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ANN: Alpha8 8.0 final-release candidate
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From: Jon G. <jg...@hi...> - 2005-05-31 13:37:05
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The Alpha-Cabal is pleased to announce the second final-release candidate of Alpha8 8.0 for pre-Mac OS X systems (binary version 8.0, AlphaTcl version 8.0.1fc2). The Alpha-Cabal is a small group of Alpha users who have taken over Alpha's development from the original author Pete Keleher. All improvements of Alpha and its suite of Tcl script files (collectively known as "AlphaTcl") are undertaken by unpaid volunteers. Please test this distribution, and report any bugs encountered to this list or file them in Alpha-Bugzilla using the "Help > Report A Bug" menu item. Assuming that no downloading/installation bugs are discovered, the final releases will be announced here and on VersionTracker, MacUpdate and other relevant sites next Friday (3 June 2005). ------------------- System Requirements ------------------- Alpha8 is only supported on Mac OS 8.5 and above. It will run in the Mac OS X "Classic" environment, but is known to have problems and is not recommended. This version of Alpha8 does has some known bugs --- use it at your own risk. <http://www.his.com/jguyer/Alpha/download/Alpha8-8.0.sit.bin> (9.4 MB download. If your e-mailer splits the urls at the dashes or elsewhere, note that there are _no_ spaces in them. Copy the string, paste it into your browser's location bar, and massage the text as necessary.) ------------------------------ Changes between 8.0b14 and 8.0 ------------------------------ (1) Printing is now available in AlphaX. (2) Alpha's Help menu has been re-organized, and now includes items for "More Modes Help" "More Menus Help" "More Features Help" Selecting these will open a list-pick dialog with options for all installed AlphaTcl packages. Additional new Help menu items available include "Search Help" "Modes Menus & Features" "Search e-mail archives" "Make a suggestion" Suggestions are logged as Requests For Enhancement (RFEs) in Alpha-Bugzilla, and listed in the "Bug Reports and Debugging" help file. The "WWW faq" item has been removed, since it has not been actively maintained. The AlphaTcl Wiki and the mailing list archives are the best spots to get questions answered until we have a dedicated site. The "Changes - Alpha" and "Changes - AlphaTcl" files are no longer included in the main Help menu, since they list the technical changes that won't interest most users. They are still available via hyperlinks in this file, as well as in the AlphaDeveloper menu. (3) The default "Word Wrap" preference for each mode has been exposed, and can be changed by selecting "Config > Mode Prefs > Preferences". This preference determines the initial "Wrap" setting for all windows which are opened in that mode. The "Wrap" pop-up menu in the status bar now changes the setting only for the active window. When the package: autoContinueComment is turned on, text that is typed in in a commented line will be automatically wrapped even if the current "Wrap" setting is "None". Pressing Control-Return still creates a new line without any automatic indentation or insertion of comment characters. (4) The "File Format" pop-up menu in the status bar allows you to change the font, font-size, tab-size, and indentation amount of the active window. You can also change the window's TYPE and CREATOR codes. (Most files that you edit are of type "TEXT", and Alpha's creator code is "ALFA".) (5) Alpha no longer provides support for the "Think" IDE. The "saved state" options used to include "None" "Think" and "MPW", but the terminology has been changed to reflect a binary choice: "Text Only" vs "Remember Window State". When "Remember Window State" is selected, window position, current selection, tab sizes, and font information are saved every time you open and close the file. You can toggle this in the "File Format" pop-up menu. (6) The package: versionControl is now "always-on" and the "lock/pencil" icon in each window's sidebar is always a pop-up menu. This provides access to various VC options as well as information for the fileset (if any) to which the active window belongs. You must normally specify a "VC tool" to use for the fileset containing the active window. If a "CVS" directory is present in the folder containing the active window and no other VC system has been established for that file, the VC menu will automatically assume that you're using CVS as your VC tool. (7) Some of Alpha's menubar menus (File through OpenWindows) have been re-organized. In particular, "Indent Line/Selection" is now in the "Edit" menu in the "Shift Right/Left" section, and all of the "All Tabs To Spaces" etc. items are in a new "Edit > Tab Conversions" submenu. "Edit > Indent" replaces the previous "Indent Line/Indent Selection" commands, and indents the entire selection (if any) and not just the line containing the cursor. The "OpenWins > Iconify" menu item has been renamed "Minimize Window." Some of Alpha's global keyboard shortcuts have also been adjusted. "Edit > Indent" is Control-I "Search > Find In Next File" is Command-Control-F (was Command-M) "OpenWins > Minimize Window" is Command-M (was Control-I) (8) The new "Utils > Compare > Diff Prefs" menu item can be used to adjust any Diff preferences/flags before performing window etc. comparisons. (9) In TeX mode, "Shift-Command-R" will invoke a new smooth interface to teTeX, with support for most dvi/pdf viewers, and featuring error browsing, synchronisation, and auto-next-action. See the "teTeX Help" file for further description and instructions. This web page <http://alphatcl.sourceforge.net/wikit/156> provides additional information about typesetting LaTeX documents using AlphaX, and the various preferences that need to be properly set. (10) Previous versions included "CodeWarrior Menu" and "CodeWarrior2 Menu". These have now been combined into a single package, and updated for MacOSX. For more information on how it works see the "CodeWarrior Menu Help" window. (11) The "File Utils" feature has been updated and renamed, for more information see the help window for the package: windowUtilities . This update also created a new package: fileCompression , which allows you to create .sit .zip, and .tar archives from within Alpha. (12) The "Remote Tcl Shell" package has been incorporated into the Tcl menu, and it is no longer a feature that needs to be turned on. The menu item "Utils > Toolserver Shell" has been removed, and is now only available in the "MPW Menu". The menu item "Utils > Shell" is now "Utils > Tcl Shell". (13) The "Cut And Copy Using Pin" preference has been incorporated into a new package: clipboardPreferences . The "Smart Cut Paste" preference previously defined by the package: copyRing has been renamed "Cut Paste Whitespace" and moved into this new package as well, along with a new "Select After Paste" preference. This "Clipboard Preferences" package must be turned on in the preferences: Features dialog to make these options available. Once it is turned on, select "Config > Preferences > Interface Preferences > Text" to change their values. The package: copyRing has also received a major update, and now offers a new "Edit > Clip Recorder" menu which maintains a Clipboard History. (14) The "Switch To Menu" package has been deemed obsolete and removed from the standard distribution. The new package: favoritesMenu allows you to specify Files, Folders, and Applications to be opened by Alpha. (15) One new mode has been added: dot (For files in the dot language (for automatic graph design)) (16) Several new features have been added, including clipboardPreferences (additional preferences for cut/copy/paste) favoritesMenu (open favorite files/folders/apps from Alpha) fileCompression (for archiving windows/files/folders) windowUtilities (various handy window tools, formerly "fileUtils") See their respective Help windows for more information. (17) As is always the case with a major release, several AlphaTcl modes, menus and features have been updated as well, including alphaServer copyRing M2 newDocument sourceforgeMenu smarterSource terminal See their respective Help windows for more information. (18) Several AlphaTcl packages are now turned on by default (and can never be turned off), including "Fileset Information" packages : filesetEncodingPreference filesetFtpMirror filesetIndentationPreference filesetTabPreference All of the "Fileset Information" packages add preferences that can be turned on when you "editAFileset" and click on the "Attach/Detach Info" button. (19) Several AlphaTcl packages have been classified as obsolete and removed from the standard distribution, including File Utils Remote Tcl Shell Switch To Menu Think Menu Their archived source files can still be found in the AlphaTcl CVS "Attic". -- Jon |