So what’s up with 0.3.5

posted by Ivan Čentéš in Development, Features | September 3rd, 2008 |

Hello. HELLO! Anybody here? We finaly figured the blog password out, so we can procede with posting… Ehm, ok, I know, not a good joke at all…

But now seriously. After a very long time (oh my, is it a year already?) our blog is back online. So what’s new with Intype? The long awaiting release of Intype 0.3.5 (codename Newcastle) is still cooking, and it will take some more time for Martin and Juraj to put all the rest of the ingredients and spices in the pot and serve the meal. In the mean time, for those who do not follow our forums, I will try to summarize the work the guys have done so far on 0.3.5 and some stuff that is planned to be included in the final release.

Search updates

Due to many updates in the core, we’ve also focused on updating the Search functionality:

  • Quick find — Firefox-like Find strip will replace standard Find dialog. The Replace function will still use the current dialog.
  • Advanced regular expression editor — Thanks to updates in UI framework and many updates made for scripting, we are now able to use Intype’s own editing component (Janed) with all it’s features in dialogs. A standard search dialog will use Janed for editing. In case you use either regular expressions or escapes mode, you will see the syntax highlighting with possibility to use embedded JavaScript commands, or snippets; or even add your own.
  • Search targets — In addition to two classic search targets: document and selections, the new search will support also searching in Project files (or any arbitrary folder).

UI framework

Major amount of Newcastle’s development time of has been spent on the new widget/UI framework and related updates. In the older releases we were using third-party SmartWin framework which caused many troubles with stability and extensibility issues. Our new framework called AFW has been created to support our ideas and dreams of UI for the editor.

  • Improved stability and responses — AFW gave Intype new level of stability and speed that we were not able to achieve with the previous framework.
  • JavaScript ready — Since AFW has been built on our future requirements, we’ve also implemented ability to use it with JavaScript. API for creating your own UI’s or interacting with existing Intype UI is being planned for future releases.
  • Multi-platform ready — AFW is an abstraction layer that has been used for creating it’s Windows implementation. Any other future platform implementations will not require any deep changes in the core.
  • Windows XP/Vista themes support — AFW also has an abstraction for renderers that can vary between various versions of Windows. Currently we have support for XP and Vista theme renderers. Thsese renderers will be made optional (so you can still enjoy the original UI look & feel)

Bundle Editor

The current implementation of the Bundle editor is vague and does not come close to reflecting the future. One important reason for creating our own UI framework wes the new Bundle editor that is going to be introduced with Newcastle.

  • Snippet and grammar editors with syntax-highlighting — The Bundle editor will now have our own editing component that will enable many helper commands and snippets to be used when creating your own bundles.
  • Logging errors and error-safe UI — Since the Bundle editor is essential, there’s is also a large amount of requirements to be implemented: error-safe UI and debugging tools.
  • Default editor for any type of bundle item — In case of really nasty error in a bundle item, the new Bundle editor will give you possibility to directly edit the the item’s Jasmine source file.

Drag & drop

Drag & Drop has been discussed and request a lot of times at the forums. Since, we were able to embed this functionality directly into the UI framework, we now have a whole bunch of new dragging features.

  • Dragging the tabs
  • Dropping files from other applications
  • Dragging files between project pane and tabs
  • Dragging files into the editor
  • Dragging selected text to tabs and project pane

Paired Characters

A new advanced editing behavior is pending for the Newcastle release: the paired characters. Along with scope-based configuration, we will also implement:

  • Paired characters autocompletition — Automatically inserts the right paired charcter when you insert the left one. Backspace (backward delete) then removes both characters, Delete (forward delete) removes the right one.
  • Wrapping in paired characters — Enables you to wrap each selection range into the paired characters.
  • Paired characters highlighting — Placing cursor near the paired character will highlight the other one.

Editing

Along with other updates, the editing features are being updated. We are currently working on a development preview screencast to show you how these works. Until then, you can take a peek at what’s cooking:

  • Virtual caret — Enables you to place the caret at any visible position in the document.
  • Improved rectangle selections — Thanks to virtual caret feature, we were able to change the behavior of rectangle selections, which now can be respectively dragged from any visible position in the document. There is also a possiblity to create multiple rectangles.
  • Backward rectangle selections — Most simply explained: creating a rectangle selection aligned to line end. The screencast should do the rest.
  • Indent guides rendering — the new renderer is now rendering indentation guides — vertical lines to give an overview of how the code is structured.
  • Different theme for different grammars — Successful Appearance preferences has been made even more useful. You are now able to specify a theme for each type of document.
  • Unicode RTL rendering upgrades — Intype has always been built as a Unicode-ready editor. Thanks to the AFW, we are now able to deliver better caret navigation and rendering for the RTL and LTR/RTL mixed text.
  • Unicode font fallback — even if you are using English, there is always need to have at least one more backup font to render characters that are not available in your main font. Typically the ToDo bundle suffers from not being able to display those pretty symbols for completed and incompleted tasks. This also provides a huge advantage for people from the Eastern locales. They are now able to use standard Courier for code and their local font for special characters.

JavaScript

  • SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine — I’m not sure if this has been stressed enough: we are going to use Firefox SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine to deliver the high level JavaScript functionality.
  • Backend scripting support for editing (MVC style) — Of course, for scripting, you’ll need to be able to access all the functionality available to internal commands. It took us a while, but the editing infrastructure has been made to give you MVC-like API for working with documents and editors.
  • There’s a lot of support and backend APIs planned for each essential part of the Intype, most of them are going to be implemented until 0.4, so we can enter beta 0.5 with fully featured scripting.

Files

  • Improved working with Recent files and Session — There has been a lot complaints about the current inability to customize session and the “reopening” of recent files. In Newcastle, you will be able to set this up.
  • Project manager file operations — Everyone (including me) is waiting for ability to work with files in the project manager. Creating new files, copying, pasting, deleting and much more is being built into the Newcastle.

Release planning

As have written on the forums, our releases have been now planned up to version 1.5. Here is the list of all major releases until 1.0 with their focus and codename:

For the alpha stage, there are two releases planned:

  • Alpha 0.3.5 (Newcastle) — focused on the new UI framework and preparing for scripting. It will be split into three phases where first two will be called Community previews (CP1 and CP2) and will be available for download only at forums. The third one will be final and stable
  • Alpha 0.4 (Brighton) — Finalizing the basic JavaScript APIs • Theme editor.

For the beta stage, there are two releases planned:

  • Beta 0.5 (Blackpool) — Focused on updating working with files (like loading from FTP on the background) • CURL API’s to work with remote files • Searching in files • Auto-update functionality.
  • Beta 0.6 (Sheffield) — Search and project JavaScript APIs • File templates • Help system for bundles.

For the final stage there are two releases planned:

  • RC 0.9 (Merthyr) — Project scaffold templates • Code folding • UI JavaScript API
  • Final 1.0 (Swansea) — Final release

I understand that some of the major features are cryptic now, but we’re going to bring some light in future posts.

Beside the main development, we are now working on:

  • development preview screencast to show you what has been done on Newcastle
  • preparing posts with insider info on the features being cooked for Newcastle
  • preparing a preview of our new website

So stay tuned, folks.

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  • 1 Yarden Sachs | 03.09.2008 at 6:15 pm

    Sounds terrific!

    Can’t Wait!

    martin if you need help, I’m HERE!

  • 2 chris | 03.09.2008 at 7:40 pm

    can’t wait for the next release, keep up the great work and know what you guys are doing is appreciated a lot from me :)

  • 3 ollu | 03.09.2008 at 8:08 pm

    I’m droolin’ …

  • 4 Paweł Kata | 03.09.2008 at 8:58 pm

    Best text editor ever! Can’t wait for 0.3.5 :-D

  • 5 amoeba | 03.09.2008 at 11:18 pm

    Very impressive! You are spoiling us.

    Thanks for the update!

  • 6 Xavier | 03.09.2008 at 11:41 pm

    Very exciting! Thanks for infos.

  • 7 dijon | 04.09.2008 at 12:27 am

    Glad to see the blog get a new entry. I’m using Intype for my daily work and it looks like ALL of the features I miss will be arriving in 0.3.5 :-)

    Hope it won’t be too long, but take all the time you need to get it right!

  • 8 dflock | 04.09.2008 at 2:52 am

    It all sounds great, I’m exited about Intype again and I’m really looking forward to the Community Preview releases!

    Well done on a excellent re-start to the blog - nice post, hopefully the first of many :)

  • 9 Anonymous coward | 04.09.2008 at 4:06 am

    Intype has been developed for years.
    Hope it will be a fantastic text editor.

  • 10 jbeduya | 04.09.2008 at 5:44 am

    At last, I’ve seen the light.

  • 11 Rdm | 04.09.2008 at 11:16 am

    And release dates? ;)

  • 12 Jowra | 04.09.2008 at 11:18 am

    A big, big thanks for the Update!

    Using InType 0.3.1 now for month and can’t wait for the new version. =)

  • 13 david | 04.09.2008 at 3:43 pm

    what about code hinting?

  • 14 h | 04.09.2008 at 4:34 pm

    Great to hear things are coming along :) Looking forward to the next release!

  • 15 T. Mulder | 04.09.2008 at 7:31 pm

    Very nice!

  • 16 Brendon Kozlowski | 04.09.2008 at 8:22 pm

    1. Glad to get some blogging love!

    2. “Projected plans are subject to change.” As is evident from the past, and any project for that matter. :) I hope people will keep this in mind.

    3. Are you sure you won’t want to start charging prior to the v1.0 release? Considering the desire to not release a “buggy” test product, these are almost all stable releases with new functionality. If you don’t charge for the product starting at projected version 0.5, I’d be afraid some may not purchase your product after all your hard work. Maybe a small split in development for a trial and retail version? Yeah, that sounds good…implement trial functionality in v0.5 and above. :)

    Thanks again for the update. I hope the entire team is doing well.

  • 17 Anonymous coward | 05.09.2008 at 3:01 am

    Delaying code folding 0.9! Oh my, I guess I’ll have to stick with e for a while… :-(

  • 18 Martin Cohen | 05.09.2008 at 8:04 am

    Brendon Kozlowski: In fact, yeah, we will be adding trial, and some “final” functionalities from 0.5 like automatic update, or support for serial keys.

    David: Code hinting is a big topic. Some stuff will be implemented before, some after 1.0. Currently we have no clear plans on where to go with code-hinting (because it may cause a small editor turn to hungry IDE).

    Anonymous coward: Some features are moved to the end, because we won’t bother with them now. However, it may easily happen that it will be much sooner.

  • 19 im not coward | 05.09.2008 at 10:39 pm

    whew! nice joke!! nyeh, really hehehe! ^^ but been using Intype for along lonely time, since release.. very FAST! editor indeed, but seriously how much is it? will it be free but close source? or to be sold for a certain $ amount? when will be the release date of 0.3.5? or is it “cumming” already… oh yes oh yes ahhh yes sh*t..bitch dont touch that….RSS.

  • 20 me again | 06.09.2008 at 1:11 pm

    why use intype in wine, when u can use gedit.. intype ported to linux too?

  • 21 Rico | 07.09.2008 at 9:28 pm

    I just discovered InType and I really, really like it. It’s beautiful and fast and I can get real work done in it so I’m looking forward to the future.

  • 22 Anonymous coward | 08.09.2008 at 5:30 am

    YOUR BACK! GREAT NEWS!

  • 23 Bruno | 08.09.2008 at 11:10 am

    I was waiting a long time for some news from you guys..keep on the good work.
    Martin move you fat ass :P

  • 24 Anonymous coward | 09.09.2008 at 5:32 am

    finally….

  • 25 Anonymous coward | 09.09.2008 at 3:05 pm

    Yes ….

  • 26 Brendon Kozlowski | 09.09.2008 at 9:39 pm

    @Martin: Glad to hear it. I hate to see really great products that gave a free alpha end up losing business because their alpha/beta versions were “good enough”.

    How is CakePHP and Rails development treating you? :)

  • 27 Deadelus | 10.09.2008 at 2:45 pm

    Great to hear something again from Intype! I’m really hoping for a new (unstable) release soon :D

  • 28 Coyote | 10.09.2008 at 5:25 pm

    this app kicks ass very light keep it up! very stable even in its alpha release.

  • 29 Agate | 15.09.2008 at 8:45 am

    yeah !

  • 30 neotoxic | 16.09.2008 at 1:32 am

    This is an excellent application that I have had my eye one for sometime now. I am very much looking forward to seeing it come into fruition. Its good to see that development is progressing… there is a real need for a good quality application like this to be made available at a good price. Keep up the good work guys and looking forward to purchasing my copy soon.

  • 31 foi | 16.09.2008 at 1:31 pm

    e-texteditor 0 ; intype 1 (s_cozy)

  • 32 Broken Record | 16.09.2008 at 2:22 pm

    As much as I love InType for being light and fast, our company will not be purchasing the final product for one reason alone: consistency.

    To make a blog and not post for over a year is, quite simply, an atrocious action with a very profound message. Regardless of any possible excuse, it takes 10 minutes to update a blog with development details.

    Don’t start something if you don’t intend to maintain it consistently, it’s bad for image - *especially* company image. How can one tell if this lack of consistency will saturate the support side of the program?

    It’s a good thing InType has some loyal - if not rather stupid, looking at foi’s post above - followers. Good luck finishing it.

  • 33 eduludi | 17.09.2008 at 6:31 pm

    gEdit in ubuntu works better, is more powerfull and productive… and isn’t alpha. If you can switch to linux, work with gEdit.

  • 34 Wilman (Uruguay) | 17.09.2008 at 9:58 pm

    This editor rocks guys! I am very excited about this new upcoming release so I will be so tuned to wait for it…

  • 35 Arik Jones | 17.09.2008 at 11:55 pm

    I hope this comes out on the Mac in the future.

  • 36 Anonymous coward | 18.09.2008 at 6:09 pm

    Intype is currently my choice for script editing. It seems it has a ways to go, but it’s already the best IMO. Wheres the tip jar?

  • 37 Anonymous coward | 23.09.2008 at 8:42 am

    So when should we expect new unstable release? It’s been 3 weeks since this post was written…

  • 38 Anonymous coward | 24.09.2008 at 2:12 pm

    Maybe you should also consider V8 (http://code.google.com/p/v8/) os Squirrelfish Extreme (from Webkit http://nightly.webkit.org/) as an alternative to Spidermonkey .

  • 39 Anonymous coward | 29.09.2008 at 11:04 pm

    Time is relative. Especially in context with that project… It can take hours or month… ;-)

  • 40 David | 02.10.2008 at 9:57 pm

    Hello

    Just want you to say that i love Intype. I use it everyday!
    Much respect for the developers.

  • 41 Alexander | 08.10.2008 at 1:28 am

    I’ve remained silent on the forums and posted no comments, but seeing this progress has compelled me to give my thanks. I develop primarily on mac, but I like Windows a lot and when I am writing code on Windows, I use Intype. Though it would be nice if it always remained free, naturally, I recall reading somewhere that when it’s in 1.0 it will cost money. That’s fine, I understand and I will pay for it. It’s worth it to me because it’s a great program with a fun and (at times :) committed team behind it.

  • 42 intype fan | 20.10.2008 at 6:53 pm

    Great editor! Keep up the good work. You should really make money out of this :)

  • 43 Tema | 23.10.2008 at 9:30 am

    Охуенный редактор!

  • 44 Anonymous coward | 26.10.2008 at 3:47 pm

    Nice editor. In which language and using which gui ib you writed it?

  • 45 foi | 27.10.2008 at 1:58 pm

    Охуенный редактор! +10000

  • 46 Martin Cohen | 27.10.2008 at 7:59 pm

    Anonymous coward: We’re writing Intype in C++, using our own UI library (codename AFW).

  • 47 free9 | 02.11.2008 at 8:17 am

    haha, wait release

  • 48 0.3.5 | 04.11.2008 at 7:50 am

    Download link help

  • 49 Anon Anony | 11.11.2008 at 7:24 am

    Cant wait for the release :D

  • 50 This Can't be Real | 11.11.2008 at 6:25 pm

    These posts can’t be real. A half-baked editor with no updates or comments for a year, and only one negative post?

    As that person mentioned, how can you trust a vendor that is so disorganized and out of control?

  • 51 foi | 12.11.2008 at 12:41 pm

    жду версии 0.35 очень сильно

  • 52 Ацкий кодер | 18.11.2008 at 8:37 am

    Я тоже жду 0.35.
    Интайп — чемпион, Интайп — чемпион!!!

  • 53 uga buga | 20.11.2008 at 4:48 pm

    Sounds great. intype is the greatest textedit by far…

    can’t wait for 3.5

  • 54 Medvedev D.A. | 24.11.2008 at 9:32 am

    Hello, guys!
    I’m waiting for 3.5 intype. Why is it so slowly? I’m gonna buy intype, I’m promise.

  • 55 JJ Rami | 26.11.2008 at 3:27 am

    Has anyone been in contact with the people who are creating Intype? I’m just curious if this project is still active. It’s a nice editor and I’m wondering if it will continue to be developed.

    Cheers!

  • 56 baael | 30.11.2008 at 9:26 pm

    it is continued, be patient - like me and many others.

  • 57 andrei | 03.12.2008 at 12:23 pm

    honestly guys, you suck >:(

 

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What is Intype?

Intype is a powerful and intuitive code editor for Windows with lightning fast response.

It is easily extensible and customizable, thanks in part to its support for scripting and native plug-ins. It makes development in any programming or scripting language quick and easy.

Where can I get it?

Intype is still in development, but the current alpha release is available for download here.

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