based and the default one-based column numbers.

Since EditPad 8.0.0, when you customize the palette you can apply a strikeout to certain colors. The predefined palettes apply this to the “redacted” color. This color is used by the Markdown syntax coloring schemes for ~~redacted~~ text, for example. The strikeout can use one of various styles, such as “thick” or “double“. But if it was set to a style other than “font” then previous 8.x.x releases failed to display the strikeout when using a complex script text layout which is needed to work with scripts such as Arabic or Hebrew or the various Indic scripts. The text still appeared by the strikeout did not. This has been fixed.

File paths that are longer than 260 characters may need to be prefixed with \\?\ or \\?\UNC\ before they are passed to the Windows API if Windows is not configured to support long paths. EditPad 8 does this automatically, enabling full support for long paths. Applications are not supposed to add this prefix to paths shown to the user. EditPad never did this and EditPad itself does not need the prefix. But, previously, EditPad did not check whether paths it receives from other applications via the command line or from the shell via the File|Open dialog had this prefix. This did not cause any problems because EditPad does understand the prefix. But EditPad would then show the path in the status bar or the tab’s tooltip, which is inappropriate. Now, EditPad strips the prefix from paths that it receives, so you see only the actual path even if another application passed it with the prefix.

If you have already purchased EditPad Pro 8, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to EditPad Pro 8 from any previous version.
Buy EditPad Pro now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Lite 8.5.4

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Lite 8.5.4 is now available for download.

On the Open Files page in the Preferences you can configure EditPad to keep a lock on files that you have open in EditPad. Previously, this disabled the File|Reload on Disk menu item. Now, this disables the File|Reload on Disk menu item only when the file does not have any unsaved changes in EditPad. When EditPad has a lock on a file it cannot be modified by another application, so there is no point in reloading it if it does not have any unsaved changes. When the file does have unsaved changes, reloading it can be a quick way to undo all those changes.

EditPad’s installer has long supported the /silent command line parameter to automate the installation. Previously, this would install EditPad for the current user if the installer was run without administrator rights, or for all users if it was run with administrator rights. Now, the installer allows you to add the /portable parameter to create a portable installation instead. You can specify the installation folder after /portable separated with a space. Put double quotes around the path to the installation folder if it contains spaces. So SetupEditPadLite.exe /silent /portable D:\EditPadLite creates a portable installation into D:\EditPad without any prompts or any progress indicators.

EditPad Lite 8.0.0 was a major release that brought many new features. This release fixes a few issues with some of those.

In EditPad 8.0.0, Go|Sort File Tabs Alphanumerically replaced Go|Sort File Tabs Alphabetically. This puts “Chapter2.txt” before “Chapter10.txt” because 2 is less than 10. Alphabetic sort did it the other way around because 1 appears before 2. When EditPad receives files from the command line or via drag-and-drop it now opens them in alphanumeric order as well. Previously it opened them in alphabetic order.

EditPad Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 4.14.3

Tue, 6 May 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexBuddy 4.14.3 is now available for download.

RegexBuddy now officially supports .NET 9.0, Boost 1.88, Java 23, and Ruby 3.4. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.

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. Unfortunately, enabling this option also showed n/a for groups that did participate but captured nothing, defeating the purpose of this option. This has been fixed. The Test panel now always shows nothing for groups that captured a zero-length match. So by turning on this option you can distinguish between groups that didn’t participate (indicated as n/a) and groups that did participate but captured a zero-length match (showing nothing as the match)..

This release improves the usability of drop-down lists on toolbars, such as the one to select the application you’re working with in the top left corner of RegexBuddy’s window. Rotating the mouse wheel now scrolls the drop-down list when the mouse pointer is hovering over an expanded drop-down list that has a scroll bar. With the drop-down list expanded you can now select an item by entering the first few letters of the item you want to select. If the list has the items PCRE, Perl, and PHP, for example, then you can enter PH to select PHP. If you make a mistake then you can press Backspace to go back one letter at a time. Or you can wait for one second after the last key press to start over.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 4 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexMagic 2.13.3

Tue, 6 May 2025 07:00:00 -0400

RegexMagic 2.13.3 is now available for download.

RegexMagic now officially supports .NET 9, Boost 1.88, Java 23, and Ruby 3.4. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.

This release improves the usability of drop-down lists on toolbars, such as the one to select the application you’re working with on the toolbar of the Regex panel. Rotating the mouse wheel now scrolls the drop-down list when the mouse pointer is hovering over an expanded drop-down list that has a scroll bar. With the drop-down list expanded you can now select an item by entering the first few letters of the item you want to select. If the list has the items PCRE, Perl, and PHP, for example, then you can enter PH to select PHP. If you make a mistake then you can press Backspace to go back one letter at a time. Or you can wait for one second after the last key press to start over.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexMagic 2, you can download this update for free.
If you own RegexMagic 1, you can upgrade to version 2 at a special price.
Buy RegexMagic now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

DeployMaster 7.5.1

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 07:00:00 -0400

DeployMaster 7.5.1 is now available for download. This release fixes two bugs.

One bug was introduced with DeployMaster 7.5.0. If you had previously saved a .deploy file that used the option to completely cover the screen background on the Appearance page then the background preview would appear in front of DeployMaster if you opened that .deploy file by double-clicking it on Windows Explorer. The problem did not occur if you started DeployMaster using its desktop icon and then clicked the Open button to open the file. The correct behavior, which has now been restored, is for DeployMaster to start with the Project page active and no background preview when you double-click a .deploy file in Windows Explorer. The background preview appears behind DeployMaster only while the Appearance page is active.

The other bug is more serious and dates back to DeployMaster 4.0.0. We discovered it after further testing of the new /portable command line parameter that is newly supported in installers built with DeployMaster 7.5.0 to force a portable installation in combination with the existing /silent parameter to fully automate the installation. The issue occurs if the readme file, license agreement, or support DLLs specified on the Project page or the background bitmap specified on the Appearance page are also added as files to be installed on the Files page. You may want to do this with the readme file and license agreement, for example, so the user can refer to these documents again after installation. When passing /silent /portable to an installer built with DeployMaster 7.5.0 it would pop up errors that these files could not be installed. This led us to discover that passing only /silent to an installer built with any version of DeployMaster also fails to install those files, but doing so silently. These files are handled differently because the installer needs to extract them before the actual installation starts so it can display them as part of the installation prompts. These files are reused rather than extracted again when they need to be installed. But silent installations do not initially extract these files, making them unavailable for reuse during the actual installation.

This bug has now been fixed. Silent installations now properly install all files, including the files used on the Project and Appearance pages. If your installer uses files on the Project or Appearance pages that you also added to the Files page, and your users may want to run your installer with the /silent parameter, then you should rebuild your installer with DeployMaster 7.5.1 to make sure these files are installed.

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

AceText 4.3.2

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 07:00:00 -0400

AceText 4.3.2 is now available for download.

AceText 4.3.1 added a new setting to the Operation preferences labeled “do not automatically capture text when the clipboard has no owner“. The option was on by default.

But some applications do not retain ownership of the clipboard. They use a temporary window handle to access the clipboard and destroy that handle immediately after the text was copied. This prevents AceText from identifying the application that copied the text. The desktop application for the BitWarden password manager, for example, behaves this way. We added the option “do not automatically capture text when the clipboard has no owner” and enabled it by default so that AceText would not automatically capture text copied by BitWarden.

Since the release of AceText 4.3.1 we’ve received quite a number of reports from users that this version stopped capturing text copied by specific applications. It turns out that there are plenty of other applications out there that copy text without retaining clipboard ownership. Therefore, the option “do not automatically capture text when the clipboard has no owner” is now off by default for new installations of AceText 4.3.2. If you previously installed 4.3.1 then you can turn off the setting yourself on the Operations page in the Preferences.

AceText 4.0.0 added a new clip kind called “text with emphasis“. It allows you to apply some limited text formatting such as bold, italics, underline, and strikeout and a number of color highlights to your text. AceText 4.3.2 fixes a few bugs in this area. Deleting all the contents of a “text with emphasis” clip (without deleting the clip itself) now works correctly. Previously, trying to use the “text with emphasis” clip kind triggered errors if the clip did not use the “parameters” option and live spelling was turned off in the Options menu and URL highlighting was turned off in the Preferences. If one of these was turned on then the errors did not occur. URL highlighting is on by default. Live spelling is on by default if you’ve installed one or more spell check dictionaries.

AceText’s installer has long supported the /silent command line parameter to automate the installation. Previously, this would install AceText for the current user if the installer was run without administrator rights, or for all users if it was run with administrator rights. Now, the licensed installer (but not the free trial installer) allows you to add the /portable parameter to create a portable installation instead. You can specify the installation folder after /portable separated with a space. Put double quotes around the path to the installation folder if it contains spaces. So SetupAceText.exe /silent /portable D:\AceText creates a portable installation into D:\AceText without any prompts or any progress indicators.

If you have already purchased AceText 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to AceText 4 from any previous version.
Buy AceText now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

HelpScribble 8.3.3

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 07:00:00 -0400

HelpScribble 8.3.3 is now available for download.

HelpScribble’s HelpContext property editor now supports the 64-bit version of the IDE that is new in Delphi 12.3 Athens and C++Builder 12.3 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.

Windows 10 and 11 do not support the legacy WinHelp format, but HelpScribble still does. You can still compile WinHelp files with HelpScribble even when HelpScribble is running on Windows 10 or 11. When you do so, HelpScribble shows a message explaining that you need Windows 8.1 or prior to view the WinHelp file you just created. This dialog box has been updated with a link to HelpScribble’s own website to download the WinHelp viewer for Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 8.1. Microsoft has removed the WinHelp viewers for Windows Vista and 7 from their own website. So as a service to our users who may still need to support legacy systems we’re now making these downloads available from our own server. Windows XP and prior have the WinHelp viewer built-in.

When you use HelpTools|Internet Link in HelpScribble to add a link to a web page HelpScribble inserts an ExecFile() WinHelp macro with the URL. When compiling into HTML Help (CHM) format, HelpScribble converted these macros into regular links. Those links would open the web page inside the HTML Help viewer. This was originally a major feature of the HTML Help system. It allowed seamless integration between help file content stored on the local computer and additional content stored on a server. Even though Internet Explorer has been discontinued, the HTML Help system internally is still based on the old IE code. A major issue with this is that it simply doesn’t support modern JavaScript. The HTML Help viewer will pop up an error message when it can’t execute some JavaScript. This happens even with web pages that use minimal amounts of JavaScript, such as HelpScribble’s own website.

To better deal with this reality, HelpScribble now converts ExecFile() macros that open an URL into links that open the page in a new browser window when compiling into CHM format. This will be whichever browser is the default browser on the user’s system.

If you have already purchased HelpScribble, you can download this update for free.
Buy HelpScribble now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

DeployMaster 7.5.0

Tue, 4 Mar 2025 07:00:00 -0400

DeployMaster 7.5.0 is now available for download. It brings two significant changes. The size of the font now affects the size of the installer. Portable installations can now be controlled from the command line, silently if you want.

Way back in DeployMaster 2.7.0 we added the Installer Font button to the Appearance page. The main purpose of this feature was to make it possible to create installers in languages that are written in scripts that the default font can’t display properly or at all. MS Sans Serif, which was the default in those days, supports a limited number of scripts. Though you could choose the size of the font as well, it wasn’t practical to select a font that was any larger than the default 8 points because the installer didn’t adjust itself to the size of your chosen font.

Starting with DeployMaster 7.5.0 installers that you build do increase their size if you select a font that is larger than 8 points. Selecting a large font makes your installer more accessible to people with visual impairments. Selecting a slightly larger font, such as Segoe UI at 11 points, can make the installation experience more pleasant for everyone. Larger fonts are simply easier to read which makes for a more welcoming experience.

Your installers now also check the “make text bigger” setting that can be set as a percentage from 100% to 225% in the Ease of Access settings in Windows 10 and the Accessibility settings in Windows 11. The installer multiplies a font size of 9 points by this percentage and uses the resulting font size for your installer if that is larger than what you selected on the Appearance page. If you specified 15 points and the user has “make text bigger” set to 120% then your installer uses the 15 points you specified because 9 * 120% = 12 which is less than 15. But if the user set it to 200% then the installer increases its font size to 18 points. On older versions of Windows which don’t have this setting the installer always uses the 15 points you specified. So you can safely select this larger font size without risking it being doubled to 30 points by the “make text bigger” setting.

Your installer will not make itself taller or wider than the user’s display. If the user has a small screen and the installer wouldn’t fit if it used the font size you specified or that it calculated according to “make text bigger” then it reduces the font size to the largest size that allows the installer to fit on the screen while properly adjusting itself to the font size. The font size will never go below 8 points. At 8 points the installer fits even on the smallest screens that Windows itself is usable on.

These changes are not optional. If you had previously selected a font larger than 8 points or if your user has “make text bigger” set to 107% or more then your installer will appear larger if you rebuild it with DeployMaster 7.5.0.

The default font for brand new installers has been changed to 9 points Segoe UI. This is the same font face and font size that Windows has been using for components like Windows Explorer since Windows Vista. This new default is not applied when you rebuild an existing installer. You can use the Installer Font button if you want to change the font of an existing installer. DeployMaster’s own installer now uses Segoe UI 9 so you can see the effect of all these changes before you rebuild your own installers.

Modern apps like Settings in Windows 10 and 11 use Segoe UI at various sizes. You can select 11 points Segoe UI as your installer’s font to provide a similar experience.

If you select Segoe UI as your installer’s font and the installer is run on Windows XP or prior then it will fall back to Tahoma, which was the previous default font. Segoe UI was new in Windows Vista. Tahoma goes back all the way to Windows 95 and is still included with Windows 11.

Installers built with DeployMaster 7.5.0 recognize a new command line parameter. If the installer allows portable installations it can be started with the /portable parameter to force a portable installation. This parameter can be followed by the full path to the target folder for the installation. The folder, if specified, must be separated from /portable with a space. If the folder contains spaces then it must be enclosed with double quotes. If you also pass the /silent parameter then the installation is performed without any user intervention. If you omit /silent then the installer shows its user interface. The user can abort the installation or proceed with it and can change the installation folder. But only a portable installation will be allowed.

This release also fixes a bug that affected installers built with the option “always create a portable installation“. If such an installer was run with the /silent parameter then it would try to create a normal installation instead of a portable one. This would likely fail as the installer wouldn’t have obtained admin rights. Now, running such an installer with /silent but without /portable creates a portable installation on the same drive that the installer is saved on. The default folder is the folder specified on the Portable page when the installer was built.

If an installer is built with the “user choice” option for “create portable installations” then running it with /silent but without /portable creates a normal installation. This is unchanged.

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

PowerGREP 5.3.7

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 07:00:00 -0400

PowerGREP 5.3.7 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.

The converters for Word documents and Excel spreadsheets have been updated to fix some bugs that caused the converters to crash on a small number of .doc and .xlsx files. By default, PowerGREP remembers if it could not convert certain files and won’t try to convert those files again unless they have been changed on disk. This way PowerGREP doesn’t waste time trying to repeatedly convert files that it can’t, whether that is due to a bug in PowerGREP’s converter or a corrupt file. If you previously got errors when trying to search through Word documents or Excel spreadsheets then after installing 5.3.7, go into the Cache section in the Preferences and clear the cache to make PowerGREP forget that it could not convert certain files in the past.

Many applications cannot handle file paths with more than 260 characters due to restrictions in the Windows API. PowerGREP 5.0.0 and later fully support paths longer than 260 characters, even if Windows itself is not configured to remove the 260 character limit. But there was one area that we missed. PowerGREP’s converter for Windows shell links failed if the full path to the .lnk file had more than 260 characters. This has been fixed.

The shortcut icons on your Windows desktop (and in other places in Windows) are technically files with a .lnk extension that use the Windows shell link format. PowerGREP can convert this file format to plain text, allowing you to search through a shortcut icon’s properties. You can try this if you set “file formats to convert to plain text” to “proprietary formats“, mark your desktop folder C:\Users\YourName\Desktop with the green tick mark, and search for the text “Target“. This will produce a list of all the file paths that your desktop shortcuts point to.

PowerGREP’s user forum is built right into the application. The edit control for reading and writing messages on the forum now uses the text layout (font and other settings) that you can select in the General section in the Preferences.

If you have already purchased PowerGREP 5, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to PowerGREP 5 from any previous version.
Buy PowerGREP now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

AceText 4.3.1

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 07:00:00 -0400

AceText 4.3.1 is now available for download.

AceText’s ClipHistory can automatically capture text that you copy to the clipboard in other applications. The Preferences dialog has extensive options to configure how much data the ClipHistory is allowed to retain and which applications it may capture text from in the first place.

The limit for the maximum number of clips the ClipHistory is allowed to retain can now be set to as low as 10 clips and as high as 100,000 clips. Previously the range was 100 to 10,000 clips. You may want a lower limit if you work with confidential information that you shouldn’t retain too long (even though you can encrypt the ClipHistory). You may want a higher limit if you use the ClipHistory as your memory bank.

Normally, the Windows clipboard is “owned” by a window that is part of the application that most recently copied text to the clipboard. AceText can identify which application the window is part of. You can configure clipboard owners in the Applications and Windows Preferences in AceText to selectively prevent or allow the ClipHistory to automatically capture the text they copy. But some applications deliberately try to hide their ownership of the clipboard by using a temporary window handle to copy text to the clipboard and then immediately destroying that window handle. The desktop application for the BitWarden password manager, for example, behaves this way. The window owner will already be gone when AceText gets to look at the clipboard and decide whether it should automatically capture the text into the ClipHistory. AceText thus has to resort to the settings for (any other application) on the Applications tab. But you may want to allow AceText to capture text copied by applications you haven’t configured while still ignoring text copied by BitWarden. A new setting “do not automatically capture text when the clipboard has no owner” in the Operation preferences makes this possible. This option stops AceText from capturing text copied by BitWarden and other applications that hide themselves as the clipboard owner. It overrides the option to allow the ClipHistory for (any other application) on the Applications tab.

The new option “do not automatically capture text when the clipboard has no owner” is on by default. If an application goes out of its way to hide itself as the clipboard owner then it is possibly copying sensitive data. BitWarden uses the clipboard to transfer your passwords, for example. (This is unsafe, of course, because malware can monitor your clipboard just as easily as AceText can. AceText itself never uses the clipboard to transfer secret clips.)

Since version 4.0.0 AceText has a fully dark user interface that you can toggle via the Options|Dark Theme menu item. But AceText lets Windows itself paint the caption bar and borders of its windows on Windows 10 and 11 for maximum reliability. But it can result in a style mismatch. Now, on Windows 11, AceText informs Windows that it is using a dark theme so that Windows 11 can paint the caption bar and borders using its own dark theme. Windows 10 does not provide a way to do this.

This release also brings a couple of performance improvements. The Create Clip from Text File command lets you select multiple text files to add as separate clips to your collection. This could take a while if you selected thousands of files as the clips were added one by one. Now, AceText first loads all the files and then adds all the clips for them at once, which is significantly faster. The Delete Clips command deletes the selected clips from the active collection by moving them to the Recycle Bin collection. If the active collection is the Recycle Bin collection then it deletes the clips permanently. Deleting thousands of clips this way caused a noticeable delay in updating the Recycle Bin collection. This has been fixed. Deleting thousands of clips from the Recycle Bin should now be near instantaneous. The Empty Recycle Bin command was not affected by this issue and remains the quickest way to delete everything from the Recycle Bin.

If you have already purchased AceText 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to AceText 4 from any previous version.
Buy AceText now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

DeployMaster 7.4.0

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 07:00:00 -0400

DeployMaster 7.4.0 is now available for download.

This release adds support for Windows 11 version 24H2 otherwise known as the 2024 Update. You can now select this version on the Platform page if you want to restrict your installer to specific Windows 11 versions.

This release also brings significant improvements to DeployMaster to find and use code signing certificates to apply a digital signature to your installer. In most cases you now only need to tick the sign the installer checkbox on the Media page. You no longer need to specify a subject name, PFX file, or command line. If you don’t then DeployMaster automatically picks a non-expired code signing certificate from your computer’s certificate store. This works with certificates stored on USB tokens and in the cloud too as long as you have unlocked the token or are logged onto the cloud service. Instructions you received for using the certificate with signtool.exe will also work with DeployMaster, without needing to download or run signtool.exe.

You can still specify the subject name of the certificate to select between multiple certificates with different names, or simply to ensure that the correct certificate is used. If there are multiple certificates with the same name then DeployMaster now picks the first one that is already valid and not yet expired. So you can leave old certificates installed and install new certificates before they become valid. If they have the same subject name then DeployMaster will automatically switch between the certificates when one expires and another becomes valid.

If you want DeployMaster to use a specific certificate then you can now specify the certificate’s thumbprint instead of its subject name. The thumbprint is a sequence of 40 hexadecimal digits that uniquely identifies each certificate. A renewed or reissued certificate will have a different thumbprint. If you have multiple certificates with the same name with overlapping validity periods then you can specify the thumbprint to sign with a specific certificate.

DeployMaster 7.1.0 through 7.3.0 allowed you to specify the full path to signtool.exe in case DeployMaster’s built-in code signing was unable find the certificate on your USB token. This functionality remains. You can still specify the full path to signtool.exe without any parameters as the custom command line for code signing. DeployMaster 7.4.0 will then run signtool.exe and provide the parameters it needs like DeployMaster 7.1.0 through 7.3.0 did. But this should no longer be necessary. If you make the custom command line for code signing empty then DeployMaster 7.4.0’s built-in code signing should be able to automatically find the certificate on your USB token just as well as signtool does, even if signtool is not installed.

If you have a code signing certificate that can’t be used by signtool.exe then DeployMaster’s built-in code signing won’t be able to use it either. For those situations you will need to continue using a custom command line for code signing with %FILE% and other placeholders as introduced in DeployMaster 7.3.0.

One bug was fixed. When building from the command line you can specify the \q parameter to run DeployMaster silently and the \l parameter to write the log that would appear on the Build tab into a file. The log is now written correctly when you specify both these parameters. Previously, only the first line was written to the file.

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

EditPad Lite 8.5.3

Mon, 4 Nov 2024 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Lite 8.5.3 is now available for download.

Some mice have a wheel that can be tilted left and right. EditPad’s editor control is now able to receive mouse wheel tilt messages. It will scroll the text horizontally when you tilt the wheel if word wrap is off and there are lines longer than the width of the editor.

Modern trackpads allow you to slide two fingers over the trackpad to perform a scrolling gesture. Technically, this gesture makes the trackpad send mouse wheel messages. You could previously scroll vertically this way in EditPad because EditPad’s editor control has long recognized mouse wheel rotation messages. Because it now also recognizes mouse wheel tilt messages, you can now scroll horizontally in EditPad by sliding two fingers horizontally over a trackpad.

On the Definition page of the file type configuration dialog there is a checkbox labeled “show in file type selection lists“. It controls whether the file type is shown in the drop-down list with file types on file selection dialog boxes such as those shown by File|Open and File|Save As. By default this is checked for all file types. You can clear it for file types that you don’t use (often) to make it easier to pick the file types that you do use often. Now this checkbox is disabled for the “unspecified file type“. Many of EditPad’s features assumes that this file type is at the top of the list. It is used as a fallback when no other file type has a file mask or regex that matches a particular file. It allows file selection dialogs to show all files as its file mask is *.*.

The color palette which you can customize for each file type has separate entries for “character” and “character string” in the list of individual colors. Most of the predefined palettes give the same color to both, such as blue in the default palette and yellow in the “white on black” palette. But some, such as the Visual Studio palettes, give them different colors. Many of the syntax coloring schemes included with EditPad can use the two different colors to highlight character escapes within strings. The included PHP schemes do this. But they didn’t take into account that PHP has different rules for single-quoted and double-quoted strings. In a single-quoted string, a backslash can only escape itself and a single quote. EditPad now includes updated PHP schemes that implement this correctly.

EditPad Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

EditPad Pro 8.5.3

Mon, 4 Nov 2024 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Pro 8.5.3 is now available for download.

You can use Block|Rectangular Selections to switch between making normal and rectangular selections. All of EditPad’s commands that operate on a selection also work with rectangular selections. This release brings a few fixes so that Block|Move Selection and Block|Swap Selections work correctly with rectangular selections too.

Before you can swap selections you need to use View|Split Editor to get two views of the same file. You can make a different selection in each view. Splitting the view affects all open files. The view remains split in the same way when you switch between files. This release fixes a bug that caused EditPad to crash if you split between a file that was using a left-to-right text layout and another that was using a right-to-left text layout, or vice versa. A right-to-left text layout allows for more natural editing of files written primarily in a right-to-left language such as Hebrew or Arabic.

EditPad Pro includes several file navigation schemes for Markdown. There are different schemes for different Markdown dialects. For each dialect there is a scheme that makes EditPad Pro’s File Navigator show a flat list of headings and another that makes it show a nested tree of headings. The schemes can also add folding ranges to your file so you can fold the text of a section under its heading. The schemes that produce a flat list only fold the text that follows the heading, stopping at the next heading. The schemes that produce a tree have been changed to extend folding ranges until the next heading that is at a higher level. So if you fold a heading then all the text following that heading and any sub-headings is folded under that heading. This makes the behavior of the automatic folding ranges consistent with the file navigation tree for Markdown files.

If you have already purchased EditPad Pro 8, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to EditPad Pro 8 from any previous version.
Buy EditPad Pro now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexMagic 2.13.2

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexMagic 2, you can download this update for free.
If you own RegexMagic 1, you can upgrade to version 2 at a special price.
Buy RegexMagic now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 4.14.2

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 4 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Pro 8.5.2

Fri, 2 Aug 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased EditPad Pro 8, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to EditPad Pro 8 from any previous version.
Buy EditPad Pro now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Lite 8.5.2

Fri, 2 Aug 2024 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Lite 8.5.2 is now available for download.

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.

EditPad Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

AceText 4.3.0

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased AceText 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to AceText 4 from any previous version.
Buy AceText now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

PowerGREP 5.3.6

Tue, 21 May 2024 07:00:00 -0400

PowerGREP 5.3.6 is now available for download.

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.

If you have already purchased PowerGREP 5, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to PowerGREP 5 from any previous version.
Buy PowerGREP now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Lite 8.5.1

Wed, 15 May 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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 Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

EditPad Pro 8.5.1

Wed, 15 May 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased EditPad Pro 8, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to EditPad Pro 8 from any previous version.
Buy EditPad Pro now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Pro 8.5.0

Mon, 6 May 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased EditPad Pro 8, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to EditPad Pro 8 from any previous version.
Buy EditPad Pro now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Lite 8.5.0

Mon, 6 May 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

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.

EditPad Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.

PowerGREP 5.3.5

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0400

PowerGREP 5.3.5 is now available for download.

This release fixes one bug that was introduced in PowerGREP 5.3.4. It caused sequences to be aborted with an access violation error during or after the first step in the sequence.

If you have already purchased PowerGREP 5, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to PowerGREP 5 from any previous version.
Buy PowerGREP now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

AceText 4.2.3

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0400

AceText 4.2.3 is now available for download.

AceText 4.0.0 introduced the Options|Dark Theme menu item that lets you switch AceText between the standard (white) Windows theme and AceText’s new dark theme. If Windows itself is using its dark theme when you run AceText 4 for the first time then AceText defaults to its dark theme. In AceText 4.2.0 we introduced a bug that caused AceText to use light colors for its tabs and clip tree when AceText defaulted to its dark theme. This has been fixed so the dark colors are initialized correctly on first run. The fix does not automatically restore the correct colors if you upgrade from 4.2.x to 4.2.3. If your copy of AceText uses the dark theme with light colors for the tabs and clip tree then you can fix this by using the Options|Dark Theme menu item to switch to the light theme and then again to switch back to the dark theme. Toggling the theme toggles the colors if you haven’t changed them from the defaults.

AceText can write RSS feeds if you add a folder to a collection and change the folder’s kind to RSS feed writer. All clips you put inside the folder are written to the RSS feed. Click the Settings button to tell AceText to write the RSS feed to a file or to upload the feed via FTP. FTP upload was broken in AceText 4.2.0. This functionality has now been restored.

AcePure is an AceText feature that removes all clipboard formats except plain text from the clipboard. If you have copied some text from a web browser, for example, you can use AcePure to paste the text into a word processor without using the fonts and other formatting from the web page. On the Hotkeys page in the Preferences you can configure AcePure to paste the text on the clipboard directly into the active application. Even if you disable the hotkey itself, you can still invoke AcePure by right-clicking AceText’s icon in the notification area on the Windows taskbar. Doing so no longer makes AcePure paste the text on the clipboard into AceText. (Right-clicking AceText’s icon makes AceText the active application.)

AceEdit is an AceText feature that lets you use the Clipboard tab in AceText to edit text in another application. Pressing this hotkey makes AceText simulate a copy command in the active application and then activate itself to show the copied text on the Clipboard tab. When you’re done editing the text you can send it back to the other application by pressing the AceEdit hotkey again or by clicking the AcePaste Now button on AceText’s toolbar. Completing the AceEdit operation this way was previously broken. This has been fixed. Switching away from the Clipboard tab or AceText itself no longer automatically completes AceEdit.

If you have already purchased AceText 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to AceText 4 from any previous version.
Buy AceText now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

PowerGREP 5.3.4

Tue, 9 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0400

PowerGREP 5.3.4 is now available for download.

This release brings a bunch of minor fixes.

On the Action panel, several action types have a “target file creation” option that you can use to write search matches to file as they are found during the action. When you use this option you get an additional “between collected text” option that lets you specify if any text should be written between the search matches. The options that put different text between matches found in the same file and matches found in different files did not work correctly with “list files“, “file or folder name search“, and “file or folder name collect” actions. These actions can only find one match per file. To solve this, PowerGREP now shows a reduced set of “between collected text” options for these action types.

When using the “target file creation” option you can tick the “collect headers and footers” to write extra text and the start and end of the target files. You can additionally tick “expand placeholders” to enable certain match placeholders and path placeholders in the headers and footers. The placeholders were correctly highlighted as such on the Action panel. But they were not always substituted correctly in the target files. For “list files“, “file or folder name search“, and “file or folder name collect” actions the placeholders remained as literal text. For “search” and “collect data” actions, path placeholders such as %FILE% worked correctly but match placeholders such as %ACTIONDATE% were replaced with nothing. Now, all placeholders work correctly for all action types.

The “file formats to convert to plain text” configuration on the File Selector panel determines whether and how PowerGREP converts files in proprietary formats to plain text when it needs to search through them. This configuration equally affects how the Editor panel opens files. This lets you open a file on the Editor panel to see exactly which text PowerGREP searches through. Some configurations treat certain file formats such as Microsoft Office and OpenDocument Format files as compound documents. Technically, these files are ZIP files containing XML and other files. The “compound document” option tells PowerGREP to search through the raw contents of the XML and other files inside the document file, while still treating the file as a single file rather than as an archive. In this mode, the Editor panel cannot open Office files directly. It can only show the contents of one of the XML or other files inside the document file. If you try to open an Office file directly while its being treated as a compound document the Editor panel now clearly explains that you either need to use the File Selector panel to select a file within the compound document or change the file format configuration to have PowerGREP convert Office files to plain text.

On the File Selector panel, you can mark the Editor node with the green tick to have an action process the contents of the Editor panel directly, even if those contents weren’t saved to file. When you do so, PowerGREP now highlights the search matches that it found on the Editor panel.

The Import button on the File Selector panel lets you import a file listing. You can select one or more text files in which PowerGREP should look for paths to files or folders to be included in or excluded from the next action. The option “custom regex to split file” now works correctly. The “paths relative to this folder” option now works correctly when the paths need to be relative to the root folder of a drive.

If you have already purchased PowerGREP 5, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to PowerGREP 5 from any previous version.
Buy PowerGREP now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

DeployMaster 7.3.0

Thu, 4 Jan 2024 07:00:00 -0400

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.

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

HelpScribble 8.3.2

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased HelpScribble, you can download this update for free.
Buy HelpScribble now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexMagic 2.13.1

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexMagic 2, you can download this update for free.
If you own RegexMagic 1, you can upgrade to version 2 at a special price.
Buy RegexMagic now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

RegexBuddy 4.14.1

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 07:00:00 -0400

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.

If you have already purchased or upgraded to RegexBuddy 4, you can download this update for free.
Upgrade to RegexBuddy 4 from any previous version.
Buy RegexBuddy now or expand your license.
Complete version history.

EditPad Lite 8.4.2

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 07:00:00 -0400

EditPad Lite 8.4.2 is now available for download.

The editor’s performance while scrolling the text has been improved. You’ll particularly notice this if you have a mouse with a stepless scroll wheel. The editor will now keep up with the wheel no matter how fast you rotate it.

Various minor bugs and issues have been fixed. Edit|Delete Line now properly deletes the last line in the file when the cursor is after the last line break in the file. When customizing the palette in Options|Configure File Types|Colors and Syntax, the color pickers are now restricted to solarized, harmonized, or monochrome colors when editing such palettes. The Editor: Control Characters color is now applied to control characters that are visualized as IBM PC glyphs or Unicode control pictures when using a complex script text layout (just like it already was when using a left-to-right text layout). Help|Create Portable Installation now copies over the lists with learned words and learned replacements for each selected spell checker dictionary.

EditPad Lite 8 is now available in Dutch, English, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. Many thanks to our users who helped us to update these translations. If you’d like to help with making EditPad Lite 8 available in your own language, please email us.

EditPad Lite is free for personal use. Business and government users can purchase a license.
If you purchased EditPad Lite 7, you can upgrade to EditPad Lite 8 at a discount.
Download EditPad Lite.
Complete version history.