home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
Text File | 1997-03-19 | 8.7 KB | 225 lines | [TEXT/R*ch] |
- What’s New in BBEdit Lite 4.0.1
- ------ --- -- ------ ---- -----
-
- This document provides a quick overview of what’s new in BBEdit Lite
- 4.0, relative to previous versions. In general, many improvements and
- refinements have been made to the user interface, and a number of
- performance enhancements and bug fixes are also included.
-
-
- Overall Construction
- ------- ------------
- From an engineering perspective, BBEdit Lite 4.0 has more in common with
- commercial releases of BBEdit than with previous releases of BBEdit
- Lite. It is built from the same code and resource bases. This has
- yielded many “under the hood” improvements to performance,
- functionality, and reliability.
-
-
- PowerPC Performance
- ------- -----------
- BBEdit 4.0 is constructed as a “fat binary”: an application which is
- fully native on both 680x0 and PowerPC Macintosh models. This yields
- maximum performance on Power Macs, and also derives benefits from using
- Virtual Memory on Power Macintosh models.
-
-
- Drag and Drop Text Editing
- ---- --- ---- ---- -------
- BBEdit Lite 4.0 features “drag and drop” text editing; having made a
- selection, you simply drag it to wherever it needs to go: another
- location in the same document, another open window, or another
- application. If you drop your text selection in the Finder, and the
- “Clipping Extension” is installed, the system will create a clipping
- file, which may be re-used at any time.
-
- You can also insert a file’s contents into a text document by simply
- dragging and dropping it from another location. To insert a folder
- listing, drag and drop a folder (or an alias to a folder), or even an
- entire disk.
-
-
- Recent Files
- ------ -----
- In the File menu, the “Open Recent” command gives quick access to the
- twelve most-recently-opened files.
-
-
- Improved Search and Replace
- -------- ------ --- -------
- BBEdit Lite 4.0 features improved performance in Grep searches and
- “Replace All” operations. For optimal Replace All performance, we
- recommend that you turn on the “Start at Top” check box in the Find
- dialog, or, if you do not wish to operate on the entire file, turn off
- the “Wrap Around” and “Backwards” check boxes.
-
-
- Updated Extensions
- ------- ----------
- Several of the BBEdit extensions included in the BBEdit Lite
- distribution package have been improved and upgraded:
-
- - The “827” extension has been renamed “Convert to ASCII”, to more
- accurately reflect this tool’s function;
-
- - The “Educate Quotes” extension is now undo-able, and will operate
- on the current selection range if there is one (and on the entire
- document if not).
-
- - the behavior of Prefix/Suffix Lines has now been corrected in
- several instances.
-
- Bug Fixes and Minor Improvements
- --- ----- --- ----- ------------
-
- The following minor enhancements are new as of BBEdit Lite 4.0.1:
-
- + When performing an "Open Selection" within an untitled document,
- BBEdit will now detect the case in which the selection encompasses a
- full pathname, and attempt to open the file directly.
-
- + The Clipboard window is now searchable; you can also make selections
- using the mouse or keyboard and drag them to other BBEdit windows
- (or to other applications).
-
- + If you choose the "Open Selection" command and there is no selection
- in the front editing window, BBEdit will display a dialog that you
- can use to type in the desired file name.
-
- + Various optimizations have been applied to the process of loading
- BBEdit Extensions; the result is that in general, there is a
- noticeable reduction in the amount of time BBEdit takes to start up.
-
- + BBEdit now requires much less transient memory when performing a Cut
- or Copy operation, and now stores its clipboard data in system
- memory. The net result is that you should be able to cut and copy
- very large amounts of text without needing to increase BBEdit's
- memory allocation size.
-
- The following reported problems are corrected in BBEdit Lite 4.0.1:
-
- - When beginning a new undoable action, BBEdit Lite now releases any
- memory used by a previous undoable action.
-
- - Fixed a problem in the Grep pattern matcher which would cause
- available memory to decrease each time a Grep search is performed;
- this would lead to BBEdit rapidly running out of memory during
- Replace All operations using Grep.
-
- - when saving a modified document, BBEdit now ensures that sufficient
- disk space is available -before- attempting to overwrite the old
- document contents. This guards against the old document getting lost
- in the event of a disk-full error.
-
- - if BBEdit has to take its "emergency exit" due to an out-of-memory
- condition, it will now use intrinsic MacOS notification services to
- warn of this state of affairs. This prevents a hang which would
- occur if BBEdit unexpectedly ran out of memory while performing an
- operation in the background.
-
- - the line number display will no longer flicker as you type in
- editing windows.
-
- - in some circumstances, BBEdit would be launched in the background
- by another application, get brought forward, and end confused about
- whether it was in the foreground or not. BBEdit now guards against
- this situation.
-
- - when printing soft-wrapped text documents, BBEdit will no longer
- erroneously drop the last character.
-
- - BBEdit now guards itself against corrupted resource files; this
- prevents BBEdit from quitting unexpectedly when open files whose
- state information may have been damaged.
-
- - when multi-file searching after a reverse search, BBEdit will now
- BBEdit will no longer occasionally try to search backwards in disk
- files (resulting in no occurrences being found).
-
- What was New In BBEdit Lite 3.5
- ==== === === == ====== ==== ===
-
- This section summarizes the changes that were introduced in BBEdit
- Lite 3.5.
-
- “Soft” Text Wrapping
- ------ ---- --------
- BBEdit Lite 3.5 features “soft” text wrapping, in which long lines of
- text are automatically wrapped to the width of the editing window,
- without using carriage returns. As you insert and delete text, BBEdit
- Lite will automatically re-flow the text as necessary. The “Soft
- Wrap Text” option replaces the old “Wrap While Typing” option.
-
-
- New “Find” Dialog
- --- ------ ------
- The Find dialog (which comes up when you choose “Find...” from the
- Search menu) has been expanded and revised for more functionality and
- greater ease of use. All of the options from BBEdit Lite 3.0 are
- present, but you no longer have to flip pages in the dialog in order to
- access the multi-file search options. In addition, you can now hide the
- multi-file search options by clicking the small triangle to the left of
- the “Multi-File Search” check box.
-
- A “Start at Top” option has been added. When this option is selected,
- BBEdit Lite will always search forward from the beginning of the file,
- regardless of where the current selection range may be.
-
-
- Updated Menus
- ------- -----
- BBEdit Lite now uses Ramon Felciano’s “Mercutio” menu definition. In
- addition to being more compatible than the previous approach, Mercutio
- also makes “alternative” keyboard equivalents visible while menus are
- pulled down. (To see this in action, pull down the File menu, and slowly
- press and release the Option key.)
-
-
- Improved “Get Info” dialog
- -------- ---- ----- ------
- The Get Info dialog has been expanded to provide character, word, and
- line counts for both the selection range and the entire documents. To
- compute the page count for the selection range and entire document,
- click the “Paginate” button. The “Copy Path” button will place the full
- path of the front document onto the Clipboard, ready for pasting into an
- edit window or into another application.
-
-
- Simplified Preferences
- ---------- -----------
- The “Zap Gremlins” and “Hard Wrap” commands now remember their settings
- after you quit BBEdit. As a result, the “Wrapping” and “Zapping”
- sections of the Preferences dialog are no longer required, and have been
- removed.
-
- In addition, the “Preferences” dialog has been revised for greater ease
- of use. All available preferences are listed on the left-hand side of
- the Preferences dialog; you can click on any one of the items to make
- that page of the dialog available.
-
-
- Simplified State
- ---------- -----
- The “Remember File State” option controls whether or not BBEdit Lite
- remembers a document’s state information (window position and size, font
- settings, display and printing options, and more). Version 3.5 no longer
- differentiates between the different state resource formats, but instead
- saves the state information in a format that is compatible with all
- modern text editors and development environments. (The Remember File
- State option for each document can be found on the file options popup in
- each window’s status area, and can be set for all new documents in the
- “State” section of the Preferences dialog.)
-
-
- Contact Info
- ======= ====
-
- Bare Bones Software, Inc.
- P.O. Box 1048
- Bedford, MA 01730
-
- email: support@barebones.com
- Web: http://www.barebones.com/
-
- =end=
-