* WinEdt News.txt Last modified on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 16:19 __________________________________________________________________ WinEdt 5.6: a beta version of the next official release! ------------------------------------------------------------------ WinEdt 5 [Build 20080429 (v. 5.6)] (Beta 1) =========================================== - The Accessories menu for MiKTeX and TeX Live Configuration has been redone. Console applications now call new common macros in Exec\TeX folder. A new macro ExeCompiler.edt in Exec folder takes care of actual execution as defined in the Execution Modes. By default console applications run in WinEdt's Console docked at the bottom of WinEdt's Window. The appearance and position of this Window can be adjusted through the Appearance| Docking and Highlighting| Forms Dialogs (just like Tree and Gather Control). Visibility of WinEdt console can be toggled through a new menu item in the Accessories Menu (Ctrl+Shift+C). Note that Console allows keyboard input. When Activated and Focused it captures keyboard input. To give focus back to the Active MDI Window, use ESC key of click on the text or use Ctrl+Shift+C to hide and disable the console. Only one application at the time can be run in WinEdt's Console (which is usually what you want when you are compiling a TeX Document). Execution Modes dialog allows you to change default properties pertaining to the execution of TeX accessories. In particular, you can disable the "WinEdt Console" option and press "Apply to All" button to establish previous mode of execution using a separate Windows Console. For some applications this may be a preferred method... At this stage it is up to beta testers to experiment and provide feedback and solutions. My testing with MiKTeX 2.7 and TeX Live 2007 did not reveal any problems with the new default settings. - The accessories menu and toolbar contains "Compile" and "Compile Selected" items (F9 and Shift+F9). At the moment these two items can be configured in the Execution Modes (compile to dvi, ps or pdf and use 3 different methods to create pdf). Advanced users may take a look at the macros that do the job (the same set is used for MiKTeX and TeX Live) and come up with improvements and new ideas how to quickly configure these two items. The "Compile" item should be defined for the most common kind of compilation that you encounter for your work. That may vary from one user to another... - It is not required that TeXify item in the accessories menu contains texify.exe as an executable (in particular, TeX Live has no texify.exe!). You could specify your favorite TeX Compiler (eg. xelatex.exe) and possibly enable 3 custom iterations in the Execution Modes to let WinEdt's Macro run BibTeX and MakeIndex up to 3 times (as required to get compiled document up-to-date). - Redirection of TeX Aux files to another folder may not work with all accessories and TeX Systems (this was also the case in 5.5). It assumes that they support *-directory=dir switches and that Aux folder already contains subfolders for documents placed relative to the main file. If you encounter problems with this you should consult the macros and the documentation/ help for TeX accessory in question and see if you can come up with an elegant solution (eg. by using the command prompt to achieve what you want). And if it cannot be done than you'll have to give up this feature or resort to some brute force solution in order to allow such accessory process files in "remote/non-default" folders... If you cannot find the way to accomplish the task from the Command Prompt then it is unlikely that a WinEdt macro can do anything about it! - Toolbar has been slightly modified / rearranged and images used in the default settings have been "enhanced" with gradient brush. This should give slightly better appearance on Vista although you should not compare it to the appearance of Office 2007. WinEdt does not have that kind of resources to put into the appearance and professional design of GUI. Even the current improvements require your computer to support 24 or 32 bit bitmaps or else the new icons may look worse than the simple 16-color old ones. Keep this in mind if you are considering upgrading on an old machine... - WinEdt Macro engine was subject to substantial changes that were required to accommodate and ever increasing number of macro functions. The old case sentence executing code on the stack was stretched to the limit and something had to be done about it. The users should not notice any difference except for improved macro execution speed and performance. Just in case you should know this as it is always possible that some unintentional change in the behavior of macro scripts might result from this... If so, we'll deal with it. - New macros for execution of console applications (inside WinEdt's Interface): RunConsole("Command","Folder","Caption", no_Reset,no_Show: 0..1); SetConsoleText("Text", GOTO_End,Append: 0..1); GetConsoleText(Register: 0..9); SetConsoleInfo("Info Caption"); GetConsoleInfo(Register: 0..9); ShowConsole(Visible: -1..1, test_Visibility: 0..1); FocusConsole(Focused: -1..1, test_Focus: 0..1); ResetConsole; IfConsoleRunning("Then Macro","Else Macro"); - ShowExecutionModes macro function has been stripped of parameters for extra files that are no longer used (not compatible with the old one!!!): ShowExecutionModes('Execution Modes - MiKTeX',> '%b\Exec\MiKTeX\ExeMode.edt',> '%b\Exec\MiKTeX\ExeMode_Backup.edt',> '%b\Exec\MiKTeX\ExeMode_Custom.edt',> '%b\Exec\MiKTeX\ExeMode_Default.edt',> 1); // Extended Mode with Extra Pages for TeX System and TeX Output - Execution Modes Interface has been redone to allow new options with WinEdt console execution. - New macro to remove extra/ redundant spaces from the command line (except inside double-quotes): TrimCommandLine("Command", Register: 0..9); - Search -> Hide Errors Menu Command (CtrL+Shift+E) now hides the console as well: ShowErrorLog(0);ShowConsole(-1); - Tree and Gather interface now allows some extended processing and specifications in order to include more useful information pertaining to Bibliography Items: EXTENDED="@{}()\" EXITEMS="author,title,year,@" EXLINELIMIT=16 CAPTION="%?: %!?" If you don't want this in the Tree or Gather comment out this lines and use CAPTION="%?" to display only bib label. Extra processing might be a bit slower in huge bibliography files (data bases). In Gather form docked at the bottom long captions with Author, Title,... make sense. - Macro GDIPopup has an extra 0..1 parameter. Specify 1 if you want extended Bib Captions in this interface (response to \cite{}). Extended captions must be enabled for Gather interface or else GDIPopup interface always shows short captions. - A new Global Options under the [ENVIRONMENTS] section: WRAP_SOFT_COMMENTS=0 // Do not Wrap Comments in Soft Mode! This property is automatically on in Semi-Soft Wrapping (where wrapping such lines would cause problems with compilation!). - Tree Branches now allow specification of # which is expanded to the number of items inside. For Example: BRANCH="Bibliography (# Items)" Repeat ## twice to include character # in this string (if required). - Input Directives (Tree.ini) now allow specification of the CAPTION. Advanced users can change the way the filename will appear in the tree (eg. by stripping off the PATH or Filetype similar to the FILENAME directive). Custom processing takes place after FILENAME has been processed. %? refers to the unprocessed caption (filename)... - New Switch for comments in LaTeX Documents: \begin{comment} .... \end{comment} - New Switch for verbatim: \verb/?/... - A few enhancements to MUI (including multiple selections in list boxes as documented in Macro Manual). - HTML Compiler now calls TtH for TeX Mode (before it was disabled for this mode and it only worked for HTML Help Files). - WinEdt now comes with LaTeX Help e-book (HTML File with documentation for LaTeX and other TeX Accessories). WinEdt's Help Menu has an interface for it in its Help Menu... ================================================================== Bug Fixes: ========== - A problem with finding files in the project tree when PATH is being used in WinEdt's Input Directives has been fixed. GetTree macro now correctly qualifies such files (as do other functions that depend on such files such as FindInFiles). - \#{...} and \#~{...} RegEx filters now allows expressions that span over one line if the expression contains > or **. - A Bug with \# RegEx in FindInString has been fixed. - A caret if now properly positioned when large extra line spacing is specified in Preferences| Font Dialog... - A bug for LstGetItem has been fixed (it now correctly returns an item as specified by the index parameter). - Word Count now properly ignores text in softly wrapped comments (bug fix)... - A delimiter matching bug with (unlikely) constructions like $\$$ or $$\$$$ has been fixed. - WinEdt (in the background) is now properly displayed in the taskbar on Vista even if it is running a modal dialog... - Windows Classic Appearance Fixes: - Unwanted Horizontal Bar no longer appears when not unnecessary in softly wrapped documents! - A Refresh Oddity with Document Tabs after WinEdt has been resized has been fixed. ================================================================== Todo List for this version: =========================== - todo: SetFontSize macro... - todo: MoveLine Up or Down Macro... - todo: Revisit Word Left and Right Commands (like word!)? - todo: Revisit GlobalReturn responses in Tree. - todo: Update Help and Macro Manual (including Keywords and Macro Dictionary) InsLine(4); // to be Documented... - todo: Finish the "darn" Environments... // One day ..................................................... SPELLING_MODE 19 SPELLING 20 HIGHLIGHTING_MODE 21 HIGHLIGHTING 22 FONT_MODE 23 ================================================================== Then tackle folding for 5.7.... __________________________________________________________________ WinEdt 5 [Build 20071003 (v. 5.5)] (Official Release) ===================================================== (see History.txt)... __________________________________________________________________ The file "...WinEdt\Doc\History.txt" contains a complete history of additions and fixes since the release of WinEdt32 (from Y2K on)... __________________________________________________________________