BLIde christmas free edition update available

BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/BLIde christmas free edition update available

ziggy(Posted 2009) [#1]
Hi, I'm glad to anounce that an update for the FREE version of BLIde is available for everyone, for free.
For newcomers, BLIde is a BlitzMax ide for Windows. For more information see: http://www.blide.org

I wish you find this useful.

This is a non-detailed changelog:
[*] Removed version information for the now unexistant Blitz3DSDKNet wrapper DLL, as it is no longer needed by BLIde and it does not exists on current BLIde distribution.
[*] Unmanaged solutionnow can be created without the need of a specific folder for the project itself. Anyway, this is not the default behavior.
[*] Committed Tommo changes on the C++ builder parser, so it now highlights symbols properly.
[*] Committed Tommo changes in the ANSI C parser for the same reason.
[*] Implemented new Build option: 'Rebuild ignoring QuickBuild'. When this is selected the solution/file is compiled with Quick Build OFF, even if Quick Build is enabled on the IDE. So in case you have to recompile something after a module/max update or whatever, you don't have to set off Quick Build, build the application, and set Quick Build on again.
[*] Several improvements on BLIde internal memory handling.
[*] BLIde was not releasing a file handle for the BlitzMax changes log information file, so this file could not be updated while BLIde was running.
[*] BLIde was not setting the correct default preferences when the blide framework folder of the host machine was missing.
[*] Changed the fade in/out mechanism so, when disabled, it does not produce any flickering or animation, so it is much more remote desktop friendly.
[*] A license embedding issue in one of the BLIde components was making BLIde display a watermark in some wizard controls. This has been fixed. [*] Local shortcuts window updates faster when code is being edited.
[*] Fixed: The underlaying HTML browser was updating the status bar text even when it was not visible or focused.
[*] Fixed an issue in the Welcome page that was making it possible to load another application in the middle of a debug session, leaving the BLIde debug session in an inconsistant state.
[*] Reduced CPU load when debugging an Application from within BLIde. Data reading and stream flushing is done on separated threads while the main BLIde GUI is left alone processing only any possible windows event.
[*] Fade in/out effect can be disabled for solutions being loaded.
[*] Improvement: Added additional assembly information and strongname to BLIde internal DLLs to benefit more from NGen so BLIde executes a bit faster in some areas
[*] Improvement: Removed offline documentation in favor of smaller updates and deployment. Also, being an online resource, it will be kept updated more easily.
[*] Several fixes on intellisense. Object instancing intellisense now provides much more detailed information. [*] Removed version information for the now unexistant Blitz3DSDKNet wrapper DLL, as it is no longer needed by BLIde and it does not exists on current BLIde distribution.
[*] Unmanaged solutionnow can be created without the need of a specific folder for the project itself. Anyway, this is not the default behavior.
[*] Committed Tommo changes on the C++ builder parser, so it now highlights symbols properly.
[*] Committed Tommo changes in the ANSI C parser for the same reason.
[*] Implemented new Build option: 'Rebuild ignoring QuickBuild'. When this is selected the solution/file is compiled with Quick Build OFF, even if Quick Build is enabled on the IDE. So in case you have to recompile something after a module/max update or whatever, you don't have to set off Quick Build, build the application, and set Quick Build on again.
[*] Several improvements on BLIde internal memory handling.
[*] BLIde was not releasing a file handle for the BlitzMax changes log information file, so this file could not be updated while BLIde was running.
[*] BLIde was not setting the correct default preferences when the blide framework folder of the host machine was missing.
[*] Changed the fade in/out mechanism so, when disabled, it does not produce any flickering or animation, so it is much more remote desktop friendly.
[*] A license embedding issue in one of the BLIde components was making BLIde display a watermark in some wizard controls. This has been fixed.
[*] Local shortcuts window updates faster when code is being edited.
[*] Fixed: The underlaying HTML browser was updating the status bar text even when it was not visible or focused.
[*] Fixed an issue in the Welcome page that was making it possible to load another application in the middle of a debug session, leaving the BLIde debug session in an inconsistant state.
[*] Reduced CPU load when debugging an Application from within BLIde. Data reading and stream flushing is done on separated threads while the main BLIde GUI is left alone processing only any possible windows event.
[*] Fade in/out effect can be disabled for solutions being loaded.
[*] Improvement: Added additional assembly information and strongname to BLIde internal DLLs to benefit more from NGen so BLIde executes a bit faster in some areas
[*] Improvement: Removed offline documentation in favor of smaller updates and deployment. Also, being an online resource, it will be kept updated more easily.
[*] Several fixes on intellisense. Object instancing intellisense now provides much more detailed information.
[*] Added compiler path information in the BLIde about box
[*] BLIde is a bit smaller, so it launches faster at the JIT
[*] New About window includes information about components, license, and the BlitzMax changelog
[*] When the save button or menu item is clicked from a TMP file, it opens the save as dialog
[*] Improved SDK inline documentation. Specially usefull when used in conjunction with Microsoft Visual Studio, or any other xml capable IDE.
[*] Fixed an issue when making drag&drop on a managed solution, when there are lots of files dragged, BLIde won't open them all, just add them to the project tree, and let them ready to be opened by the BLIde user
[*] New: BLIde editor window can be vertiaclly splitted (in addition to the horizontal splitter)
[*] Some internal SDK commands now include inline documentation (not all of them yet!)
[*] Automatic completion list (Ctrl+Enter) now shows also scope based self info.
[*] Automatic completion list (Ctrl+Enter) now shows also local variables when possible!
[*] Fixed a debugger issue that was making BLIde unable to show objectumps for Object type variables that were being upcasted to Strings at runtime.
[*] Fixed a visualization issue on horizontal scrollbars.
[*] Several changes and improvements on the BLIde configuration wizard
[*] Small fixes on the BLIde intelliprompt
[*] Small fixes to improve compatibility with next BlitzMax version.
[*] Fixed a visualization issue that was affecting some TreeView controls in BLIde. This has been fixed with the help of Gfk and TaskMaster.
[*] Memory leaks reduced.
[*] Fixed bug with mouse wheel scrolling on some PCs.
[*] Fixed bug with painting in page breaks/page view mode.
[*] Fixed bug with drag-n-drop text.
[*] Fixed bug with search-replace.
[*] Minor issues with VB, C#, Parser and XML parsers fixed.
[*] Fixed bug with deleting text when inserting item from code completing listbox.
[*] Fixed bug with displaying generic types in code completion listbox.
[*] Minor code completion issues fixed.
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde managed solution to mix relative paths with complete paths sometimes, when a new solution node was created.
[*] Inline syntax analyzer is disabled while BLIde is loading or closing a project. This speeds up loading and closing big projects. The analyzer is enabled again at the end of the load/close process
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde managed solution to mix relative paths with complete paths sometimes, when a new solution node was created.
[*] Improved imports handling on managed solutions. When a imported library node is released, BLIde now also releases any reference to it in order to leave the files completely out of the scope of the managed solution.
[*] BLIde no longer forces a tree-view sort of the managed solution tree after a solution node has been edited, unless text has been changed.
[*] BLIde now prevents a crash that could happen when BLIde was being close at the same time a big project was being unloaded on a slow computer. (this was caused by a thread running slower than expected).
[*] BLIde now inherits any available documentation when overloading a documented method or function from a parent class.
[*] Fixed an issue that was disabling B3D files preview from an unmanaged solution
[*] Fixed an issue that was making TXT files not load properly on a managed solution.
[*] New Plug-in included in the official 00.09.88-A distro. This plug-in automates the getter and setter methods creation for fields, using the context menu
[*] Several important stability fixes on the internal BLIde SDK engine
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde managed solution to mix relative paths with complete paths sometimes, when a new solution node was created.
[*] Fixed an issue with the BLIde debugger. It could stay on an infinite loop, on a non main thread, so it could potentially waste some resources if a concrete chain of debug requests was performed.
[*] Fixed a visual issue with the closing project window. The icon was not properly set and the window looked wrong.
[*] Fixed the tab-switching speed. Now it does not perform a re-parsing unless the leaving document has changes on its internal code tree.
[*] BLIde SDK engine is now 100% compatible with Visual Studio Express Edition 2008. More information about this to come very very soon
[*] Fixed an issue with the managed solution explorer, that was making BLIde unable to handle properly incbined media.
[*] Improved the way BLIde handles included files on managed solutions. Now BLIde will store relative paths whenever possible.
[*] Fixed several issues with the BLIde debugger. It has been changed in many ways. More info here,
[*] Several improvements on the internal BLIde text renderer. Now it can make word-customized highlighting (a la untraedit).
[*] BLIde Layout has been revised, and improved in many ways. It is now more 'proportional' and looks better
[*] Several optimizations to make BLIde smaller, so it is also faster at the JIT process.
[*] BLIde default value for 'enable system themes' on the Publisher is now 'enabled'
[*] BLIde default value for compression level on the publisher is now 'medium'
[*] BLIde default solution layout has been changed, and the console is now outside the tabbed documents container. This introduces a better focus handling.
[*] Fixed a bug on the internal BLIde debug, that could make a secondary thread enter a infinite loop, when requesting an object dump to the application being debugged and the BlitzMax debugger was not providing a valid answer.
[*] Removed the helpful hints panel from the BLIde main window. Those hints are now displayed on the welcome page.
[*] Some fixes on the internal BLIde instellisense parser.
[*] Added a window that displays the debug information being sent to BLIde by the application being debugged
[*] Status bar has been unified to all documents being edited or Web Pages being shown inside the html/help document tab
[*] The option to disable the auto learning engine has been removed as BLIde is now fast enough to handle auto learn properly on all situations
[*] Fixed a minor stability issue that was making some GDI+ items on the text rendering engine to not be collected fast enough by the GC. This bug could potentially cause some false Out of memory messages.
[*] Improved the symbols auto completion algorithm
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde parse wrong function pointers on fields of types, when the pointed function was VOID. This issue was only affecting intelliprompt in some very rare situations.
[*] Some improvements to the intelliprompt AST parser.
[*] Improved support for several Unicode formats with automatic conversion for the max compiler
[*] Several improvements on the Advanced module builder. It now shows a tree structure and has a threaded building system, so you can let the builder working on the background, and continue coding meanwhile.
[*] Fixed a small serialization issue on unmanaged solutions, that could cause the blideUS file to be sorted differently after a save operation, making the resulting file very SVN unfriendly.
[*] Internal TextRendering engine updated to QWhale 1.54.3436 revision due some compatibilities with Win7 RC1
[*] Fixed a minor stability issue that was making BLIde display an Out-of-memory message sometimes when saving a BLIde solution as the result of closing BLIde.
[*] Organized and improved the BLIde Properties dialog.
[*] New feature that integrates auto completion for quotes, parenthesis, etc.
[*] New customizable option to disable new auto completion options (by default they are enabled).
[*] Improved support for several Unicode formats with automatic conversion for the max compiler
[*] Fixed the singleton type template on the BLIde distro.
IMPORTANT: BLIde update won't modify your templates. If you want BLIde to install the new (fixed) templates, delete the Templates folder from inside the BLIde Framework folder, in your "My Documents" folder.
[*] Fixed an issue that could make the BLIde menu toolbar disappear when making some specific toolbar movements/docking and undocking operations.
[*] Fixed an issue that could affect the docking engine when BLIde was changed from a window to another using an automated shortcut on some NVidia utilities.
[*] Fixed a very important stability issue that could make BLIde mangle your source code files. (This bug was introduced on BLIde 00.09.81-A)
[*] Fixed a refreshing issue on the Build As combo box of code files.
[*] Fixed an encoding compatibility issue with latest MaxIDE on windows. BLIde will now use UTF-7 instead of Unicode as the default text encoding when loading files with special characters and no byte-order mark, as this is how MaxIDE saves files containing special characters on Max 1.33
[*] Fixed an issue that was treating the null char as a string terminator when sending data to the Console Output window from a running file.
[*] Fixed an issue on the serialization of the compiler options when an unmanaged solution was stored on disk. BLIde could be on a inconsistent state after reading a wrong serialization of a unmanaged solution.
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde unable to refresh its plug-in when they were already running.
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde unable to run 2 or more instances in a clean way.
[*] Fixed a "Document not found" unhandled exception when a BLIde user was building a BlPi file and the appropriate SDK package was not installed.
[*] Changed the way BLIde handles its configuration files. Now a folder called BLIde Framework is created inside the users Documents folder, following Microsoft strict rules about security and user accounts.
[*] BLIde now is an administrative application. That means it has to be run from an administrative account. As BLIde has to be able to modify files inside the BlitzMax folder (for example, when modules are built), this is the only way to make it safe of virtualization on Vista. Specially with computers with UAC on.
[*] BLIde Recovery Utility has been removed from the package. To restore the BLIde installation you only need to delete the BLIde Framework folder inside the user documents folder.
[*] Now different users of the same machine can have different BLIde preferences and work even with different BlitzMax versions
[*] Fixed an issue that was activating tabs in the wrong order when pressing Ctrl+W to close the active tab
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde not serialize properly the publisher icon on unmanaged solutions
[*] Fixed some small issues on intellisense
[*] Fixed an issue that could leave an unmanaged solution in a corrupted state. Now BLIde is able to load this corrupted solution files, and fix them.
[*] Fixed an issue that could introduce void nodes in a solution projects structure, when making the XML serialization
[*] Fixed an issue in the VSIntegration namespace of the BLIde SDK APIs
[*] Improved unmanaged solutions loading time
[*] Added a new Add Ons manager in BLIde
[*] Removed the Add Ons manager separated utility from the BLIde Package. It is no longer needed
[*] Moved the BLIde Plug-ins Folder to Documents\BLIde Framework\Plug-Ins. BLIde will auto-move pre-existing plug-ins to the new folder
[*] Added BLIde configuration migrator, to let BLIde refresh pre-existing configurations when the new UAC friendly mode is applied for the first time
[*] Fixed an issue that was making BLIde not build threaded modules even when thread building was available on BlitzMax version 1.32
[*] Fixed a Bug with highlighting braces when inserting code snippet.
[*] Few bugs with the Ansi C parser have been fixed.
[*] Fixed a bug with displaying generic types in code completion list box on the SDK parser
[*] Fixed a bug with incorrect displaying long space character (/U+3000).
[*] Fixed a bug with caret still displayed in the editor when auto lists looses focus due to switching to other application.
[*] Fixed a bug with updating positions of bookmarks/line styles when typing text
[*] Fixed a bug with caret movement when expanding collapsed regions.
[*] Fixed an issue that was making the Find dialog not to select the currently selected text on the editor, when opened
[*] Fixed an issue that was affecting the BLIdeExplorerRuntime, making it impossible to load more than one file, directly from the windows explorer.
[*] Fixed an issue that was introducing some issues with the BLIde update engine.
[*] Fixed an issue in the Add ons manager window, that was making impossible to add new add-ons to BLIde
[*] The file extensions associated to parsers was not properly updated when BLIde was recovering the information from a 0.9.6.x version or older.

This free update is available from the BLIde community forums http://forum.blide.org You'll need to be registered to access the Download Free Edition board. Obviously registering is also free.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to uninstall (and remove folder) of any previous installation before installing this new BLIde version.


ImaginaryHuman(Posted 2009) [#2]
Still nothing for Mac? :-)


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#3]
Still nothing for Mac? :-)


Blide is written in .net, so don't hold your breath. :-?


ziggy(Posted 2009) [#4]
@xlsior: .net works wonders on MacOs and on Linux due the mono framework. (Unity as instance is written in C# and was first released for the Mac). The real problem is that BLIde is not using only managed code. Some areas are written in plain "old" C and rely very deeply on the Win32 APIs. I've done several test combining BLIde + mono + some of the wine libraries without any real usable success and there are no plans to release any Mac version of BLIde. In the other hand, the FontMachine editor does run on Mac and Linux when the mono framework is present, as this program was coded with Mono in mind from the beginning.


Damien Sturdy(Posted 2009) [#5]
I'd suggest on Linux people just give it a go, it's a bit of work but Blide CAN work using wine and some winetricks (Use the GUI if you're unsure.)

I got there eventually, it has graphical glitches but it's worth it to avoid the poor default IDE.


North(Posted 2009) [#6]
Hi Ziggy,

thanks alot!
Wish you a successful and healthy new year.

Nicholas


plash(Posted 2009) [#7]
Is there a way to make BLIde not stick a newline in when you hit enter on an auto-complete box?


Arowx(Posted 2009) [#8]
@Plash you can use the spacebar but you get a space after the text!


ziggy(Posted 2009) [#9]
@Plash: Yes, disabling it on the BLIde preferences. Anyway, I would recommend to complete using whatever operator, space or ( or anything that is going to be after the selected completed word (and leave ENTER only when you want a new line). This way you can gain a lot of time when coding.
BLIde autolists can complete with any operator, ala Visual Studio.


plash(Posted 2009) [#10]
@Plash you can use the spacebar but you get a space after the text!
But I liked it how it was!

@Plash: Yes, disabling it on the BLIde preferences.
Good to hear. I'll poke around with the settings later when I have something to code.

I might also note the strange line around the main area with certain BLIde window skins (seems to only appear when a file is open):



ziggy(Posted 2009) [#11]
@Plash: This is the default 'flat' control border drawn by the OS. With this dark skin it does not look as integrated as in other skins, I will make a change in the skin to make this border disapear (just in this skin). Thanks a lot for pointing this out.