Alpha Developer Build 9.2d1 (10073)

[Bernard D. <bde...@or...>]

Hi all,

I have uploaded a new developer build of Alpha. This is Alpha 9.2d1 ("Gianfar_d1") for Mac OS X 10.11 or greater. 
This is not a final release. It is meant for developers and beta testers. 

This new version contains some major improvements. The most noticeable is that Alpha now has its own internal PDF viewers. This is a great new feature because it means that the pdf output of your latex files is now displayed directly by Alpha (no need to use external PDF viewers anymore). Furthermore, Alpha now also incorporates the synctex technology (written by Jérôme Laurens) so that you have two-way synchronisation between your latex sources and the pdf output. Here is how it works:
- if you set the insertion cursor at some position in your latex document and want to go to the corresponding location in the pdf file, you just have to select the command Latex menu ↣ Process ↣ Synchronise. Alpha then brings the pdf document to front at the right location and blinks a small rectangle there to help you spot this position.
- the other way round, if you want to go from some location inside the pdf output back to the corresponding position in the latex source file, you just have to Option-Click on the desired position in the pdfviewer .

That’s all there is to it. 

Another great new feature, in another area, is that Alpha now has its own internal command to execute comparisons between files or folders. So it does not rely anymore on external resources. The interface (offered by the Compare submenu in the Tools menu) is almost unchanged. There is just a new item to set Comparison Options, and folders comparison has its own separate navigation windows.

Please test these new features and report any problem or remark before the final 9.2 release.


Disclaimer: this development build reflects the current state of the source code and should be used only for testing the most recent features. 
It has been built with the sources at revision 1960 in the Subversion repository at SourceForge. 
Version:	9.2d1 (devel)
Date:	2020-09-21
Build:	10073
Revision:	1960

See at the end of this message, the main changes contained in this developer release. 

Here is the URL to download the application: 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/alphacocoa/files/DevBuild/Alpha_devbuild.zip/download <https://sourceforge.net/projects/alphacocoa/files/DevBuild/Alpha_devbuild.zip/download> (38.33M) 

Checksums: 
MD5:	dc2bb0623637eba4629d48127d2a0151
SHA1:	dc6e4ef1addce9b21957538b1b44e7c1f7e38bf8
RMD160:	f59f406be15b30d1611d25ba229347f763526b4d
SHA256:	d227b0346dfadc7fd20fec088b90243f50664c69af3b42ac58748aa55dd61512


If you find problems with the application, don't hesitate to post bug reports (go to Alpha's Bug Tracker <https://sourceforge.net/p/alphacocoa/tickets/>). 

Thank you for using Alpha. 
Cheers, 
Bernard
 <>Changes from previous version

New core command [synctex] <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Reference/synctex.html> to handle synchronization between LaTeX source files and the PDF output. This relies on the synctex library written by Jérôme Laurens (see Synchronization for TeX <https://github.com/jlaurens/synctex> on Github).
New view PDFView <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Reference/view.html#view_pdfview> for the [view] <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Reference/view.html> command.
New built-in PDF viewer for LaTeX mode with full two-way synchronization.
New dynamic commands associated with each PDFView <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Reference/view.html#view_pdfview> view for manipulating the content of the text. See the $pdfToken command <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Reference/pdfViewer.html> help page.
New core command [diffFiles] <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Syntax/diffFiles.html> to perform a diff between two text files.
Modified the behavior of the [search] <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Syntax/search.html> command in the case of a backward regexp search: the command does not match anymore at the starting position. The semantics of the -l option has also been slightly modified in the case of a backward literal search.
Improved indentation in C modes.
Revision of Alpha's Compare <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/CompareHelp.html> package based on the new [diffFiles] <https://alphacocoa.sourceforge.io/Syntax/diffFiles.html> core command. Alpha does not use external tools anymore for executing comparisons, in particular the extra application DiffBOA.app has retired and has been removed from the bundle.
The helper application AlphaUpdater.app has been removed and is replaced by shell scripts invoked directly by the core.
The following tickets have been closed:
Ticket #235: spellchecker <https://sourceforge.net/p/alphacocoa/tickets/235/>
Ticket #236: spellchecker <https://sourceforge.net/p/alphacocoa/tickets/236/>