RText / News: Recent posts

Here's what's new:

- Touchups to syntax highlighting:
- C, C++, Java: Fixed a bug that caused exceptions to be thrown
sometimes if a multiline comment's end token was
modified.
- Java: Made all java.lang.* classes, interfaces, exceptions and
errors into syntax highlighted tokens. I classified them
as "functions" even though they aren't functions, but
I didn't have a token type descriptive enough for them.
- Updated Options Dialog:
- You can now decide what file extensions get associated with
what file types, and thus control what files get syntax
highlighted.
- Fixed 'Text Area' panel so that clicking the 'Restore Defaults'
button only enables the Apply button when it changes something.
- RText once again remembers more between sessions:
- Whether or not the window was maximized.
- File filters
- File history
- Fixed bug: Background as image stopped working on Windows with the
introduction of syntax highlighting.

Here's what's new in this release:

- Touchups to syntax highlighting:
- All: Word wrap now works with syntax highlighting.
- C, C++: Made characters '?' and ':' highlighted as operators.
Preprocessor directives now colored.
- Java: Made characters '?' and ':' highlighted as operators.
Documentation comments distinguished from
multiline comments.
- Overhaul of Options dialog; designed to reflect more modern
Options dialog style found in many Windows applications. Also
added support for customizing syntax highlighting and other text
area options.
- RText now remembers more of your preferences between sessions:
whether or not word wrap was on, caret color, selection color, and
syntax highlighting colors.
- Fixed small bug involving changing carets and selections: if you
had a selection then switched from insert to overwrite mode or
vice versa and moved the caret, it appeared that the old selection
stayed (even though it really didn't). This is now fixed.
- Block caret used in overwrite mode now sizes itself to the character
it's over; this makes it look a little nicer when using a
proportional font.
- Fixed up inline comments; Javadoc now generates with no errors
or warnings.
- Fixed bug - Bad regular expressions in find/replace operations threw
unreported exceptions and appeard to not do anything; you now get a
dialog box telling you to check your regular expression.

It's been awhile, but I've finally managed to get out a new release. Version 0.8.6.0 brings an exciting new feature to RText - syntax highlighting!

Here's what's new in Version 0.8.6.0:
-----------------------------------
- VERY PRELIMINARY support for syntax highlighting. Currently
supported languages are:
1. Java
2. C
3. C++
You currently have no control over the syntax highlighting. When
you open a file with an appropriate file extension (.java, .c, etc.),
syntax highlighting will be used appropriately for that file. You
cannot currently change the color scheme used for syntax highlighting.
Word wrap is not yet supported when syntax highlighting; if you
turn on word wrap while editing a *.java/*.c/*.cpp/*.h file, you
will not be able to scroll horizontally in the file. All of these
issues will be fixed in the next couple of releases, after I ensure
that the syntax highlighting is working correctly.
- Fixed nasty bug where cut, copy and delete actions alternated
between active/inactive when the selection size grew/shrank.
- Fixed very malicious bug that slowed RText down when dealing with
files much larger than 500 kb... It has since been tested on a
2.12 MB file (representing over 60,000 lines of Java source code)
and it ran fine. Further scalability testing may come later.

Two points of news today:

First, the website (http://rtext.sourceforge.net) has been redesigned... still simple, but just a little snazzier and with a little more information on it. I hope to expand the site even more soon.

Second, I have added a Windows installer into the 0.8.5.0 release. Windows users should download and install via the Windows installer, all other OS's should for the time being install rtext.jar (as before). Hopefully by 0.8.6.0 there will be an installer for all OS's.

This release consisted of many, many smaller changes, making this version much more robust. Changes include:

- RText now remembers some of your editing preferences between
sessions.
- Worked around a Java "bug" where the default backspace action is
triggered by the same event as Ctrl+H.
- Made text fields on Replace dialog and Find in Files dialog
into "smart" combo boxes that remember your last searches.
- Changed default button on Replace dialog from "Replace Next" to
"Find Next" for safety reasons.
- Fixed a bug where if you opened the Find or Replace dialog, then
closed all open documents, you could still perform the search
and get some Java exception.
- Fixed a bug in the Find dialog's combo box where you would have
to press enter twice to do a search whenever you changed the
search string (damn Java JComboBoxes...).
- The File History in the File menu now intelligently abbreviates
file paths.
- When you do a "Replace All", RText now tells you how many times
it did the replacement.
- Find in Files dialog now clearly identifies multi-line regular
expression matches as such, to help prevent some confusion.
- Fixed a bug where if you double-clicked on a "<Verbose>" line
in the Find in Files dialog that described a directory, RText
would try to open the directory as if it were a file.
- Fixed a bug where opening a document from the Find in Files
dialog didn't add the document to the File menu's "File
History."
- Find in Files dialog now updates it's "status bar" when you
double-click on an search result to open the file, telling you
what file it opened.
- RText's status bar now has more to say; it changes its message
when you open a file, close a file, and more.
- Enhanced the "File History" in the File menu so that, if there
are no recently opened files, it shows just 1 separator, not 2.

This was a big release, with functionality being added/improved in many areas. Here are the updates in this release:

- Find in Files dialog now fully operational (added Regular Expression
searching, searching subdirectories, and some UI "prettiness"
enhancements).
- Fixed JRE 1.4 bug cauing popup menus to disappear when a modal dialog
is displayed (4911422).
- Added "Printing" tab to Options dialog, allowing you to configure some
printing options.
- Made the edit field on the Find dialog into a combo box that remembers
your last few searches. Eventually, I will do the same thing for
the text fields in the Replace and Find in Files dialogs.
- Fixed bug where printing cut off first line of every page (see
Request ID #859349).
- Updated text editor so that repeatedly pressing the "Home" key moves
the cursor between the start of the current line and the first non-tab,
non-space character on the current line.
- Updated Find dialog so that the edit box isn't extra tall when using
the Motif Look and Feel.
- Changed the startup code to give more information when RText is
initializing, in the hopes of finding out why it hangs when starting
on MacOS X 10.2.x...

The latest RText release, version 0.8.3.5, is ready for downloading! This release didn't have all the functionality I wanted for 0.8.4 (as I didn't have a lot of time over the holidays), hence the extraordinarily long release version.

Here are the major changes:
- Major overhaul of the print code. Previous releases could only print in a monospaced font; now you can print in any font installed on your system.
- Print Preview dialog was overhauled. Now you can zoom in/zoom out of individual pages, and overall performance should be better (i.e. faster).... read more

A new version of RText has just been released! 0.8.3 fixes several bugs and adds some new functionality:

1. The "Find in Files" dialog's UI has been completely redone to be both more attractive and more user-friendly. It now works (!!), can be resized, and results are color-coded for quick parsing.
2. Fixed a couple of user interface bugs specific to RText running on a Linux box.
3. Fixes to the general UI, making it more robust in catching errors if they occur.... read more

Version 0.8.2 has just been released! Here are the changes:

1. Fixed "Replace All" button on the Replace dialog, which had stopped working (unbeknownst to me).

2. Added preliminary functionality to the "Find in Files" dialog. The UI is still pretty messy, and all functionality that will be there isn't there yet.

3. Fixed the bug that kept certain icons the same when you changed the icon set. This bug only occured when no text documents were open at the time you changed icon sets.... read more

This release mainly just fixes the bug that made find/replace actions not work correctly when both the "Regular Expression" and "Whole Word" options were selected. See the change log for a complete list of changes.

Also, I'd love to hear from you if you are running RText from an OS other than Windows. If you are, please drop me a line and let me know!
robert_futrell@rtext.sourceforge.net

This version adds Regular Expression capabilities in the Find/Replace dialogs, using Java's java.util.regex package, as well as a "Find in Files" dialog (which doesn't yet do anything, but the GUI's there as a placeholder).

I may have fixed some bugs from the last release, but I can't remember.

If you try out RText, or even just run it once, I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd let me know how the program ran for you. Too slow? GUI look funny? I'm especially interested if you're running on Linux, as I don't have access to a Linux box at the moment. Feel free to fill out a bug report, or even send an email to robert_futrell@sourceforge.net.... read more

The first public release of RText, v0.7.1, is available for download. Give it a try and tell me what you think!