For some reason, backslash expressions were disabled for replace (even though there was a checkbox). I've enabled them and you can now do useful things like:
replace: \r\n with:
and that will remove all line breaks in a file (if you have CRLF line breaks of course). Not sure why this was ever disabled - must have been an oversight.
I've added another toolbar which contains a combo-box for find to PN2. This box currently only allows you to search the current document, but will also allow you to "find in files" and search google (eventually). The combo supports auto-completion too. I've also committed changes to allow PN2 to parse "broken" paths like these:
file:///C%3A/source/monkey.cs
and:
c:\source\\monkey.cs
This means that the output window is a lot more useful with tools that give broken paths in their messages.
There is now a mailing list hosted by sourceforge for CVS commit notifications (for those that like that kind of thing). Every time some changes are committed to CVS you too can receive an e-mail telling you about them, just subscribe here:
I've just checked in changes adding a drop-down box on a toolbar allowing scheme selection. This was a requested feature, and it's about 80% implemented - it currently doesn't reflect the active scheme. Somewhat irritatingly, sourceforge's pserver CVS servers are currently running 24 hours behind the developer SSH access, so those who are keeping in sync with the code will have to wait a bit. This is catching me out on other projects that I use at the moment - most annoying. Bjoern Graf has also submitted some more changes to the find and replace code which I'll be putting in tonight hopefully.
This is possibly the coolest feature I've discovered in Word in years. I've been writing a lot of technical specs recently, and most of them have a number of XML snippets in them. It's always really annoying to see red and green wiggly underlines all over the document when I'm trying to read it, and I thought to myself: "wouldn't it be cool if you could disable spell-checking for one style". And low and behold, I found an option to do that. Go into Modify Style for the relevant style, select "Language" from the Format drop-down box, and click "Do not check spelling or grammar". You need to re-load the document for it to take effect. This works in Word 2002, I don't know about previous versions.
As a continuation of the series: Money that EMI have lost because of copy protected CDs, I'd just like to point out that I have no use for Radiohead's Hail To The Thief album, because of the copy protection. I cannot listen to this album on my audio equipment (iPod), so EMI lose whatever proportion of 12.99 they would have received. Bad luck. Also, Virgin records have lost two sales of Turin Brakes' Ether Song - Me and John both will not buy this album because of copy protection.
So let's see. One person will successfully extract the data from one of these copy protected CDs and will create MP3s from it (there are a number of ways I can imagine doing this without losing quality - digital input on a soundcard anyone?). Then that person will share that music using Kazaa. Then everyone will download it (ok, that's missing a few steps but we get there in the end). Unfortunately for EMI (or Virgin et al) the same people who would always have stolen the music do so, but they also lose a number of their paying customers who refuse to buy copy protected CDs that are of no use to them.
My prediction is that CD sales will fall, but that this fall will be blamed on people copying music, and those of us who are unable to use the music and are therefore not buying it will be ignored. Lets hope some of the small
Other posts in this series: My open letter to "The Darkness".
Other sites worth viewing:
UK Campaign for Digital Rights on Corrupt CDs.
Hot Buttered Death: CD copy protection: a list.
Fat Chuck's - Corrupt CDs.
Don't buy these albums, and write to their record labels expressing your disgust.
I've stayed out of the new syndication format development process while keeping an eye on blog reports to see what's going on. Mostly there are too many strong personalities involved to leave sensible discussion, and I've got other things to do with my time than to watch the RecentChanges page on a wiki all the time. What is syndication for after all?!
However, I did go over and vote on the current naming issue. Feedcast is just a bad name - it is the name of a technology not a protocol/format. The format and API itself doesn't cast anything - software does. And how redundant is the phrase "FeedCast feed". I think almost any other name would be better. Don't get me wrong, I think the naming process for this thing is long winded and completely over-blown, but there are many better suggestions than feedcast.
Of course, we shouldn't forget that the name of the format it's trying to better itself (RSS) had unfortunate misuses - RSSBandit anyone? Oh dear...
Load up Zempt (if you are using it as an offline blog tool) and type in <blink>. Be amused.
I've just checked in a bunch of changes to the search and replace dialogs and some of the related functionality (with big thanks to Bjoern Graf who sent me lots of code). This fixes the problem with "Replace Once", puts the current word under the cursor into the find/replace dialogs when shown, positions those dialogs away from the cursor, and enables the proper combo-box functionality in the dialogs - and that's just some of the changes! The next version will also have Incremental search (although that code's not checked in yet).
Thus begins the development of the Mingus roadmap milestone.