First look, QE 4.0 Beta.

[hutch--]

I have the new version of QE more or less ready to put it out for Beta testing, with the help of a member from Melbourne QE4.0 has already had extensive testing and appears to run OK from its minimum platform Win2000 through XP Sp2 and Vista. The new version has been coded fom scratch in MASM to pick up the advantages of size, control and native use of the masm32 libraries.

By it being limited to Win2000 and above it contains later capacity which has allowed the later versions of rich edit which in turn allows multiple level undo/redo, reliable colour control of text and background in the editor without unwanted side effects. QE4.0 has an entirely new scripting engne that is much faster and a lot more powerful. It has been implemented as a DLL to further reduce the memory footprint of QE which is now coming in at under 30k.

It is easier to configure and has additional adjustments like margin control to set the left side selection bar to suits different font sizes. There is a new help file for this version in CHM format that contains the documentation for the new script engine. The attached zip file should be unpacked in a seperate directory to masm32 and it has a menu set up with the normal build options that use the batch files in masm32 so it can be used to test building asm files without disturbing the existing setup for masm32.

If you don't like inverse colour schemes, just go to the Edit menu and change the colours to your own choice, there is the normal RGB 24 bit colour range available.

QE4.0 is designed to be extendable in 4 stages, you can set up plain text pieces of code and add them to the menus, this simplifies creating reusable code in snippet format without having to write any scripts. The script engine is relatively easy to use as it is more like a programming language but it also has Windows API capacity for more advanced scripts. The plugin interface for the old version has been retained as a legacy interface and a completely new interface has been added so that extra capacity can be added from the editor end without needing to change the existing interface.

Note that with the old plugin format, most will still work but a minor technical difference from rich edit 1 to 2 is that version 2 and later only use a carriage return (13) internally so a plugin that assumes the CRLF pair may not work correctly.

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[hutch--]

Apologies but I did not correct the menus.ini file paths and the text menu was not working. here is a replacement menus.ini file that has the correct relative paths.

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[hutch--]

Something that wouled be very useful to me is if anyone has a Windows only printer that they could test the printing with. I have it testd on a HP laserjet and two different PDF printer drivers and it works correctly but I just don't have access to a Windows only printer to test with.

[hutch--]

Attached are two DLLs that convert both binary files to QSE notation and text files to QSE notation. These are dsigned to make the production of more complex scripts that write resources like icons and bitmaps a lot easier while keeping them self contained.

The binary DLL version will convert anything to QSE notation while the text DLL version attempts to detect if the file is a binary file and will not try and convert it. The text format is smaller so if you need to encapsulate a text file in a script, it is both more economical and faster.

LATER I have found an error in the txt conversion DLL, I will have it fixed shortly.

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[daydreamer]

plz Hutch, I want a modded version of QE for Java
so I can use it without need of have a separate batch file for compilation and running it
I want on menu so it calls Javac.exe followed by Java.exe and one that calls Javac.exe followed by Appletviewer.exe

[hutch--]

magnus,

Write a plugin that does what you want. Either old or new format will do the job.

[simonst]

Hello,
at first let me say Thank You for this useful and wonderful editor.
I remember, since version 3.5, there was an "User defined text selection" included. With the "maketbl.exe" tool one
could create tables for deciding which characters should be additionally selected by double clicking in the editor. If I have
right understood, then QE would load the "chtbl.ini" file after starting, so that this user-defined option would be immediately
activated.
My question is: does the new version of QE still support this? Admitted, in the new masm32 release (10), I have not
found the "chtbl.ini" anymore, but still "maketbl.exe".
I am thankful for Your help.
Kind Regards,
Stefan Simon

[hutch--]

Hi Stefan,

Internally QE 4.0 uses the same technique but in the development cycle I did not have enough time to make it configurable like the old version. The table dialog is useful in assembler programming as a stand alone and with the old QE version I made sure it used the same format. One of the things I will do in the future is put this capacity back into QE, After this release I have put back in the search and replace escapes, added extra capacity to the new scripting engine, there is an errata in one of the HEX dlls, it works fine but has the wrong caption on its dialog, even bothered to slightly optimise the old QSC dll to get it slightly faster.

I am personally pleased with the new QE, once I started using it I am faster using it than with the old version and particularly with algo development, the muklti-level undo/redo is a blessing, the colour control helps with eyestrain as i personally use a dark gray background with light text. Like with the last one, I will keep tweaking it forever but I think this is a better tool than the last one.