[ jEdit-announce ] jEdit 4.1 now available

[Slava P. <sl...@je...>]

jEdit 4.1 is now available from <http://www.jedit.org>.

jEdit 4.1 features improved functionality, usability and performance.

Many thanks to all the people who contributed to the editor core during
the 4.1 development cycle: Alex Jacoby, Alexander Maryanovsky, Alfonso
Garcia, Andreas Mross, Axel Biernat, Carmine Lucarelli, Chris Kent,
Chris Petersen, Claude Eisenhut, Cullen Linn, Eric Benoit, Fan Ho Yin,
Gerd Knops, Giulio Piancastelli, Iain Hewson, Ivan Herman, John Perry,
Jonathan Revusky, Joseph Schroer, Joshua Miller, Kris Kopicki, Marcelo
Vanzin, Marco Gotze, Marco Hunsicker, Matthias Schneider, Oliver
Rutherfurd, Patrick Tingen, Peter Cox, Randolf Mock, Reinout van
Schouwen, Rex Young, Rudolf Widmann, Ryan Grove, Silas Smith, Stefan
Jozsa, Stefan Kost, Steve Snider, Thomas Dilts, Will Varfar, and extra
special thanks to anybody whose name I forgot to mention here!

And many thanks to all those who worked on plugins during this time too.

An overview of major changes from 4.0 to 4.1 follows.

* User interface

- Improved menu bar layout and Utilities->Global Options dialog box
  usability.

- jEdit now remembers if windows were maximized across sessions when
  running on Java 1.4.

- The View->Unsplit Current command removes the currently focused split
  from the view. Other splits are left intact (unlike View->Unsplit All).

- The View->New Plain View command opens a new view without any tool
  bars or docked windows.

- The View->Docking menu now contains commands for moving keyboard focus
  to the four docking areas and the text area.

  The commands for closing each of the four docking areas have been
  merged into a single command that closes the currently focused docking
  area.

- All dockables now automatically have commands created for them for
  opening a new floating instance of that dockable, regardless of the
  docking configuration. The commands are named after the dockable name
  with "(New Floating Instance)" appended.

  Another way to open a new floating instance of a docked window is to
  select the appropriate command from a dockable button's right-click
  menu.

- The status bar now displays the word wrap mode and the line separator.

- The contents of the status bar can be customized in the Status Bar
  pane of the Utilities->Global Options dialog box.

* Text editing

- Rectangular selection now respects hard tabs, inserting text into
  columns has been much improved, and a there is now a "Vertical Paste"
  command.

- Auto indent in Java mode and similar file types now inserts indent
  after "if", "while", "for", and such.

- By rebinding commands in the Shortcuts pane of the Global Options
  dialog box, the C+LEFT/C+RIGHT commands can be reconfigured to skip
  whitespace, like they do in some other text editors.

  The standard commands are named "Go to Previous/Next Word"; the
  alternative versions are named "Go to Previous/Next Word (Eat
  Whitespace)". Corresponding "Select to..." commands exist for
  CS+LEFT/RIGHT.

* Search and replace

- Directory search can now be performed over virtual file systems.

- The HyperSearch Results window can optionally retain previous search
  results.

- HyperSearch within a rectangular selection is now supported.

- The search bar is now hidden by default. The quick search commands
  make it visible, and pressing ESCAPE hides it.

  If you prefer the old behavior where the search bar was always
  visible, specify so in the General pane of the Utilities->Global
  Options dialog box.

* File system browser

- The File->Open With Encoding menu has been removed. Files can now be
  opened in a different encoding by selecting the encoding from the file
  system browser's Commands->Encoding menu.

- The popup menu shown when right-clicking on a file now has commands
  for opening the file in a new horizontal split, and a new plain view.

- The text field in file system browser dialog boxes now auto-completes
  the currently entered file name.

* Syntax highlighting

- Syntax highlighting for 15 new file types has been added.

- HTML mode now correctly highlights most <SCRIPT> and <STYLE> tags.

- Perl mode now correctly highlights various esoteric constructions such
  as s/.../.../, m#...#, and so on.

- Added regular expression matching with SEQ_REGEXP, SPAN_REGEXP and
  EOL_SPAN_REGEXP rules.

- EOL_SPAN rules can now delegate to another rule set.

- SEQ rules can now specify a delegate -- this will switch the rule set
  for the remainder of the SEQ's context.

- Rules can now specify AT_WORD_START and AT_WHITESPACE_END attributes
  for more exact control of where they should match.

- Digit highlighting is now more flexible. Rulesets can specify a
  regular expression that matches numeric expressions in a DIGIT_RE
  attribute.

* Macro system

- jEdit now includes BeanShell 1.2b7, which features a number of minor
  improvements over version 1.2b6, which was shipped with jEdit 4.0.

- The "scriptPath" variable is now set to the full path of the currently
  running macro or script.

- If the system and user macro directories have a sub-directory with the
  same name, the contents of the sub-directory is merged into a single
  sub-menu of the Macros menu. Previously, two sub-menus with the same
  name would be created.

- Startup scripts can be written in any scripting language supported by
  an installed plugin, not just BeanShell. This lets you write startup
  scripts in Jython if the JythonInterpreter plugin is installed, for
  example.

* Plugin manager

- A SOCKS proxy server can now be specified in the Proxy Servers pane of
  the Global Options dialog box.

- The "Install Plugins" and "Update Plugins" dialog boxes now categorize
  the plugin list.

* Documentation

- The online help is now fully searchable.

- For macro and plugin developers, API documentation generated with
  javadoc is now included.

* Incompatible changes

- Older versions of some plugins might be incompatible with jEdit 4.1.
  Ensure you are running the latest set.

- Custom edit modes might need some minor updates to work with jEdit
  4.1. See the "Updating Edit Modes" section of the user's guide for
  details.

- Wheel mouse scrolling support for Java 1.4 is now built-in; if you
  previously installed the WheelMouse plugin, remove it.

- The "indent on enter" and "indent on tab" settings have been removed.
  Now, the behavior of the ENTER and TAB keys can be configured in the
  Shortcuts pane of the Global Options dialog box, just as with any
  other key. The ENTER key can be bound to one of the following
  commands, for example:

  - Insert Newline
  - Insert Newline and Indent (default)

  The TAB key can be bound to one of these commands:

  - Insert Tab
  - Insert Tab or Indent (default)
  - Indent Selected Lines

  Custom behavior can also be implemented by binding these keys to
  macros, etc.

- The "smart home/end" setting has been removed. Now, the behavior of
  the HOME and END keys can be configured in the Shortcuts pane of the
  Global Options dialog box, just as with any other key. The HOME key
  can be bound to one of the following commands, for example:

  - Go to Start of Line
  - Go to Start of White Space
  - Go to Start of Buffer
  - Smart Home (default three-keystroke behavior)

  The END key can be bound to one of these commands:

  - Go to End of Line
  - Go to End of White Space
  - Go to End of Buffer
  - Smart End (default three-keystroke behavior)

  There are corresponding "Select to..." commands that can be bound to
  S+HOME and S+END too.
-- 
Slava Pestov