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UltraEdit v14.xx Development Roadmap Update

Posted on Jul 02, 2008 10:29:25 AM by Richard Knott

Richard Knott,
Vice President

UltraEdit v14.xx Development Roadmap Update

As many in the user community already know, your feedback is driving v14.xx series. As such, the purpose of the v14.xx series is to take core and commonly used features, such as Find/Replace, Encryption, and Bookmarks, and perfect them. In addition to our v14.xx series development cycles, we have added three dedicated maintenance cycles to polish functionality and performance - just as you've asked.

Version 14.10 is another installment toward our commitment of acting upon our responsibility to the user community to deliver the best editing solution available each and every release. This distinct focus has produced some incredible results....

Find/Replace operations are fundamental to the core purpose of an editor. It's an operation we all do daily within UltraEdit. You asked for more depth... Now you can execute Find/Replace operations with even greater control with the added search & exclude criteria as well as the ability to name and edit your find/replace favorites.

Use bookmarks? We have taken this simple feature and, together with your feedback, made it an amazing tool. New fields, control, double click and sort function make your bookmark navigation a snap! The Bookmark Viewer is just one of the many great improvements that v14.10 has in store...

Those are just two examples of the many things that have come from the v14.xx project.

What's next?

Coming this Fall will be yet another material release (v14.20) that again reflects a commitment to quality, performance, and existing feature depth.

The v14.xx series is all about quality and perfection, but we don't plan to stop there because we thrive on solving the challenges our users face in their daily computing. As technology and programming trends change, so will your text editing needs. IDM will be there and as always, will lead the industry in providing innovative solutions to meet your needs.

Tell us what you need next – we are listening! Thank you for choosing IDM as your solution provider.

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Showing comments 1 to 30 of 34 | Next | Last

Sam Hasler
Posts: 26

Screencasts
Reply #1 on : Wed July 02, 2008, 11:09:54

How about some screencasts to demonstrate these new features? I'd be particularly interested in seeing how the new bookmarks features work.

Zebulon
Posts: 26

bookmark feature
Reply #2 on : Wed July 02, 2008, 14:07:28

Hello,
the bookmarkfeature was one of my favorite requests to IDM (long time ago ;-)). I've seen the 14.xx beta-releases. the new bookmark handling works great. that's was i was longing for. special thanks - guys.
greetings
Zebulon

idmadmin
Posts: 1

RE: Screencasts
Reply #3 on : Wed July 02, 2008, 15:37:45

Hello Sam,

Thanks for the reply. Good to hear from you.

I very much like the idea of screencasts and product demo's in general.

There is so much to show in not only terms of new or improved features but
also general use overall.

I personally learn more from a demo than by reading a manual or referring to
help. Demo's also get me fired up over a particular benefit a feature
offers.

We have looked at various types of demo software for purposes of
demonstrating feature benefits online but have not yet settled upon a
convention. As you suggest, the new Bookmark Viewer is an ideal candidate
to for this type of media and I think you will see IDM offering this type of
online content in the future.

I am sure you are familiar with the term 'design build' Sam. To minimize the
need to key off of F1 or reach for the Help menu, we strive to design
features that are self documenting and human engineered. The Bookmark
viewer is a great example of the design build model. If you are using
v14.10, set your environments to Tech Writer and open a file. Bookmark any
line with Ctrl + F2 and you will see all fields in the bookmark viewer
automatically populate. We feel that users hover, right click, and double
click by nature so that is really all that one needs to do to discover the
power of the new viewer.

In support of your screencast suggestion, an online demo would provide a
more robust understanding of the sort functions and the context menu
selections one can also leverage from within the Bookmark Viewer upon right
click. An online demo would also illuminate the fact that the bookmark
viewer holds up to 500 bookmarks and manages all bookmarks in all open
files.

I really appreciate you bringing this idea forward as a platform that would
help new and existing users discover more about the benefits of IDM
products. I'll speak to our team about moving in this direction with a
featured powertip in an upcoming IDM Highlights newsletter. This will give
us some idea of the user community response and an analysis of the resource
requirement to produce the rich content and the convention to follow if/when
scaled. Great hearing from you Sam.

- Rich

Dan Kanze
Posts: 26

Enhancement Request
Reply #4 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 09:47:54

For several years now I have suggested a change to UltraEdit sort feature. Sort allows the removal of duplicate records but it would be far more useful if the exclusion of duplicates could be made based on the sort key criteria. Please add this soon.

David Blume
Posts: 26

Thanks! And we want more!
Reply #5 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 13:28:25

Thanks for your continued work, we really appreciate it!

I've been longing for some more script support. Manipulation of the clipboard contents would go a long way! There's so much we could do with clipboard contents if we had access.

1. UltraEdit.clipboardContent exists, but is undocumented. How can we use it?
2. UltraEdit.outputWindow is an array, but does not enumerate its lines. It should!
3. Make scripts be able to be mapped to the Popup menu like Tools are. Why not? Some of our favorite utilities are scripts!

Marvin
Posts: 26

Where is the Linux version?
Reply #6 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 14:14:22

All this is nice and great but wouldn't cause me to pay for a new version. The last one I bought, 12.xx, is good enough for my daily needs. What I do need desperately, is to have the same familiar, favorite editor of mine on other platforms I am using but it seems that cross-platform support is not on IDM's priority list. Other than some unverifiable promises in the forum I haven't seen any 'official' commitment from IDM to deliver a Linux version (not to mention other Unix-like platforms).
I am seriously starting to consider switching to a different editor...

Ian
Posts: 10

Enhancement Request
Reply #7 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 14:25:18

Dan,

Thanks for the comment regarding Sort. There are several items and enhancements we want to make in this area. I can't give you a time frame but we do plan on looking at this.

Thanks, Ian

Ian
Posts: 10

Where is the Linux version?
Reply #8 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 14:37:12

Marvin,

Thanks for the post and we understand that you have all the features you need in the version you are currently running. I would suggest that you may actually find that some of the enhancements to existing features that you will find in the later versions may be of even more help and improve your efficiency.

More importantly to your question/comment, we are very very serious about Linux and Cross-Platform and have done much in creating a Linux version of UltraEdit. We are fully committed to this and hope to have much more news in the coming months. I have always held the policy of "Under Promise" and "Over Deliver" and that is why we are saying less, and usually do until we can deliver.

There is more I would like to say, but until we are a little closer I just won't promise a time frame. It is sooner than later and we are not talking years. If you look at all the features of UltraEdit, it is a huge task but well worth it. We will be saying more over then next few months.

Thanks for your patience.

Ian

Ian
Posts: 10

Thanks! And we want more!
Reply #9 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 15:30:59

David,

Thanks for the kind comments and great suggestions, we appreciate it. I particularly like the suggestion regarding the clipboard access within scripts. We will look at what we can do to implement your suggestions. Adding scripts and macros to the pop-up menus and toolbars is something we have discussed - just not found time to do. If you would like to email these to support@idmcomp.com also we will have your email address to respond to when these are available.

Thanks, Ian

Dale
Posts: 26

Hidden lines enhancements
Reply #10 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 18:39:35

First, let me second Dan Kanze's sort request; I would find that very useful as well.

Second, I've been asking for this for years, so let me try one more time, particularly since you're enhancing the find capabilities already: please enhance the hidden line support of the find command. I'd like to be able to have every line found by the command to be hidden if it's not, or unhidden if it was, via a checkbox on the find dialog. This way, I could hide all the lines in a file, then through a series of searches quickly subset a file. Then, if you enhance the delete command to delete either all hidden or all unhidden lines, I could delete what wasn't of interest and retain what was. For example, I could edit a large XML file, and quickly get just the lines containing a certain tag. I've had this capability with the mainframe editor for ages and ages, but it's a pain to transfer a file from a PC to a mainframe, edit it, then transfer it back. And at home, of course, I don't have ready access to a mainframe!

Please look into this; this would be the perfect time for you to implement it. I've been searching for an alternate PC editor that has this (or a similar) capability but so far haven't found one. I really don't want to have to abandon UE anyway! I was so excited when you first implemented hidden lines; even though it fell short of what I wanted, I thought surely you'd implement the rest of the feature soon, but of course it's been many years and you still haven't, in spite of my repeated requests.

Thank you

Marvin
Posts: 26

Re: Where is the Linux version?
Reply #11 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 21:25:41

Ian,

Fair enough. Now I can wait patiently :-)
Keep up the good work!

Charles Evans
Posts: 26

Macros
Reply #12 on : Tue July 15, 2008, 21:55:04

I would sure like to see your macros run alot faster without refreshing the screen. I have bought your
product for years but I also own Vedit strickly for this purpose of executing macros quickly without
refreshing the screen. What takes UE to run a macro of mine in two hours, Vedit executes it in 5 minutes. This is all because of refreshing the screen upon every change. Otherwise I like your product very much.

Kevin J. Rice
Posts: 26

Would like status of UEX
Reply #13 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 09:23:00

Please comment on the status of development on UEX, the Unix / Linux version of UltraEdit? I first read on your site about this product being worked on about a year ago. I'm a software developer, too (Python mostly with some Perl and C), and I understand that complex products can take a while to build.

One more question - is UEX going to be the new codebase for UltraEdit, so that the same code runs on both Ubuntu and Windows? Or, is it going to remain a parallel codebase product?

I'm eagerly awaiting being able to ditch windows (the only think keeping me on Windows XP is UltraEdit's ease of use).

-- Kevin J. Rice,
Textura Corporation
Lake Bluff, Illinois

Ed carden
Posts: 26

When will SQL Developers no longer be left out of the UE Family
Reply #14 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 11:07:08

I've been working with UltraEdit and then UltraStudio for several years, over 5, and to this day I can't understand the lack of support for SQL Developers. i know there is a Syntax Highlight for SQL which is a help but I have a feeling that was orginally put together by a user.

I'm talking integartion of UE with RDBMS like SQL Server and Oracle. I can, in less then 15 minutes, throw to gether a VB app that uses ADO to connect to a SQL Server DB (using a Login screen that the user of the application can fill out) and submit to it whatever query is entered into a text field and show those results in a grid to the user. Why then does UE/UEStudio lack the ability to at a minimum connect to a Relational DB Server & DB, execute whatever code is highlighted in UE and show the results to the user? There really is no excuse for not having something like this.

Milton
Posts: 26

Startup Speed
Reply #15 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 15:05:29

Please focus on putting back startup speed. Every version gets slower. That is why I purch UE long time ago. I now use notepad again to open up simple text files (quick edit/save) because UE takes too long to gather its thoughts. I'll always have a place for UE for those large text files and hex editing. But I really want a notepad startup speed too so I dont have to use notepad anymore, just like the old days when UE was super-fast loading.

Clare Owens
Posts: 26

UE for Mac
Reply #16 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 16:04:02

I have been a licensed user of Ultraedit for about 10 years. My work laptop is a Dell but my home computer for the last four years has been a Mac so I am only able to use UE on the Dell. I also look forward very much to being able to license a Mac version - compatible with my Power PC Mac for now and eventually with the Intel Macs.

Ian
Posts: 10

Hidden lines enhancements
Reply #17 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 16:05:40

Dale,

Thanks for the input on additional hidden line functionality. I can certainly see the benefit of this. I don't know what it would take to do this but we will review it and weight it against our other requests and priorities.

Thanks, Ian

Ian
Posts: 10

Macros
Reply #18 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 16:08:55

Charles,

You may want to look at the scripting which I believe runs faster than the macros and has in many respects more functionality. The macros area is complex and rewriting it is not likely in the foreseeable future. There is much more to it than refresh and this has been optimized also.

Thanks, Ian

Ian
Posts: 10

When will SQL Developers no longer be left out of the UE Family
Reply #19 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 16:15:37

Ed,

We appreciate your interest in additional SQL support for UltraEdit. We do intend to look at this, possibly for the next major release. This requires careful research and considerations for all the various platforms, interfaces and commands.

With what you are doing with the App that you have put together I believe you should be able to configure this to run as a command from within UltraEdit and pass it the contents of the clipboard. For additional information on running the commands please check the help and online resources and contact support@idmcomp.com if there are unanswered questions.

Thanks, Ian

Ian
Posts: 10

Startup Speed
Reply #20 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 16:18:45

Milton,

With regard to the startup speed, our tests and myself personally have found it to be very quick. We did have some issues in some of the releases that caused some slowness under certain conditions and configurations. If you are finding the latest version to be slow please do contact support@idmcomp.com with specifics and they will be glad to help.

Thanks, Ian

Ian
Posts: 10

UE for Mac
Reply #21 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 16:20:27

Clare,

Thanks for your interest for UE on a MAC, this is part of our cross-platform (UEX) plan and we hope to release a version of UltraEdit for the Mac following the release for Linux.

Thanks, Ian

Ian
Posts: 10

Would like status of UEX
Reply #22 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 16:22:50

Kevin,

Please see my earlier response to "Where is the Linux version?" regarding the UEX status. As for the codebase, we can't say the exact phasing but it will work on Linux, Mac and Windows when complete.

Thanks, Ian

Ken
Posts: 26

Folding improvements
Reply #23 on : Wed July 16, 2008, 19:08:12

Is there any chance that the way folding is displayed could be updated to look and function like some other IDEs? Specifically, I like how a box drawn around the collapsed fold's first line that is truncated and has a "..." at the end. I would also really like to see lines drawn clearly showing the start and end of an expanded fold. And lastly, hovering over a closed fold would show a tooltip like popup showing the contents of the fold without having to expand it.

Something I haven't seen in a script editor yet is folding displayed like an explorer tree-view (XP not Vista). This would be especially useful for deeply nested structures and would also make UE into the most awesome folding editor :) Naturally it would be nice to have all of these features as individual options so it could revert back to the current method for those that prefer it that way.

tom francen
Posts: 26

vi plugin for navigation please
Reply #24 on : Thu July 17, 2008, 09:16:10

vi plugin for navigation please
vi plugin for navigation please
vi plugin for navigation please
vi plugin for navigation please
vi plugin for navigation please
vi plugin for navigation please
vi plugin for navigation please

Brendan Coyne
Posts: 26

Wiki-esq type linking ability
Reply #25 on : Thu July 17, 2008, 09:38:48

I don't know if UE can do it now in 14.10, but the ability to link text files in subdirectories of a root directory would be truly fantastic. I'm sure everybody sets up folders and subfolders according to their own needs, but I think being able to interlink between these files/subdirectories whilst maintaing them as text files would not only allow desktop wiki functionality, but also (eventually) web publishing. Just a thought

Tommy
Posts: 26

Find and Find In Files Ignoring Text in Comments
Reply #26 on : Thu July 17, 2008, 10:14:33

I recently had to examine an entire web site's files looking for a particular field name, so that I could modify the code around the field depending on how it was used. My search turned up many false positives because the field was in some code blocks that were commented out.

I'd like to see the ability to tell UE's Find and Find In Files functions to ignore search text found within commented lines. I would think UE could determine the line and block character information from looking up the file's extension in the Wordfile.

This feature is the same idea of "Subdirectories/File names/extensions to ignore in search", but would go one step further by restricting the search to only portions of the file. Also, it is very similar to Dale's "Hidden Line Enhancement" request, so maybe there could be some shared effort.

Thanks!

Steve Mount
Posts: 26

Fix status
Reply #27 on : Thu July 17, 2008, 10:27:27

I submitted a bug, confirmed by support, for version 14.0. It wasn't fixed in any maintenance release thus far, and there is no bug fix list for 14.1 that I could find. Perhaps it is fixed ("Many internal improvements" is pretty vague) ... but the larger issue is tracking. I'd like to see the ability to look up the status of known bugs based on some tracking ID. This is more a organizational issue than a feature issue, but it is related.

In terms of features, I am excited to see auto-select of Selected Text in Find/Replace, and can't wait to play with Named Favorites.

Brendan Coyne
Posts: 26

Wiki-esq type linking ability
Reply #28 on : Thu July 17, 2008, 11:25:38

Vincent Buonomano
Posts: 26

large files - speed
Reply #29 on : Thu July 17, 2008, 12:17:27

Dear Sir,

The development that would be most meaningful to me is to be able to work with large files (> 1/2 mega bytes) much faster. (It is a pity, I have all this ram memory that you don't even use.)

Thanks,
Vincent

Troy Noble
Posts: 26

Wordfile gets clobbered every time...
Reply #30 on : Thu July 17, 2008, 13:03:42

It would be really wonderful if the installer would keep my extra languages in word file so I don't have to merge them every time. Right now it's an all-or-none approach where I can either keep the old wordfile, and then merge your "standard" wordfile updates in by hand... or I can let the installer write the new wordfile, and then merge in the extra languages by hand. It would nice if this was more automatic.

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