JHTML / News: Recent posts

Update 8/10/00

1.0pre5

- Tabs work and are a preference option
- With tabbed views, the tabs position on the window are now an option
- Syntax Highlighting, not perfect, but works
- New find/replace dialog
- Selected text to upper/lower case supported
- All HTML tags to upper/lower case supported ( takes a while on large documents )
- Init PreferenceMenu/HelpAgent on startup are options, turned off, it increases JHTML's startup speed by about 2x
- Project directory is a option now
- Replace keeps a persistent highlight now, doesn't go away after replacement
- Help agent pages added for each menu ( file, edit, etc. )
- Text style is no longer an option since anything but monospaced resulted in crap formatting.
- Multiline elements ( comments, tags left open, etc. ) are supported somewhat. They are colored correctly when created, but if you ( for example ) jump into the middle of a 10 line comment and add "-->" to end it, the remaining 5 lines won't recolor themselves correctly right away. This is something I am working on.

pre4 is comming along nicely, I'm tackling the preference menu now, trying to figure out the best way to balance its look and beauty for the user and how easy it is for me to extend and maintain. I think I'm on the right track.

I repackaged and reposted pre2 and pre3 to follow correct packaging order.

I've decided to release pre3 as is, with no warrenty as far as functionality is concerned because I've been getting so many requests to see a current snapshot, so here it is!

Progress is comming along nicely, please check the new jhtml.sourceforge.net page for progress reports and what else has been happening.

A current rewrite of JHTML is under way to take advantage of dynamic loading of the modules, most of the program will be rewritten from the ground up with a more extensible design

Ok, after evaluating JHTML with JDK 1.3 it looks like the tabbing in JTextPane has been fixed, so developement will continue on JHTML and the JDK requirements will be upgraded to 1.3 for proper functionality.

Developement will hold off until the first release candidates of JDK 1.3 are available for Linux so JHTML can be used across all major platforms.

There exists a tabbing problem in JTextPane's in JDK 1.2.x series, this problem did not exist in 1.1.x series of JDK's and we are waiting to see if it exists in 1.3.x series of JDK before continuing. If the problem does still exist in 1.3.x, we will downgrade the project to use JDK 1.1.8 and Swing 1.1.1 ( Much like JEdit ) to avoid hours of finding a way around the tabs in JTextPane.

Thank you for being patient.

After extensive research into the areas of: Syntax Highlighting, Plugin support, Auto indentation, Right click tag editing, etc. I have decided to pause the developement of this project until a new design paradigm has been developed. Currently the code works very well with its current design. Its not very extensible, not dynamic ( runtime plugins, etc ) at all, and I have yet to figure out the most efficient manner in which to implement Syntax Highlighting ( which is the sticking point at the time of this writing ). If anyone has any information on any of these topics, please email me, I will greatly appreciate it. However, please do not suggest using precoded classes (i.e. JEdit's components ), that would defeat the original purpose of this project, which is to learn as we go :)

Ok, the inital release of JHTML has finally been posted to CVS as well as a release that matches it. Currently only the File Menu works, none of the other menus or toolbars work. Progress is being made quickly so don't be too discouraged. Once all the menus and toolbars are implemented, work will start on Syntax Highlighting and auto indentation immediately.

Stay tuned!

-JHTML Developers