several Bugs to report,as well as a few questions

[zhouzh2]

Environment: Windows 7 X64  Chinese. Hippoedit 1.48.765 X64.
Hi Alex,
I must appologize first as I  did not use the report BUG menu in Hippoedit. I tried, but somehow it does not work.
Resently I'm on a project of COBOL, and I try to use Hippo as my code editer. The following are something I found so far, as well as some questions...
BUGs:
1. In C source files (maybe not only in C), comment and uncomment when the selection is close to the lift side is not cope to each other.
i.e. create a new C file with templates,  select all, comment,  get source commented, which is fine. But when you hit uncomment, those code will not be uncommented. 
When the selection is not close to the lift side, hippo uses block comment, which works fine.
2. Under Windows 7, when creating a new file, if such format has a template, Hippo will open a new file with template but with no modification allowed.
3. Under Windows 7, the layout of Hippo's panes cannot be saved.
2,3 can be solved only by 'run as admin', which does not make sense for a text editor.
My data is stored in 'C:\ProgramData\HippoEDIT', so may be this is the case. However, this location was choosed by Hippo's installer itself.
4. options not saving. i.e. in C++ home tree, check 'white space', switch to sub-tree 'word wrap' under C++ tree, then switch back to C++ tree, 'white space' become unchecked. Is this a desired effect?
5. In hippo's syntax of COBOL, PERFORM and END-PERFORM is not in the same category( functions and keywords ).
6. When editing cobol's source file, format-comment selection inserts a '*' at the beginning of the line. However, this is actually illegal in cobol, and the '*' should be inserted at "^\s{6}\*", which is also the only legal line comment. I wonder if it is possible to set this in Hippo.
7. formatting-tabs and spaces: The 'auto' works on auto-indenting(when tab is used use tab,when space is used use space), but will not work when I input TABs manually. IMHO, if set to auto, tabs should always be spaces when the whole document does not have a TAB.
My cobol compiler refuse to compile if there is any tabs in the source code. But I don't want to use Replace tabs by spaces since I trend to use tabs in other source files.
8. wrap by window when the file has some chinese text in it is broken. and can cause hippoedit to crash.(when wrap by window on, some chinese text will not wrap by window. and when the horizontal scroll bar appears, clicking on the bar crashes hippoedit.)
a test file can be found  here.

Then please allow me to ask a few more questions...
1. what does smart highlight do?
2. what does go to previous position do? I suppose it means to go back to where I last changed my text, but it seem this is not always the case...
3. what does set anchor do? only to cooperate the 'select to anchor' command?
4. Is there a command to tabify/untabify document? which means to convert all tabs to spaces (or vice versa) while keeping the indent style. (don't want to use find&replace every time...)
5. why '/s' cannot be used in replace with, while '/t' works?  (I'm a regex nuts...)
6. what does wrap search and extend selection mean?
7. what's the differences between 'functions' and 'keywords' in Hippoedit?
8. Can I use regex to define a Keyword? (more to come: if I want any char that appear as the first 6 char to be highlighted, and the char that appear after the 80th char to be highlighted, can I do this? seems a look_around regex will be involved?)
9. Can I customize the indent rules? i.e. when a regex on a line is matched, the next line should (or shouldn't) be indented?
10. Can I customize the outlining rules?
i.e. suppose I have ini files like this:

Code:

[something]
xxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxx

[something else]
xxxxx
xxxxx

and want to collapse like this:

Code:

+[something]
+[something else]

11. Can I disable the start page and directly have plain txt ?

I'm so sorry to put such a long question list here...Hippoedit is great editor, and has so many features that I haven't seen before

PS. I saw your home page has been updated, with more english contents than those I translated last year.  I will see what I can do to make the chinese version of your home page more complete. (If you need it  )

[alex]

Hi Angus,

glad to see that you are still using HE

There is no problem in not using BUG Report function from HE itself, reporting on forum is even better. Because than other people can also find information about error/questions and my responses. Just small remark: try next time to split all your report and questions on different posts. It will be easier to track them, find by other people and me to answer, because they will be shorter

First of all I think you need to reinstall (full uninstall and fresh install with removing user files, generally you can copy data files before and then overwrite files in new installation). When installing you need to select as destination of file not a portable way but current user data folder (first). Because on Windows 7 x64 applications normally do not have permissions to write in Program Files (as it it done in portable mode when HE installs all data files in sub folder of HippoEDIT in Program Files).
Portable mode was preselected, because you have installed new version on top of old one, which always installs data files together with executable.
This should solve problem 2, 3.

1) This is true for example you have mentioned. Problem comes because of the selection after comment of all. Firts // are not taken are not selected. If they will be selected (once more Ctrl+A) everything works in sync. but you are right in any case this is a bug. I will fix it in next beta.

4) options not saving. This is a bug. Will be fixed next beta.
5) corrected, new syntax schema is uploaded. Cobol schema was not really checked. So you help here will be appretiated. And I will do my best to help you in making it better
6) I have corrected syntax schema (this is actually possible), but I have never tried this. Maybe some extra fixes will be necessary. At least commenting - already checked.

About some questions:

what's the differences between 'functions' and 'keywords' in Hippoedit?

no difference. Just some texts to split styles. id is used to reference styles inside schemes. Name for display in UI.

Regular expression currently can be only used in Label definitions. I plan to add regular expressions for indenting rules (not performance critical) and some when for syntax highlighting rules (this is complex and performance critical).

Command "Tabify/untabify" does not exist. This function plan to be added via scripting, coming with 1.50.

Rest answers come tomorrow

********************************************************************** Tomorrow *********

formatting-tabs and spaces: The 'auto' works on auto-indenting(when tab is used use tab,when space is used use space), but will not work when I input TABs manually. IMHO, if set to auto, tabs should always be spaces when the whole document does not have a TAB.

And what to do if you open empty document ? There is statistical limit used: if document has less then 11 lines or percentage of tab usage more then AutoDetectTabUsagePercent (xml settings) HE assumes that tabs are allowed and selects Keep As Typed mode.
So, probably you have small document. You send it to me I will check.
Maybe will be good to have this settings on syntax level, but currently this is not done

8. wrap by window when the file has some chinese text in it is broken.

Sorry, can not reproduce this. No crash, no horizontal scroll bar, wrapped by window edge. Can you try with latest 1.48.766 and if it crashes send me crash report (will bes suggested or files errorlog.txt + crash.dmp from HE user directory). Which font was used, which encoding?

Questions:

1. what does smart highlight do?

I have created FAQ post explaining this.

2. what does go to previous position do? I suppose it means to go back to where I last changed my text, but it seem this is not always the case...

No, to go to last change of you text you need to use Menu -> Navigation->Go to Last Change or Changed area function set. Previous/Next position navigates between "visited" positions history, taking into account distance between them.

3. what does set anchor do? only to cooperate the 'select to anchor' command?

Search in command list (Tools->Options->Keyboard) for "Anchor" Navigation, Selection etc

4. Is there a command to tabify/untabify document?

Answered before.

5. why '/s' cannot be used in replace with, while '/t' works?  (I'm a regex nuts...)

Answered by yourself

6. what does wrap search and extend selection mean?

wrap search - if not set, search is done form current position till end of the document (depends from direction) only. If set them further from start of document till current position.
extend selection - extend current selection till found position. Or if no selection exist, select from current position till found position

7. what's the differences between 'functions' and 'keywords' in Hippoedit?

Answered before.

8. Can I use regex to define a Keyword? (more to come: if I want any char that appear as the first 6 char to be highlighted, and the char that appear after the 80th char to be highlighted, can I do this? seems a look_around regex will be involved?)

Now not. Maybe some when in 1.5x.

9. Can I customize the indent rules? i.e. when a regex on a line is matched, the next line should (or shouldn't) be indented?

Now not, but probably this will be added soon.

10. Can I customize the outlining rules?

Only in limits described here.
Such ini file outlining will be hardly possible. I think I have tried to define this but without success.

11. Can I disable the start page and directly have plain txt ?

Yes. Do the following:
1) Tools -> Options -> General -> Events -> At Startup -> Open New File.
2) Tools -> Options -> Document -> Defaults -> Plain Text

Best regards,
Alex.

P.S: Of course I am interesting in updating of the translation New English content file + old Chinese content file is sent to you Do what you can, when you can and how you can Any result is appreciated. And of course ask if something is unclear. I will help ASAP.

[zhouzh2]

Hi Alex,

glad to see that you are still using HE

I have HE installed all the time, and it's so generous of you to offer me a registrations for such a great product It's just that I did not use it as often as I thought I would...
It's not HE's fault though. For me HE is more programmer-oriented (with so many features for happy coding ), while I'm not a programmer (yet?) and rarely do codings. For general text manipulation, I will just grab Emeditor for that...for general text manipulation, you can't beat an editor that launches fast, with recordable scripts,unicode and on-the-fly spell checking...it's not HE can't do those things but more likely i'm just too lazy to change my default editor
Last year I have been busy in finding a job (first job should be chosen with caution right :-)), and rarely had time to visit HE's forum.
As I said I end up involving in a COBOL system...(while having zero idea about what cobol is).  When it comes to coding, I thought about if HE's rich feature set will suit my needs better, therefore I'm back to the forum:-)

Cobol schema was not really checked.

I'm also a freshman in cobol. COBOL is really an OLD fashion language. Few books about it, and lacks a well-rounded IDE (even those few existing IDEs are huge and expensive). There is even little text editor has good support in cobol. And there is no documentation (as far as I can tell) about cobol's standard code style. But anyway, if I find something that's don't work as expected, I will report here.

try next time to split all your report and questions on different posts

I know, I know...I'm just too lazy to split my post next time I will.

new syntax schema is uploaded

I will try and report.

Command "Tabify/untabify" does not exist. This function plan to be added via scripting, coming with 1.50.

This is reasonable. I'll wait patiently for 1.50's coming. (your plan for 1.50 looks like a grand 1.4-2.0 leap but not a 0.02 one :-) god bless you...)

I still think problem 2, 3 is due to the installer not compatible with Windows 7. I suggest that, in future a better installer should be involved so that novice/new users of HE will have a better experience. (of course this is in fairly low priority but IMHO when 1.50 is out this needs to be solved.)

About question 5, I have find an explanation myself :-) '\s' can match both tab and space, that's why HE does not use \s in replace right?

[alex]

with 1.50 HE will also get recordable scripts and on the fly spell checker
and it is not a switch from 1.48 to 1.50 but from 1.4x to 1.50. All 1.4x were minor releases with bug fixes, and 1.50 is a feature release. So it even can be that will be several updates of 1.49

Yes, COBOL has rather strange syntax. Even not a syntax but text structure rules... I do not think that I will go to far in support of it, but I will try to fix all bugs that can be corrected without big effort. And then let us see on demand for it.

I still think problem 2, 3 is due to the installer not compatible with Windows 7. I suggest that, in future a better installer should be involved so that novice/new users of HE will have a better experience. (of course this is in fairly low priority but IMHO when 1.50 is out this needs to be solved.)

No, installer is compatible with Windows 7 (generally this problem is only relevant for Win 7 x64). And if you will do a fresh install, you will not have such problems, because Current User is default than.

HE uses boost regular expression engine, so full list of what is possible can be found in boost documentation. And about \s - yes you are right, this can be used only as search expression, because it is not clear what you want when this is used in replace with. But this is general regular expression rule. HE is not involved here.

I will place rest of answers in my previous post, to keep them in one place.

[alex]

Checked Report Bug function on fresh installed Windows 7 x64.
Mail was formed/opened without any problem.
Check is done with 1.48.766.

Can you please retry. Do you have mail client configured ?

[zhouzh2]

Checked Report Bug function on fresh installed Windows 7 x64.
Mail was formed/opened without any problem.
Check is done with 1.48.766.

Can you please retry. Do you have mail client configured ?

Still not working here. But probably it's because no default mail client is installed on my system. I use web gmail, Opera as a notifier.

This should solve problem 2, 3.

reinstalled as your instruction. problem solved.

6) I have corrected syntax schema (this is actually possible), but I have never tried this. Maybe some extra fixes will be necessary. At least commenting - already checked.

The highlight of comment is right.  Line-comment is correct if you do a precise box selection to/from row 7 Anyway, never mind, I'm pretty satisfied so far. HE is the only editor that I tried to have cobol comment highlighted right (by default). Although VIM seems to be able to highlight everything correctly. But it cannot be viewed as a true windows editor.

And what to do if you open empty document  ? There is statistical limit used: if document has less then 11 lines or percentage of tab usage more then AutoDetectTabUsagePercent (xml settings) HE assumes that tabs are allowed and selects Keep As Typed mode.
So, probably you have small document. You send it to me I will check.

empty document should be treated as Keep As Typed but your method is reasonable enough too. You can find the file here, and try TAB when Tabs and Spaces set to auto . It is indeed very small (my first cobol program...), though I believe it has more than 11 lines...

Sorry, can not reproduce this.

wrap by window still has some problems here. however after a clean install 766 will not crash.
please check out those screen capture. demoPic

Search in command list (Tools->Options->Keyboard) for "Anchor"

I got it. What a cool functionality

Email received. Hopefully by this weekend new translation will be done.

[alex]

Still not working here. But probably it's because no default mail client is installed on my system. I use web gmail, Opera as a notifier.

Of course will not work HE use default client to send mail. And you do not have one, then bad luck Maybe in this case I need to show message that no default client installed, but I am not sure that I got this information.

empty document should be treated as Keep As Typed  but your method is reasonable enough too. You can find the file here, and try TAB when Tabs and Spaces set to auto . It is indeed very small (my first cobol program...), though I believe it has more than 11 lines...

Theory was correct, but you are right There is a bug I found checking your example - thanks! Detection was done not only initially when opening document but also after document change . And change was inserting tab Will be fixed. Regression.

wrap by window still has some problems here. however after a clean install 766 will not crash.
please check out those screen capture. demoPic

OK. Now I have understood. Yes, probably crash has fixed (I have done some corrections in this area some time ago). And problem with wrong wrap I know :/ Same problem as when using non monospaced fonts: HE wraps not by actual text width but by character position. This is much faster and works for monospaced fonts correctly but immediately produce bugs with non monospaced fonts. And Chinese is even with monospaced fonts twice wider then roman symbols. I have this fix in my todo list but do not promise to correct this soon, probably 1.5x. :/ EmEditor is the best in Unicode handling and HE is more source code oriented, where mostly monospaced fonts are used. but will be fixed any way, just matter of time.

[Stefan]

Maybe in this case I need to show message that no default client installed, but I am not sure that I got this information.

Maybe try this:

Code:

If RegKey Exists
var = RegRead "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\shell\open\command"

IF var ="" Then
  MSG "No default client defined"
ELSE
  IF exists var Then
     open mail client to report
  ELSE
     MSG "couldn't find your mail client: var"

[alex]

Thanks Stefan!
Will use it.

[zhouzh2]

HE wraps not by actual text width but by character position. This is much faster and works for monospaced fonts correctly but immediately produce bugs with non monospaced fonts.

Understood. After all word wrap is not that important for me, since I use HE for coding.