DeployMaster 7.4.0 is now available for download.
This release adds support for Windows 11 version 24H2 otherwise known as the 2024 Update. You can now select this version on the Platform page if you want to restrict your installer to specific Windows 11 versions.
This release also brings significant improvements to DeployMaster to find and use code signing certificates to apply a digital signature to your installer. In most cases you now only need to tick the sign the installer checkbox on the Media page. You no longer need to specify a subject name, PFX file, or command line. If you don’t then DeployMaster automatically picks a non-expired code signing certificate from your computer’s certificate store. This works with certificates stored on USB tokens and in the cloud too as long as you have unlocked the token or are logged onto the cloud service. Instructions you received for using the certificate with signtool.exe will also work with DeployMaster, without needing to download or run signtool.exe.
You can still specify the subject name of the certificate to select between multiple certificates with different names, or simply to ensure that the correct certificate is used. If there are multiple certificates with the same name then DeployMaster now picks the first one that is already valid and not yet expired. So you can leave old certificates installed and install new certificates before they become valid. If they have the same subject name then DeployMaster will automatically switch between the certificates when one expires and another becomes valid.
If you want DeployMaster to use a specific certificate then you can now specify the certificate’s thumbprint instead of its subject name. The thumbprint is a sequence of 40 hexadecimal digits that uniquely identifies each certificate. A renewed or reissued certificate will have a different thumbprint. If you have multiple certificates with the same name with overlapping validity periods then you can specify the thumbprint to sign with a specific certificate.
DeployMaster 7.1.0 through 7.3.0 allowed you to specify the full path to signtool.exe in case DeployMaster’s built-in code signing was unable find the certificate on your USB token. This functionality remains. You can still specify the full path to signtool.exe without any parameters as the custom command line for code signing. DeployMaster 7.4.0 will then run signtool.exe and provide the parameters it needs like DeployMaster 7.1.0 through 7.3.0 did. But this should no longer be necessary. If you make the custom command line for code signing empty then DeployMaster 7.4.0’s built-in code signing should be able to automatically find the certificate on your USB token just as well as signtool does, even if signtool is not installed.
If you have a code signing certificate that can’t be used by signtool.exe then DeployMaster’s built-in code signing won’t be able to use it either. For those situations you will need to continue using a custom command line for code signing with %FILE% and other placeholders as introduced in DeployMaster 7.3.0.
One bug was fixed. When building from the command line you can specify the \q parameter to run DeployMaster silently and the \l parameter to write the log that would appear on the Build tab into a file. The log is now written correctly when you specify both these parameters. Previously, only the first line was written to the file.
EditPad Lite 8.5.3 is now available for download.
Some mice have a wheel that can be tilted left and right. EditPad’s editor control is now able to receive mouse wheel tilt messages. It will scroll the text horizontally when you tilt the wheel if word wrap is off and there are lines longer than the width of the editor.
Modern trackpads allow you to slide two fingers over the trackpad to perform a scrolling gesture. Technically, this gesture makes the trackpad send mouse wheel messages. You could previously scroll vertically this way in EditPad because EditPad’s editor control has long recognized mouse wheel rotation messages. Because it now also recognizes mouse wheel tilt messages, you can now scroll horizontally in EditPad by sliding two fingers horizontally over a trackpad.
On the Definition page of the file type configuration dialog there is a checkbox labeled “show in file type selection lists“. It controls whether the file type is shown in the drop-down list with file types on file selection dialog boxes such as those shown by File|Open and File|Save As. By default this is checked for all file types. You can clear it for file types that you don’t use (often) to make it easier to pick the file types that you do use often. Now this checkbox is disabled for the “unspecified file type“. Many of EditPad’s features assumes that this file type is at the top of the list. It is used as a fallback when no other file type has a file mask or regex that matches a particular file. It allows file selection dialogs to show all files as its file mask is *.*.
The color palette which you can customize for each file type has separate entries for “character” and “character string” in the list of individual colors. Most of the predefined palettes give the same color to both, such as blue in the default palette and yellow in the “white on black” palette. But some, such as the Visual Studio palettes, give them different colors. Many of the syntax coloring schemes included with EditPad can use the two different colors to highlight character escapes within strings. The included PHP schemes do this. But they didn’t take into account that PHP has different rules for single-quoted and double-quoted strings. In a single-quoted string, a backslash can only escape itself and a single quote. EditPad now includes updated PHP schemes that implement this correctly.
EditPad Pro 8.5.3 is now available for download.
You can use Block|Rectangular Selections to switch between making normal and rectangular selections. All of EditPad’s commands that operate on a selection also work with rectangular selections. This release brings a few fixes so that Block|Move Selection and Block|Swap Selections work correctly with rectangular selections too.
Before you can swap selections you need to use View|Split Editor to get two views of the same file. You can make a different selection in each view. Splitting the view affects all open files. The view remains split in the same way when you switch between files. This release fixes a bug that caused EditPad to crash if you split between a file that was using a left-to-right text layout and another that was using a right-to-left text layout, or vice versa. A right-to-left text layout allows for more natural editing of files written primarily in a right-to-left language such as Hebrew or Arabic.
Some mice have a wheel that can be tilted left and right. EditPad’s editor control is now able to receive mouse wheel tilt messages. It will scroll the text horizontally when you tilt the wheel if word wrap is off and there are lines longer than the width of the editor.
Modern trackpads allow you to slide two fingers over the trackpad to perform a scrolling gesture. Technically, this gesture makes the trackpad send mouse wheel messages. You could previously scroll vertically this way in EditPad because EditPad’s editor control has long recognized mouse wheel rotation messages. Because it now also recognizes mouse wheel tilt messages, you can now scroll horizontally in EditPad by sliding two fingers horizontally over a trackpad.
On the Definition page of the file type configuration dialog there is a checkbox labeled “show in file type selection lists“. It controls whether the file type is shown in the drop-down list with file types on file selection dialog boxes such as those shown by File|Open and File|Save As. By default this is checked for all file types. You can clear it for file types that you don’t use (often) to make it easier to pick the file types that you do use often. Now this checkbox is disabled for the “unspecified file type“. Many of EditPad’s features assumes that this file type is at the top of the list. It is used as a fallback when no other file type has a file mask or regex that matches a particular file. It allows file selection dialogs to show all files as its file mask is *.*.
The color palette which you can customize for each file type has separate entries for “character” and “character string” in the list of individual colors. Most of the predefined palettes give the same color to both, such as blue in the default palette and yellow in the “white on black” palette. But some, such as the Visual Studio palettes, give them different colors. Many of the syntax coloring schemes included with EditPad can use the two different colors to highlight character escapes within strings. The included PHP schemes do this. But they didn’t take into account that PHP has different rules for single-quoted and double-quoted strings. In a single-quoted string, a backslash can only escape itself and a single quote. EditPad now includes updated PHP schemes that implement this correctly.
EditPad Pro includes several file navigation schemes for Markdown. There are different schemes for different Markdown dialects. For each dialect there is a scheme that makes EditPad Pro’s File Navigator show a flat list of headings and another that makes it show a nested tree of headings. The schemes can also add folding ranges to your file so you can fold the text of a section under its heading. The schemes that produce a flat list only fold the text that follows the heading, stopping at the next heading. The schemes that produce a tree have been changed to extend folding ranges until the next heading that is at a higher level. So if you fold a heading then all the text following that heading and any sub-headings is folded under that heading. This makes the behavior of the automatic folding ranges consistent with the file navigation tree for Markdown files.
RegexMagic 2.13.2 is now available for download.
RegexMagic now officially supports .NET 8, Boost 1.85, Java 22, and Ruby 3.3. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.
The pattern for VAT numbers has been updated to support new Belgian VAT numbers that start with the digit 1.
You can use the Insert key on the keyboard to toggle between insert and overwrite mode in the edit controls on RegexMagic’s main window. In overwrite mode, these edit controls now use the overwrite cursor specified in the text layout configuration in the Preferences. By default this is a block cursor that covers the bottom half of the character that will be overwritten.
RegexBuddy 4.14.2 is now available for download.
RegexBuddy now officially supports .NET 8.0, Boost 1.85, and Java 22, and Ruby 3.3. These regex flavors are unchanged compared with previous versions.
Perl 5.22 and later support the /n flag to turn unnamed groups into non-capturing groups. RegexBuddy emulates this by adding a regex option that you can switch between “numbered capture” (equivalent to omitting /n in Perl) and “named capture only” (equivalent to specifying /n in Perl). But when you copied the regular expression as a Perl operator via the Copy button on the main toolbar or generated a Perl source code snippet on the Use panel, RegexBuddy never added the /n flag. This has been fixed. RegexBuddy now adds /n to the Perl operator it generates when you select “named capture only“.
RegexBuddy now also sets the “named capture only” regex option when you select Paste Regex from Perl Operator under the Paste button on the main toolbar and the Perl operator on the clipboard includes the /n flag. It will also change the application to Perl 5.22 if you had selected Perl 5.20 or prior as the application prior to pasting a Perl operator that includes the /n flag.
You can use the Insert key on the keyboard to toggle between insert and overwrite mode in the edit controls on RegexBuddy’s main window. In overwrite mode, these edit controls now use the overwrite cursor specified in the text layout configuration in the Preferences. By default this is a block cursor that covers the bottom half of the character that will be overwritten.
On the Create panel you can export the regex tree into various formats, including HTML. The HTML export now properly preserves whitespace and line breaks in the regular expression.
On the Test panel, the List All menu has an option to show non-participating groups. This makes test results that show the matches of capturing groups show n/a for a group that did not participate in the regex match instead of showing nothing for such groups. This allows you to distinguish between groups that didn’t participate and groups that did participate but captured a zero-length match, for which the test results always show nothing as the match. Toggling this menu item now immediately updates the test results if Update Automatically is active or clears the test results if not. This way you won’t end up looking at test results that don’t correspond with the state of this option.
RegexBuddy includes a library with many sample regular expressions. The samples for matching VAT numbers for Belgium, Ireland, and Northern Ireland have been updated to match the latest VAT number formats.
AceText 4.3.0 is now available for download.
On the Appearance page in the Preferences you will find two additional text layout settings. One is the default text layout for clip labels and the other next to it is for the opposite text direction. One of these text layouts is used for the Label field on the AceText Editor. The Options|Right-to-Left menu item swaps between them. The one of these two that is a left-to-right text layout is also used for the URL field on the AceText editor. This text layout also determines the font for all controls on the AceText editor that are not edit controls.
This is the main purpose of the two new text layout configurations: all the controls on the AceText editor now have a configurable font. To change the font or its size, click the Edit button next to the text layout configuration drop-down list. All controls on the AceText editor automatically shift their size and position to accommodate the size of the font.
The list of text layout configurations has two new predefined text layout configurations “left-to-right label” and “right-to-left label“. The two new text layout settings default to these. If you upgrade from a previous version of AceText then these default to the font you’ve selected for the clip tree on the Appearance Preferences. So you may immediately notice a difference in appearance. If you want to restore the previous appearance then edit the new text layout configurations to select the Tahoma font with a size of 8 points. If you want everything on the Editor panel to use the same font then you can select the same text layout configurations for the clip contents, binary clips, and the clip labels.
For clips of type “plain text“, “rectangular text block“, and “before and after text“, you can select a syntax coloring scheme to automatically add colors or highlighting to your clips. AceText includes syntax coloring schemes for a variety of programming languages and other file formats. The schemes for C#, Delphi, JavaScript, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Transact-SQL have been updated significantly. There are new schemes for F#, GitHub Flavored Markdown, GoogleSQL, TypeScript, and YAML. There’s also a new scheme labeled “spreadsheet formula“. You can use this to highlight formulas copied from Excel or OpenOffice Calc or a similar application.
The ClipHistory has Auto Append and Auto Split features that allow you to automatically merge or split clips captured by the ClipHistory. These features affect both automatically captured clips and clips captured when you press the “hotkey to capture the text on the clipboard into the ClipHistory” which you can configure on the Hotkeys page in the Preferences. This hasn’t changed. But to better indicate this, the Auto Append and Auto Split features continue to indicate their status as being enabled when the hotkey is enabled even if Automatic Capture is disabled. Activating Auto Append or Auto Split no longer automatically activates Automatic Capture when the hotkey is enabled. If the hotkey is disabled in the Preferences, then turning off Automatic Capture automatically turns off Auto Append and Auto Split while turning on either of those two automatically turns on Automatic Capture. Previously, this happened regardless of whether the hotkey was enabled or disabled.
AcePure is an AceText feature that removes all clipboard formats except plain text from the clipboard. If you have copied a list of files in Windows Explorer then previously AcePure would leave the clipboard empty because Windows Explorer does not put a plain text representation of the list of files on the clipboard. Now, when AcePure sees a list of files without any plain text on the clipboard, it converts that file list to plain text in the same way that the ClipHistory captures the list of files as plain text.
AceText lets you type letters with various diacritics by first typing a punctuation character while holding down Ctrl and then typing the letter (without holding down Ctrl). Ctrl+@ T now types the ™ symbol and Ctrl+& supports additional ligatures. Ctrl+/ or Ctrl+: followed by a digit type additional vulgar fractions. Ctrl+. is a new combination that lets you type various letters with dot above as well as dotless ı and ȷ.
PowerGREP 5.3.6 is now available for download.
Files in proprietary file formats need to be converted to plain text before PowerGREP can search through them. PowerGREP has built-in converters for many such file formats. You can enable or disable each converter separately by editing the file format configuration on the File Selector panel.
A significant bug was fixed in PowerGREP’s converter for WordPerfect Documents. Previously, this converter could get stuck in an infinite loop on certain WPD files. This would cause the action to stall if the number of WPD files included in the action that triggered this bug exceeded the minimum number of execution threads configured in the preferences. You would then have to abort the action by clicking the Abort button on the Action or Results toolbar. To avoid the issue in the first place you had to select “always exclude files of this type” for the WordPerfect file format in the file format configuration.
Now PowerGREP correctly converts these WPD files. If you previously encountered this error then you may now get an error saying that another PowerGREP instance is stuck on those files. To avoid this, go into the Cache section in the Preferences and clear the cache to make PowerGREP forget it previously ran into trouble with those files.
After previewing or executing a search-and-replace, you can make and revert replacements on the Results panel. Changes you make on the Results panel are not saved immediately. This improves performance by not having to rewrite the file for each and every replacement you make or revert. Instead, each file is only saved when you make or revert a replacement in another file. The last file is saved when you clear the Results panel, run a new action, or close PowerGREP. Starting with version 5.3.6, PowerGREP will also save the last file you made or reverted replacements in when you tell PowerGREP to open a file in EditPad or in any other external editor or application (even if the file you’re opening is a different one). This ensures that the other application will see all your changes.
If you make or revert replacements on the Results panel in the same file that you have already open on the Editor panel then the changes are actually made to the contents of the Editor panel that are modified. Then it’s up to you to save the file using the Save button on the Editor panel or via the Editor panel’s prompt to save unsaved changes before closing the file.
If you make or revert replacements on the Results panel and then open the file on the Editor panel then the Results panel will first save the file and then the Editor panel will load the file. Previously this caused the Editor panel to prompt that the file was modified on disk and ask you to reload it. This prompt was false. The file was modified on disk by the Results panel before the Editor panel loaded the file. This release eliminates the false prompt.
The Results|Automatic Update menu item toggles whether PowerGREP updates the contents of the Results panel on a regular basis while an action is being executed. You can turn this off for better performance or to avoid matches scrolling by faster than you can check them. When the menu item is off you can click the Update button on the Results toolbar while an action is running to show the latest progress.
Previously the Results|Automatic Update menu item advertised Shift+F5 as its keyboard shortcut. But this shortcut actually did something else. When a multi-line editor control has keyboard focus, Shift+F5 cycles through the most recent editing positions. So if you make a change somewhere in a file on the Editor panel and then move the cursor somewhere else, then you can press Shift+F5 to go back to where you made the change. This is the same what the Go|Back in Editing Positions command does in EditPad, which also has Shift+F5 as its keyboard shortcut.
Now the Results|Automatic Update menu item has Ctrl+F5 as its keyboard shortcut. This combination was previously unused in PowerGREP. It now correctly toggles Automatic Update. The Shift+F5 key continues to work as it did before.
HelpScribble 8.3.2 is now available for download.
HelpScribble’s HelpContext property editor now supports Delphi 12 Athens and C++Builder 12 Athens. HelpScribble’s installer will automatically install it if it detects that you have Delphi 12 Athens or C++Builder 12 Athens installed. HelpScribble’s HelpContext property editor can assign HelpContext properties to controls in VCL applications and Multi-Device applications.
HelpScribble’s documentation has been updated to explain that Windows 11 fully supports HTML Help and does not support WinHelp at all, just like Windows 10. HelpScribble itself required no changes to support Windows 11.
A bug has been fixed that caused HelpScribble to show a “list index out of bounds (0)” error when closing HelpScribble or switching to another application. It only happened after using the spell checker and you used one of but not both of the Learn and Learn Replace buttons in the spell checker since first downloading the spell check dictionary. These buttons add words to the user word list. The Learn button adds words to be considered as spelled correctly. The Learn Replace button adds words to be automatically replaced with other words. You can edit the list of learned words and replacements via the Word List button in the spell checker.
Back in version 8.0.0 we gave HelpScribble a fresh coat of paint by way of new toolbar icons. Since then the buttons with arrows in the Browse Sequence Editor had their arrows pointing the wrong way. We’ve flipped them back in the right direction now.