Meet my new project: Small Editor

[dec]

Hi NeoBookers!

I'am very proudly to present to you my new project: Small Editor, which intended to be a little more than a NotePad replacement, a daily work editor for plain and other text files.

Here is a list of the Small Editor main features:

* Minimalist interface, forgive the main menu!
* Virtually unlimited opened files placed on tabs
* Save your session: reopen last files automagically
* Not only reopen, but remember selection and more
* Customizable syntax highlighters with themes support
* Include two syntax highlighters themes ready to use
* Multilanguage interface and temable syntax highlighters
* More than 50 syntax highlighters for most commont files
* Unicode, UTF-7, UTF-8, ANSI and ASCII supported encodings
* Multisyntax highlighterss to HTML or PHP, for example
* Print preview and optional color highlighter printing
* User friendly interface and enhance Windows(tm) controls
* Drag to the editor or shortcut to open files and folders
* User confirmation when try to open lots or big large files
* Regular Expressions when search or search & replace text
* Advanced editor capabilities, like column selection support
* Optional (ready by default) reusable program instances
* Full screen mode support covering all available desktop
* Historials for open URLs, search and replace queries
* Search and replace engines to search and replace in files
* Possible editor exporting to HTML, RTF and TeX formats
* Automatically correction of some text by other text
* Automatically save the opened files every N seconds
* Customizable code proposal for alll supported languages
* HTML preview on Internet Explorer and Chromium Browsers
* And more... many more big small details!

For now only a alpha release are available (the first public release), I need to work hard in order to prepare the first stable release, but can't resist to provide now this earlier release of the program.

Hope Small Editor can be useful to you!

Download the program from the bellow link:

http://www.smalleditor.com/?download/smalleditor.exe

Thank you very much!

[dec]

Hello there!

Just to inform that the first stable release of Small Editor is currently available!

Get more information and download from the Small Editor website at: www.smalleditor.com

Hope this program can help you in your daily work!

[dec]

Hello there!

Just to inform that Small Editor 1.2 is available, and include lots of changes and enhancements from the previous releases, for example, now it's possible to preview HTML files in both Internet Explorer and Chromium, and lots of other features and enhancements!

Get more information and download from the Small Editor website at: www.smalleditor.com

Remember I hope you can use this program in your daily work!

[Tony Kroos]

Now I'm trying to edit my html files with SE. Preview in chrome/ie becomes very handy. Print preview needs zooming. Also I'd like to preview & print in browser mode as well.

p.s: once I got access violation at address 005F5BFA in module 'Editor.exe'. Read of address 0000042C. (I was playing with presswork menu)
and, I got stable access violation when I change something in editor (text, encoding...) and then click any of "preview in..." tabs below (7х64 sp1). When I save html first, then it's ok...

(I think the 'preview in' is also to blame in 1st case)

[dec]

Hello Tony,

First of all thanks for your comments and interest. Please, assert you have installed the latest Small Editor release, download it again and then install it to be sure you use the latest Small Editor version. I will take a look at the print preview zoom question and maintain you informed here if found something of interest. Thanks again Tony.

Download the latest Small Editor release clicking on this link

[dec]

Hello again,

Please Tony, try to put your "access violation" error result in a step by step procedure. In other words, try to explain in order that I can reproduce the problem here. I spend several time and efforts in order to avoid this kind of exceptions and, apparently, I cannot get this error when try to do "everything" using the preview browsers tabs. So, please, Tony, try to explain here how I can reproduce the problem.

In other words, what Windows version you use?

Thanks Tony.

[Tony Kroos]

I downloaded SE from your site yesterday to check it out, v1.2 11/25/12 , now I upgraded to 11/26/12

still have an access violation, I will make a video tomorrow to demonstrate. I just open a html document, change it (type one single letter) and click 'preview' -> access violation. I click ok in error dialog and then preview works fine.
OS: win7x64 sp1 (also tried on xp sp3 virtual pc - no luck)

[dec]

Hello Tony,

Thank you very much. Finally I get the same (I think it's the same, because follow your refered steps) error and I will try to investigate can be happend.

Thank you again Tony.

[dec]

Hello again,

Well. Apparently the problem is when the program try to save the possible modified HTML document in order to show the most recent version at the browsers previews. Since I have no time just now (I will in the way of the hospital with my mother) I update the program in order to fix the problem, but, now the user is responsible to save the document before use the browsers preview (in order to preview the latest changes).

In fact maybe this is the behaviour that we need to use... I'am not sure at this time if maybe it's a better idea to stay the things like this: so the program don't try to save the HTML document... because maybe this is not wanted by the user. However, later on this day I want to investigate the cause of the problem. Anyway, Tony, you can download (or update) Small Editor and view how the "access violation" you found not appear anymore.

Thank you very very much for your notes Tony.

[Tony Kroos]

program try to save the possible modified HTML document in order to show the most recent version at the browsers previews.

I told you when I save document first no errors shown )
Well there's something to think about... to save or not to save. On the one hand, I surely want to preview my changes immediately in one-click; on another I'm not sure I want it to be saved. You better make a 'preview' copy of the document just to show it in browser and do not save main document to let the user decide to do so.

[dec]

Hello Tony,

program try to save the possible modified HTML document in order to show the most recent version at the browsers previews.

I told you when I save document first no errors shown )
Well there's something to think about... to save or not to save. On the one hand, I surely want to preview my changes immediately in one-click; on another I'm not sure I want it to be saved. You better make a 'preview' copy of the document just to show it in browser and do not save main document to let the user decide to do so.

Well. In fact, if no HTML file exists, the program show the HTML code of the document: the most update HTML code. So it's possible to show the HTML code in al cases, but, for some reason, I prefer to load (if exists) the file into the browser, instead of load the HTML code. Why? Because the behaviour of the browser (if I'm not wrong) change between a loaded string or a loaded HTML file.

I know the error is solved, but, I continue working on this issue, since I found that it's problematic to load empty strings and even empty documents on the browsers. The problem (now) is that I need to understand well why ocurr this. I need to investigate this more slowly in order to found a good solution. You point me to a possible solution: load the last HTML code (without saving the document) but I refer you the possible diferents behaviour in this case.

I continue working on this and maintain updated the program and inform to you here when finally I can found a good solution.

Thank you again Tony!

P.S. The adopted solution now is to disallow the previews when a document is empty. This can be a good solution, but, I'm not sure of this. So I need to investigate if we can adopt another solution which don't implied to disallow the preview when an empty HTML code (saved in a file or not) is wanted to preview.

[dec]

So it's possible to show the HTML code in al cases, but, for some reason, I prefer to load (if exists) the file into the browser, instead of load the HTML code. Why? Because the behaviour of the browser (if I'm not wrong) change between a loaded string or a loaded HTML file.

For example, if you use a CSS style in your HTML document, the preview only can take it if a file is loaded into the browser: because then the browser know the location of the HTML and the CSS file. But if you simply load the HTML code into the browser, the CSS file cannot be loaded, since the browser don't know their location. For this reason (for example) I prefer to load the HTML file when exists, and only load the HTML code when the file did not exists. And what about to save or not to save the document? I need to think this... I say in principle the decision is to save the document, but, maybe this is not a good idea, since you put the hand on something that the user maybe do not wanted...

[Gaev]

dec (David Esperalta Calderón):

If I may suggest ...

Yes, when you load the HTML directly into a Browser ... the 'base url' is set to 'about: blank' ... which messes up any 'relative references'.

But it is also not a good idea to 'force a save of the changes' before being able to 'Preview' it.

So, the solution might be to ...

1) respond to a 'Preview' request by saving the changes to another file in the same folder as the file being changed ... e.g. if the file was /path/to/abcd.html ... the temporary file would be /path/to/abcd_sesesese.html ... so unlikely to be duplicate of file names used by user ... and same 'base url' (folder) as original file.

Then, 'Preview' the saved temporary file.

Use same /path/to/abcd_sesesese.html for each subsequent 'Preview' request for the original file

2) provide separate 'save' function ... so he/she can 'Preview' changes ... and ignore them if results are not as expected.

3) keep track of these temporary files ... and delete them when ...

- user asks to 'save' changes to the original file
- exiting Small Editor

If the deletion of temporary file is somehow missed ... the '_sesesese' text pattern will easily identify it as a temporary file created by Small Editor.

[dec]

Hello,

Thanks for your sugestions Gaev. Thinking on this, maybe can be a good idea to allow the user to choose if the program "force" the save changes or not: this can be made by put another option into the program. So the user can choose if the program save automatically the changes or not. The only question is if I can avoid the past problem when try to saving the changes. I think so, but need to test it.

I like your sugestion, except for some possible "file write problems" if you try to preview an HTML file from a folder which is not writable by the program. Of course this can be investigate to offer an alternative: maybe we can use the temporary file when possible and other way when not. But this complicate the things a little more... I really want to study if finally can found a way to save the changes, and, let the user to decide what to do adding a new program option.

P.D. Chromium browser allow to add strings directly and specify an URL... so with Chromium we can show in the preview the last changes, with the beneficts of relative paths. But, unfortunatelly, Internet Explorer did not allow this feature. At the least not in the same way,... maybe we can doing this using some "rare or hidden" feature... Chromium allow this by default.

[Tony Kroos]

Why? Because the behaviour of the browser (if I'm not wrong) change between a loaded string or a loaded HTML file.

Yes it is. The only way to get correct html content in browser is to let browser load it from the page. So I think the only way is to save document as temporary html file and display this file in preview mode, without affecting file opened in editor. It's normal behavior to keep opened file intact (save it only by user request) and work with 'temp' copy only (ms word for ex.)... then u may implement 'autosave' (into copy) and 'recover' (from copy) options just like msword does.