MacFormat 1998 August

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Text File | 1997-11-02 | 26.2 KB | 611 lines | [TEXT/R*ch]

What's New in BBEdit 4.5 ====== === == ====== === This document describes the feature enhancements that are present in the current release of BBEdit, including features that distinguish the current "major" (4.5) release from the previous (4.0) release of BBEdit. BBEdit 4.5 incorporates the following improvements: The BBEdit Table Builder --- ------ ----- ------- The standard BBEdit distribution now includes the "BBEdit Table Builder", a visual table-editing application. The Table Builder gives you the ability to create and edit HTML tables graphically. It is also integrated with BBEdit, so that you can easily create tables using a combination of textual and graphical editing approaches. The HTML Tools palette features a "Table Builder" button; when you click on this button, the selected table is sent to the BBEdit Table Builder for editing. Improved HTML Tools -------- ---- ----- The BBEdit HTML tools have been extensively revised and refined. Performance and reliability have been significantly improved in all areas, and some user interface refinements have been made. Reorganized "New" Commands ----------- ----- -------- The various "New" commands (which were previously distributed across an assortment of menus) have been gathered into a single "New" submenu. (Note that your reflexes will still work: Command-N still creates a new editing window, and you can still choose the first command from the File menu to create a new editing window.) New Preferences --- ----------- the Preferences dialog has been reorganized and enhanced. There is now a "Languages" panel which contains settings for assigning languages to file suffixes. These settings were previously part of the "Function Popup" preferences panel. In addition, you can now set languages for files that have no suffixes (the "no suffix" setting), as well as for files that have a suffix, but which don't match any of the established settings (the "default" setting). In addition, there is now a "Web Browsers" setting, which enables you to manipulate the list of Web browsers available to the HTML tools "Preview" command. Finally, the "Backup" preferences panel gives you the ability to set a backup location for all files. Please note that files created by previous versions of BBEdit which contain their own backup settings will continue to use those settings; you may use the "Backup Options..." command on the File menu to change this. MacOS 8 Support ----- - ------- BBEdit 4.5 supports MacOS 8 contextual menus. To see the contextual menus in action under MacOS 8, make a text selection in an editing or browser window, hold down the Control key, and click on the selected text. A menu will pop up, giving you access to tools for performing specialized operations on the selection. In group windows and disk browsers, you can control-click on a file to pop up a contextual menu for operating on that file. If you create a clipping file by dragging a text selection to the MacOS 8 Finder, the clipping file will be named "BBEdit text clipping" to identify its origin. Tools List Window ----- ---- ------ A single "BBEdit Tools" floating window replaces the collection of floating windows in previous releases of BBEdit. This window presents a hierarchical list of installed BBEdit tools. You can use the "Set Key..." button to assign a keyboard equivalent to a selected tool, or the "Run" button to run that tool. Browser Window Improvements ------- ------ ------------ The appearance of browser windows (disk, glossary, project, compile errors, search results) has been refined to be more usable and to occupy less screen area. All browser windows offer a function popup (to navigate files without opening them), options popup (to control display), path popup (to navigate the path to the file), and the Get Info icon. Improved Grep Pattern Storage -------- ---- ------- ------- Grep patterns are now stored in a "BBEdit Grep Patterns" text file in your Preferences folder. This ensures that Grep patterns are preserved even if you discard your BBEdit Preferences file. Copy to FTP Server ---- -- --- ------ The "Save a Copy to FTP Server..." command has been added to the File menu. This command will save the front window to the desired FTP server, but will not relocate the file. In that sense, it is the FTP analog of "Save a Copy As...". The following features in BBEdit 4.5 were added after the original release of BBEdit 4.0: Editing via FTP ------- --- --- BBEdit features two commands on the File menu: "Open from FTP Server" and "Save to FTP Server". These commands make it easy to edit text files residing on a remote FTP server (including Web servers which are accessible via FTP). Multiple Undo -------- ---- BBEdit gives you the ability to undo more than just the last change you made to a file. Because the "Undo" command no longer changes to "Redo" when you have undone an action, there is a new "Redo" command on the Edit menu. To reverse the effects of an Undo, choose the "Redo" command. Startup Items ------- ----- When it starts up, BBEdit 4 will look for a folder named “BBEdit Startup Items” in the same folder as the BBEdit application file. If it finds such a folder, BBEdit will open any documents it finds in that folder. If you place a text file, picture file, or BBEdit file group in this folder, BBEdit will open a document window appropriate to that document. If you place a compiled OSA (AppleScript, or any other OSA-compliant scripting language) script in this folder, BBEdit will execute the script. If you place any other type of document in this folder, BBEdit will ask the Finder to open the document. If you wish, you may place the actual BBEdit Startup Items folder in any convenient location, create an alias to it, and place the resulting alias in the same folder as the BBEdit application file. Having done so, be sure to change the name of the alias to "BBEdit Startup Items" so that BBEdit can properly locate it. What's Fixed in BBEdit 4.5.1 ====== ===== == ====== ===== The following minor enhancements are new as of BBEdit 4.5.1: + the range of the horizontal scrollbar has been doubled, to facilitate viewing of files with very long unwrapped lines. + BBEdit's internal maximum search string length has been increased from 1024 to 4096 (4K) characters. + The Find dialog has been reworked so that you can edit very large search strings. There's no provision for a scroll bar; the text fields will autoscroll as you move through them. (If you routinely find yourself modifying very large search and replace strings, you may find it helpful to use an editing window as a scratch pad, and then choose Enter Selection.) The text fields in the Find dialog use Monaco 9, but if you have ProFont installed, BBEdit will use that font instead. (ProFont is a more readable version of Monaco; it may be found on the BBEdit 4.5 CD.) + the Grep Patterns section of the Preferences dialog has been reworked to support the editing of larger Grep patterns. + when printing a document that is soft-wrapped to the window width, BBEdit will soft-wrap the document to the printed page width. + BBEdit is now SmartScroll-aware. For more information on SmartScroll, see <http://www.Kagi.com/Authors/Marc/> on the Web. + Change Case will now remember its settings across runs of BBEdit. + when checking HTML files (as determined by the file name suffix or the default language setting), the spelling checker will ignore properly formed HTML entities. + Find Differences has been substantially beefed up: + you can now elect to have BBEdit ignore typographer's quotes when doing the comparison. When "Ignore Curly Quotes" is turned on, the following the lines are considered identical: This is BBEdit’s idea of a “smart” quote. This is BBEdit's idea of a "smart" quote. Support for this option is also in the scripting interface, as "ignore curly quotes". + The "Find Differences" dialog has been rearranged for greater readability, and the file path areas have been enlarged to accommodate longer path names. + when performing a multi-file Compare, you can instruct BBEdit to only compare files when they contain (or don't) a literal string or Grep pattern, subject to the settings in the "Multi-File Compare" section of the dialog. It works like this: Given a pair of files (A, B), the following settings have the following meanings: * if "contain" is selected, then A and B will be compared if -either- file contains the specified literal string. * if "match" is selected, then A and B will be compared if -either- file contains a match to the specified Grep pattern. * if "don't contain" is selected, then A and B will be compared if -neither- file contains the specified literal string. * if "don't match" is selected, then A and B will be compared if -neither- file contains a match to the specified Grep pattern. + when performing a multi-file Compare, you can instruct BBEdit to ignore non-text files. This is useful when comparing Web sites and other folder hierarchies that contain large numbers of non-text files. + BBEdit now supports "Dreamweaver", the new HTML editing tool from Macromedia. See <http://www.dreamweaver.com/> for more information. (If you don't have Dreamweaver installed, clicking on the "Dreamweaver" button in the HTML Tools palette will take you there.) + There are two new plug-ins: "Internet Tools" and "Compiler Tools". Each of these is a small floating palette which gives you access to frequently-used applications which support BBEdit. The Internet Tools palette will show, by icon, the "helper" applications that you currently have specified in Internet Config. Clicking on an icon will launch the corresponding application (if it's available). The Compiler Tools palette gives access to the development tools and environments that support BBEdit: Symantec C++, the THINK Project Manager, the CodeWarrior IDE, ToolServer, and VOODOO. As with the Internet Tools palette, clicking on an icon will launch the corresponding application. Both palettes share the same features: if you click the zoom box of the palette, you can choose between a small and large view of the icons. Each palette will remember whether it was open when you quit BBEdit; if you leave the palette open when you quit BBEdit, it will reappear the next time you launch BBEdit. If you close the palette before quitting BBEdit, it will not. The following reported problems were corrected in BBEdit 4.5.1: - BBEdit will now correctly import stored Grep patterns from an existing BBEdit 4.0.4 preferences file. - BBEdit no longer loses HTML Custom Markup macros when importing preferences from an existing BBEdit 4.0.x preferences file. - fixed a bug in which BBEdit would crash when trying to use some plug-in tools while another plug-in tool's floating palette was open. (This was usually reported as a crash when choosing the "Convert..." option of the HTML Table tool while CometPage was open, although neither CometPage nor the HTML Table tool was at fault.) - BBEdit will no longer crash when dragging an image or HTML file into an HTML file which is not the front window. - the C/C++ scanner will now properly color preprocessor directives of the form: #directive <some text> // comment #directive <some text> /* comment */ - fixed a bug in which completing a language keyword by typing inside of it would not properly re-color the keyword. - "Select Line" will now work correctly when used on the blank first line of a window. - fixed a bug in which text would flicker when typing on the first two lines of a soft-wrapped document. - Command-Forward-Delete now works again. - worked around a MacOS 8 bug which prevented text clippings larger than 1K (1024 bytes) from working when dragged to other applications. - worked around a MacOS bug which would cause small-font popup menus (such as the ones in an editing window's status bar) to get mangled when navigating those menus with Balloon Help turned on. - the "Find" and "Find All" buttons in the Find dialog are now disabled if you've chosen to search a group, project, or precompiled header file, but haven't chosen one to search. - fixed a cosmetic bug which would occur when the string in the "Quick Search" window was too long for the available space. - BBEdit will no longer crash if memory runs low while it's printing a picture. - the C++ scanner (used by the function popup) now correctly recognizes the C++ "operator () (...)" syntax. - if an error occurs while communicating with the Metrowerks debugger, BBEdit will now report it only once. - BBEdit now enforces a sensible minimum size for picture windows. - fixed bogus drawing which would occur sometimes when dropping items into the Find Differences dialog. - When doing a multi-file Find Differences, BBEdit is now better at figuring out whether two files are identical or not. (The quick comparison is now performed after linefeed conversion.) - If the "Don't List Identical Files" option is turned on in the Find Differences dialog, BBEdit will now present an alert if all of the files in common to both folders are identical. Previously, it would just put up a funny-looking Differences window. - if you choose "Copy" or "Save As" in a Find Differences window, BBEdit will now generate a correct listing of the differences (instead of garbage). - The spell checker will no longer flag as duplicated words which are separated by only a number, HTML tag, or entity (the latter two only when searching HTML files). - the Rez scanner (used by the function popup) will no longer crash when confronted with certain malformed Rez files. - fixed a bug in which Glossary keystrokes were not invoking the proper Glossary entries. - Undo now behaves correctly after performing a Zap Gremlins. - when doing a Replace All with Grep enabled, BBEdit now correctly handles situations in which the replacement text generated for a single match exceeds 4K. (Previous versions would truncate the replacement text, leading to undesired results.) - when performing a Replace All with Wrap Around and Grep turned on, BBEdit would fail to find and replace some matches of the Grep pattern. - the "Hard Wrap" scripting command should now work correctly in situations where it didn't before. - if a scripting command is received which specifies "selection only", BBEdit will now issue an error message if there is no selection on which to operate. - the vestigial zoom controls have been removed from the ASCII table and Window List floating windows. - BBEdit now verifies the position of group windows when reopening existing group files. This resolves situations in which group windows would appear off screen. The BBEdit Table Builder has been updated to version 1.0.1, and features the following fixes and improvements: - if the Table Builder encounters unknown attributes when importing or reading a table, it will store those attributes, and restore them to the generated HTML when saving or exporting. This resolves situations in which the Table Builder would delete unrecognized table, row, or cell attributes. - if the Table Builder encounters something other than text, a picture, or a pure embedded table inside of a cell, it will create an "HTML" cell, which stores the raw HTML code (which may be edited as plain text when inside the Table Builder). This resolves situations in which the Table Builder would delete unrecognized HTML code. - You can now control the generation of HEIGHT and WIDTH cell attributes for an individual cell or group of selected cells, using the appropriate commands from the "Cell" menu. For existing tables, these settings will reflect the existence (or lack thereof) of these attributes in the imported table. - The Table Builder is much better behaved in low-memory situations, and should no longer crash if it runs out of memory. If Table Builder unexpectedly runs out of memory in the middle of an operation, it will first try to free up memory by closing any unmodified document windows. If there is still insufficient memory to continue, it will write the contents of all modified open windows to a file called "Table Builder Rescue File" at the top level of your startup disk before quitting itself. - fixed an error in the generation of WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes in which the generated attributes would sometimes differ from the requested values. - the Table Builder now generates correct HTML for text cells containing anchors. - a bug which would cause spurious -43 or -48 errors when saving files from within Table Builder has been fixed. - the Table Builder now correctly auto-sizes tables which include ROWSPAN and COLSPAN attributes but not WIDTH or HEIGHT attributes. - the Table Builder will now generate correct HTML when exporting manually entered links or links extant in imported HTML. - the Table Builder will no longer remove the "SRC" attribute for images that could not be located. - The Table Builder now prevents you from typing non-printing characters into the document title field or text cells. - The "Image Info" dialog matches the layout of the Image dialog used in BBEdit's HTML tools. - The obsolete "Space Before" setting has been removed from the Table Info dialog. - the "Quicktime is required to view JPEG files" alert has been removed. (You will still need to have QuickTime installed in order to view JPEG files; the annoying alert has simply been suppressed.) - URLs of the style "file:///path/file.gif" are now properly interpreted. - corrected a problem in which the Table Builder would sometimes emit HTML with asymmetrically balanced tags. - fixed a bug which would cause the Table Builder to sometimes hang when selecting "Send to BBEdit" - the Table Builder now supports relative URLs which include folder aliases in the specified path. - the Table Builder now supports SmartScroll. - Command-/ (Command-Forward-Slash) now operates to zoom the front window, just as in BBEdit. - the Table Builder now spins the cursor to indicate progress while reading or writing HTML documents (and when importing and exporting from BBEdit). The BBEdit HTML tools have been updated to version 2.2.1, and feature the following fixes and improvements: + New tools are provided to support markup for frames, scripts, style sheets, and applets. + You can now control the behavior of the "Check Links" command. The "Check Links Options" command, available from the "HTML Debugging" submenu under the Tools menu, provides the following controls: - "Always Show Warnings": if there are any warnings (for example, a link beyond the scope of the current server), an Errors window will appear to display those warnings, whether or not there are any errors. The remaining settings allow you to set some of the conditions for when the link checker issues warnings: - "Remote Links": if the link checker determines that a link is not within your site (as set in the "HTML" section of the Preferences dialog), it will issue a warning if this check box is activated. - "Folder Aliases": if one or more folders encountered in a file path are aliases, the link checker will issue a warning if this check box is activated. - "Incorrect Filename Case": if the case of a file name as specified in a link does not match the actual case of the file's name as it appears on disk, the link checker will issue a warning if this check box is activated. You can also bring up the check links options by holding down the Option key when clicking on "Check Links" or "Check Site Links" in the HTML tools palette, or by using the "Check Links Options" button in the palette. + It is now much easier to specify which tools should appear in the HTML Tools Palette. To do this, choose "Configure Buttons" from the popup menu in the upper left-hand corner of the palette. + the Web Color Palette now remembers whether or not it was open when you quit BBEdit. If you leave the palette open when you quit BBEdit, it will reappear the next time you launch BBEdit. If you close the Web Color Palette before quitting BBEdit, it will not. + If you hold down the Option key while clicking the "File" button in the Anchor and Image tools, those tools will list every file on your hard disk. If you click the "File" button without any modifiers, those tools will only list eligible image or HTML files. + the Web Color Palette has been renamed to appear as "<HTML> Web Color Palette" on the menus, for consistency with the rest of the HTML tools. + the HTML link checker will now resolve and verify links which include a folder alias in the file path. + the HTML Table tool now provides the option to generate a "shell" table (that is, a table which contains the necessary structure and you need only fill in the appropriate content). + the old "Index Document" tool has been replaced with an all-new and improved "<HTML> Index Document" tool, which is much faster and more flexible than previous versions of the tool. + the Preview tool has been modified to work around various Web browser bugs (particularly, a bug in which Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.0.x would misbehave when asked to preview a file with no open browser windows), and to add compatibility with more Web browser (particularly CyberDog). + the HTML syntax checker now recognizes and <NOSCRIPT>. - previous versions of the Update tool would only recognize the "#DONT_UPDATE#" placeholder if it appeared in ALL CAPS. The current version will now recognize the placeholder regardless of its capitalization. - the Anchor and Image tools are now intelligent about encoding special characters in URLs, and so will no longer encode characters such as "?", "&", "=" which can appear in CGI calls (for example). - the Update tool is now about 40% faster than before as the result of having addressed an internal performance bottleneck. - the Format tool will no longer interfere with whitespace occurring between matching <PRE> and </PRE> tags. - the "Check HTML" tool will no longer issue errors for in <TT>, nor for <BIG> or in . - the Format tool will now remember the last format you used across invocations of the tool and runs of BBEdit. - the HTML checker will no longer complain about legitimate markup occurring within a container. - the UnComment tool now correctly removes comments in situations where it didn't before. - the NCSA to Client Side image map converter now correctly converts spaces to commas where it didn't before. - when receiving a table from the Table Builder, the <HTML> Table Builder tool will now select the table. - the Update Site tool will now honor the line-break convention of any files that it modifies, rather than always writing out Mac line breaks. - the No Break tool will no longer (incorrectly) extend the selection to the start of the line before applying its markup. - the "Breaks" tool is now much faster than before, and Undo of this tool will now work correctly in situations where it didn't before. - fixed a bug in the table converter which would cause incorrect code generation when "First Line is Header" and "First Item is Header" are both turned on. - the Table Builder tool will no longer hang when asked to send a table containing more than 32K of HTML code to the Table Builder application. - the "Translate" tool now correctly sets the "Selection Only" checkbox when it is invoked. Also, the translation direction setting now defaults to the setting that was last used in that dialog. - fixed a bug in which an "Unknown Error N" (with N some small integer) would be reported when using popups from the tool palette. - the Preview tool will now correctly clean up preview temp files from remote volumes. - fixed a problem with the template used by the Index tool which would cause site and folder indices to be generated with incorrect URLs. - the NCSA to client-side image map converter was erroneously omitted from the standard installation. This has been corrected. - the HTML tools will only try to access the Root and Template directories when absolutely necessary. This eliminates the alert which would sometimes appear when starting up BBEdit. - the Image tool will now recognize the USEMAP attribute and fill in the proper settings in the dialog when editing an existing image tag. - the Breaks tool will now properly honor the HTML tag case setting. - fixed a bug in which attempts to Undo the action of the Paragraph tool would cause unpredictable results. - the HTML link checker no longer reports errors on fully-qualified URLs that reference the current site. The FTP tool (used to support the "Open from FTP Server" and "Save to FTP Server" commands) has been updated to version 4.5.1, and features the following fixes and improvements: - the FTP tool scripting interface now behaves correctly when asked to fetch to a local file that doesn't yet exist. (It now creates the local file, rather than signalling a "File Not Found" error.) - when transferring a file via the scripting interface, the FTP tool no longer mangles plain file names passed as the "path" parameter. (It would previously delete the first character of the specified name before trying to transfer the file.) =end=