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| Kephra Version 0.4 |
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1. Preliminary notes
2. News summary
2. News in detail
4. Known bugs and issues
5. Hints
6. Plans
1. Preliminary note
- Welcome to Kephra. This text editor is made to fullfill your individual wishes.
If you have any comments, suggestions ans thanks, please use the links to our
website in the help menu. There you find also a longer welcome text.
- This is a so called stable version for the daily use. It contains only well
tested features and bugs will be fixed as soon as possible with the next patch
level, which will add no new features. If you like to help us and/or use
always the freshest features, please consider to use test versions, which have
a three digit version number. Four digits mark developer versions, in case you
really believe in: "no risk no fun".
2. News summary
+ search bar on the bottom.
+ first 2 extensions
+ much better drag 'n drop support
+ 10 doc spanning bookmarks and goto last edit
+ context menu on selected text and tab bar, which has 2 new optional icons
and movable tabs.
+ "recent files" and "insert template" menus
+ menu and toolbar items can be checked and respond to events and states.
+ all menus and bar can modified via simple config files
+ menu labels have German umlauts
+ autosave, autonotify and blockformat
+ rename file and open all files of a dir
3. News in detail
- Searchbar
+ This is probably the most visible and useful addition. You find it usually
above the status bar, but you can - as nearly everything in Kephra - change
its position as well. It contains an input field you can click on or jump
into and back with <Ctrl>+<F>. With every letter you type, it starts a new
search with the new search phrase (incremental search). The still existing
search dialog can do that as well, but he sometimes covers the finding.
+ It's now possible to drag text with the mouse into the text input of search
bar and search dialog. (Drag'n Drop)
+ The <Up> and <Down> keys let you skim through the previous used search items.
+ Following key combination do inside the search bar the same as in the editor.
<PageUp>, <PageDown>, both also with <Ctrl> to change the doc as well as
<Ctrl>+<Cursor Keys>.
+ <Enter> or <Shift>+<Enter> skips to the next or last finding of the search
item. It's the same as the two buttons next to the text input.
<Ctrl>+<Enter> jumps to the first finding, +<Shift> to the last.
+ The third button jumps to the spot of the last text change (goto last edit)
(<Ctrl>+<Shift>+<G>).
+ The last two button are calling the well known goto and search dialog. The
ladder contains all the search and replace functions. A right click above
the search bar opens a context menu with all search options.
+ The leftmost, red X, or a <Ctrl>+<Q> closes the bar. It reappears with the
next <Ctrl>+<F>. <Esc> jumps back into the editor without closing the bar.
- Bookmarks and more Navigation
If remembering the position of last change is not enough, use bookmarks. The
Editor handles 10, counting from 0 up to 9.
+ With <Ctrl>+<Shift>+<Number> you set this particular bookmark and a blue
arrow appears on the leftmost margin. If not, you should activate the menu
item "View > Marker Margin". If this bookmark was already set, it moved to
the new position and if it was already on this spot, it is now deleted.
+ <Ctrl>+<Nr> jumps to the document and position, if the bookmark is defined.
+ Moving the cursor block wise you do with <Alt>+<PageUp|PageDown>. Blocks
are chunks of text, separated by empty lines.
+ New is also the brace navigation (<Alt>+<arrow keys>). Vertical translates
to a movement between matching braces, braces of the same nesting depth or
at least braces of the same kind. Horizontal moves are between any braces.
+ Rectangular selection is possible with the mouse, holding the <Alt> key or
with <Alt>+<Shift>+<arrow keys>.
+ <shift>+<Backspace> deletes several spaces, depending on tab width.
+ Jumping to the last opened document was moved to <Ctrl>+<Shift>+<Backspace>.
- File menu
This menu got a complete redesign, 8 new functions and 2 new submenus.
+ The "templates" submenu list chunks of text that can contain recent data
like the name of the file the template is inserted. Templates can be added
by editing the file you open with the menu item "Config > Templates".
+ To shorten the file menu, all open related functions gone into a submenu.
There is also function to open all files of a directory.
+ "Recently Closed" helps to reopen last used files. The global config key
"file > history > length" does determinate the length of that menu.
+ In the "Save" group is now a call to rename the recent document that also
can be called with <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Shift>+<S>.
+ All close and exit calls have now an alternative "without save" sibling.
+ Even the submenu for file sessions has 2 more functions to save and restore
a file session without having to type in a session name. This name lays
under the global config key "file > session > backup".
- Drag 'n Drop
Open files and directories via DnD was possible with 0.3, if you dragged them
on the tab bar, but this area is so small that maybe no one noticed it. Now it
works like it should (windows only). There is also a global config key named
"file > open > dir_recursive" to open files in the directory but not in the
subdirectories (not recursive), but recursive is default.
- Formating Text
The submenu "Edit > Format" has 4 new entries.
+ In contrast to the view option "line wrap" changes this line wrap the text
permanently. All lines that are longer than the chosen width (or exceed the
right margin) are cut at an end of a word.
+ "Blockformat" does the same with one precondition. The lines will be joined
and than wrapped. That way a block of text with a desired maximal width is
created.
- Context menus and bars
Not only over the new searchbar are new context menus to discover:
+ Maybe the most important new context menu shows above a selected text.
Many functions just then make sense or if no text is selected. A useful
division into two menus it also made possible to offer more functions.
+ Tabs in the tab bar can now be moved with <Ctrl>+<PageUp|PageDown>.
+ The tab bar now has also 2 optional icons. One leftmost to make a new doc,
and one rightmost to close the current doc. The same does a middle click,
but that can be changed also with the config key "app>tabbar>middle_click".
+ The context menu of the tab bar lists all opened docs with full paths.
+ The menus above the status bar cells are now only open with a right click.
A left click switches between the most common settings (mostly on and off).
+ The second cell of the status bar displays now the size (chars and lines)
of the selected text or the percental cursor position.
- Configs
The new menus and bars are useful, but the real change from version 0.3 to
0.4 is the replacement of XRC with homegrown, more powerful technology.
+ Thats why menus can now contain German umlauts.
+ Thats why menu entry can now be checked (check or radio button) or disabled.
Buttons in tool bars can now have states.
+ New is also the command list (open via menu item Config > User Interface).
where are defined which internal call, event, icon and key binding belong
to every command, the user can call. Labels and hints are stored in the
localization files (config menu), that contain everything to translate this
program. If you would like to help with translation, please contact us.
+ The menu: "Config > User Interface" also hold the new YAML files that define
every menu and toolbar. A "#" at the end, does comment a line.
+ Under the global config key "app > window > title" you can now also change
the titlebar. Some special variables will insert recent data. More details
are listed in the module Kephra::Config::Default::GlobalSettings.
+ All displayed file paths are now OS conform.
- First 2 Extensions
+ With <Ctrl>+<F4> or the icon in the tool bar you can open or close the
notepad panel on the right side. There you can leave text that always is
visible, even after a restart. <F4> let the cursor jump between the editor
and the notepad and <F5> does a perl "eval" with the content of the notepad.
The output will be shown in the output panel.
+ Is the cursor at the edit panel active you can run with <F5> the current
file as a Perl script and stop that any time with <Shift>+<F5>. <Ctrl>+<F5>
opens or closes the output panel.
+ All settings regarding these panel like color, font size or behavior can
be found under app > panel.
4. Known bugs and issues
Please don't try to change file encoding.
5. Hints
+ Read the "Advanced - Tour" in the "Help" menu. This is full of goodies,
which makes your editing with Kephra much more effective.
+ To understand the main config file better, look into the defaults under:
kephra/config/global/default/default.conf. It explains many keys and tells
you about possible settings.
6. Plans for next releases
+ Plugin API
+ tree extention for text snipptets and self defined tools
+ commandline extention for vi like usage