JOE - Joe's own editor Mercurial

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JOE.next (not yet released changes in Mercurial)

• Enhancements

  • Improve memory usage by shrinking buffer header size and
    highlighter state size.

  • Improve performance of status line context display (which shows
    the first line of the function that the cursor is currently in).
    This feature was making JOE very slow on extremely large files with
    auto indent enabled (typically JSON or XML data files). Now
    the syntax highlighter computes the context display (using a new
    syntax named context.jsf).

  • Add a mode 'title' to enable or disable the status line context
    display (previously autoindent mode was overloaded to do this).

  • Disable syntax highlighting and context display in very large
    files

  • Force more appropriate modes when we enter hex dump display:
    enable overtype, disable autoindent, wordwrap, ansi, picture.

  • Handle middle mouse button in "joe -mouse" mode (before it did
    nothing). It's treated as paste (copy region to mouse) as
    expected. (patch from Petr Olsak).

• Bugs fixed

  • Do not kill region highlighting during incremental search (patch
    from Petr Olsak).

  • Negative numbers were not being recognized in blocks

  • PgUp/PgDn would try to scroll menu if the window above is a menu
    (it should do this only for completion menus associated with
    prompts)

  • Use 'LC_ALL=C sed' to get JOE to compile in OS X.

  • Forward direction delimiter matching where the delimiters do
    not begin with special characters (for example in Verilog
    "begin" / "end") was not working.

  • Get mouse to work in menus: this broke in 4.1

  • Character classes with ranges were not working for UTF-8 (as in \[a-z])

  • Apply spec highlighting to .spec files

  • Gracefully handle short terminals: fix segfaults which occur when
    trying to shrink terminal while many windows are on the screen or
    while turning on help with a short terminal. Fix similar bugs
    involving the skiptop option. JOE now works even if the terminal
    height is only one line.

JOE 4.2

• New or improved syntax files for the following languages:

  • Dockerfile

• Usability Enhancements

  • The top Google help searches for JOE include:

    • How do I save and exit? The startup copyright notice
      has been replaced with basic help for beginners: ^K Q
      to exit and ^K H for help.

    • How do I dismiss the region highlighting? The traditional
      way is to hit ^K B ^K K, but this is slightly non-obvious
      and has always been awkward. Now Ctrl-C will do it.

    • How do I close all files and exit? Now Ctrl-K Q does this.
      Previously ^K Q was the same as ^C: abort a single file.

  • Restyle the help screens:

    • Make it more obvious that there is more than one screen:
      put the help for help inline with the text instead of in
      the (seemingly invisible) header.

    • Mention Ctrl-Arrow region selection, status
      and goto matching delimiter commands on the first screen.

  • Remove time and "Ctrl-K H for help" message from status bar.
    Beginners often don't notice this help message, and it takes up
    valuable status bar space that power users want for the context
    display.

  • Add ^KH for help to search and replace prompts. Many JOE users
    do not know about this context sensitive help.

  • Provide aborthint and helphint options so that the ^C and ^K H
    hints can be customized depending on the rc file (so say ^G
    for abort in jmacs, for example).

  • Enable -noxon by default (disable ^S/^Q flow control). This
    allows us to bind ^Q to quote and ^S / ^R to incremental search.

  • Document ESC X (command prompt) in the help screens.

  • "joe --help" now prints all command line options.

• Other Enhancements

  • Tags search now tries to find the tags file in parent directories
    if it does not exist in the current directory and if the TAGS
    environment variable was not set.

  • Built-in calculator can now print and accept numbers in binary,
    octal and engineering formats:
    dec 12_345
    eng 12.345_0e3
    bin 0b11_0000_0011_1001
    oct 0o3_0071
    hex 0x3039

  • Built-in calculator now prints and accepts separating underscores
    for clarity. For example, 4_294_967_296 instead of 4294967296.

  • Enhanced calculator statistics functions:

    • dev computes standard deviation with full population
    • samp computes standard deviation with sample of population
    • Linear regression analysis. Select a region of x
      and y values, then:
      • lr(x) provide estimate of y given x
      • rlr(y) provide estimate of x given y
      • Lr, lR, LR: log, exponential, power regression

  • Calculator region functions now assume the entire buffer if no
    region is set.

  • Tab completion now works at the calculator prompt (and in all
    prompts which allow numeric input, such as ^KL- go to line).

  • Make new regex engine (from JOE 4.1) more compatible with the
    classic engine. \y is now shorthand for \(\.\*\), so that it does
    what \* did in the old engine. Also:

    • \. no longer matches newline.
    • \* matches shortest match, not longest match.

  • Add -left and -right options to control the amount scrolling when
    the cursor moves past the left or right edge of the screen. When
    the baud rate is low these are automatically set to a large
    amount. Also, these now control the manual horizontal scrolling
    commands. When these are positive, they indicate number of
    columns. When they are negative, they indicate a fraction of the
    screen width (-2 is 1/2 the width).

• Bugs fixed

  • Fix use after free bug which shows up as a crash in OpenBSD

  • Fix bug where indent step value was not shown on ^T menu

  • Fix bug where setting margin doesn't work on big-endian systems

  • Fix issue where highest valued Unicode character equivalent was
    not translating to its corresponding 8-bit character. Effect
    of this was that Delete key was not working in shell windows in
    ASCII character set.

  • Standard deviation calculator function was not producing correct
    results.

  • Allow koi8r and koi8-r for KOI8-R in joe_getcodeset (which is only
    used if there is no setlocale).

  • Guess_crlf forced UNIX line endings for new files even though
    crlf was set. Now crlf is left alone if guess_crlf can not
    determine the line ending.

  • If cursor was at end of a long line and you switched to hex dump
    display mode, then hex dump was scrolled. Now scroll offset is
    reset when you switch to hex display mode.

JOE for Windows 4.1

Download

• Includes all changes from mainline 4.1

• Now includes html documentation, shortcut to documentation in context menu

• Added pop-up terminal support

  • Brought in Ryan Prichard's winpty for a better pop-up terminal experience
    (now with tab-completion, colors, doskey, and support for Powershell)

  • Can easily be configured to launch Cygwin shells

• Fixes to keep the Window title in sync with the current file.

• Better tab-completion behavior for Windows-style paths

• Code cleanup

• Added translations to installer

• Improve color scheme support

• Distribute standalone executables in addition to regular MSI installer

JOE 4.1

• New or improved syntax files for the following languages:

  • Groovy, R, Clojure, Rust, Coffeescript, Java, Scala, Swift, D,
    AVR, Ruby, Perl

• New translations

  • Chinese (zh_TW)

• UTF-16 support

  • JOE can now edit UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE files. It does this
    by converting them to UTF-8 during load and back to UTF-16 during
    save.

  • Within JOE, native byte order is called UTF-16 and reversed order
    is called UTF-16R.

  • If you change the encoding (with ^T E) between UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-16R,
    JOE will convert the file to the desired encoding on save.

• New regular expression engine

  • Old one was a recursive matcher, new one is compiled Thompson NFA matcher

  • JOE now supports full regular expressions (but as before special characters are
    escaped by default), so:

    • It now supports alternative: X|Y
    • It now supports grouping and submatch addressing with parenthesis: a\(inside\)b
    • You can specify an explicit number of matches: X\{3} for XXX
    • Or a range of matches: X\{3,5} for XXX, XXXX or XXXXX
    • \! is a JOE extension: it's like \., but matches whole balanced expressions

  • JOE also supports the standard regular expression syntax where
    these characters are not escaped.

    • Use the 'x' search & replace option for this, or use the
      '-regex' global option to make it the default.

  • Standard syntax regular expressions are now used in the ftyperc
    file (which is used to determine the syntax of the file by
    inspecting its contents)

  • Submatches within regular expressions can now be any size (up to
    the size of the disk!). Before this, they were limited to 16K.

  • Case conversion allowed in replacement string, as in sed:
    everything between \U and \E converted to uppercase.

• Unicode improvements

  • Character class database has been updated to the latest version
    (Unicode 8.0.0)

  • Switched to new character class data structure for faster Unicode
    (uses radix search instead of binary search).

  • Key sequences in the joerc file are now UTF-8 coded Unicode.

    • Also you can specify Unicode in hexadecimal like this: U+F123

    • Note that even if you are using an 8-bit locale, keys are
      translated to UTF-8 before keymap lookup. This means you
      must use the Unicode code for your character in the joerc
      file, not the 8-bit code for the character.

  • Jump to matching delimiter (Ctrl-G) now supports Unicode for word
    delimiters (for example, within XML tags).

  • Identifiers within JOE now allow Unicode. For example, variables
    at the math prompt and JOE macros can use any letter.

  • JOE now displays Unicode combining characters properly

  • Syntax files are now UTF-8 coded and support Unicode syntax.

  • Character lists in syntax files and search strings (regular
    expressions) now provide access to the Unicode category database
    and provide some other useful character classes:

    • Use \x{f123} to specify a particular character.

    • Use \p{Lu} to specify a Unicode character class: any one of
      L, Lu, Ll, Lt, Lm, Lo
      M, Mn, Mc, Me
      N, Nd, Nl, No
      P, Pc, Pd, Ps, Pe, Pi, Pf, Po
      S, Sm, Sc, Sk, So
      Z, Zs, Zl, Zp
      C, Cc, Cf, Cs, Co, Cn
      See: ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/5.1.0/ucd/UCD.html#General_Category_Values

    • Use \p{Cherokee} to specify any character from a named Unicode block.

    • \d for a digit, \D for not a digit

    • \w for a word character, \W for not a word character

    • \s for a space character, \S for not a space character

    • \i for identifier start character, \I for not identifier start character

    • \c for identifier continuation character, \C for not identifier continuation character

• Code clean up

  • Switch to ptrdiff_t for memory offsets and off_t for file offsets
    (prior to this, int and long were used). Now you can edit files
    larger than 4 GB on 32-bit systems.

  • Give up trying force all strings to "unsigned char *" so that the
    code is less weird.

  • Clean up code so that we get a clean compile even with many more
    warnings enabled. Going forward this helps find real bugs by
    highlighting new warnings.

  • Remove C usage which is illegal in C++ so that JOE can be compiled
    by C++ compilers as well as C compilers. This is useful because
    C++ compilers sometimes warn about issues that C compilers miss.

• Bugs fixed

  • Fix bug where \ was not parsed correctly within syntax file
    character lists unless it was at the end of the string.

  • Fix bug where position cursor history operations would mix
    pointers between different buffers if user had switched buffers in
    a window.

  • Fix bug where lockup would happen if you try querysave when the
    only buffer left is the startup log.

  • Default locale

    • If no locale set, default to C / POSIX, not ISO-8859-1
    • If locale is C / POSIX, set language to en_US (for aspell).

  • Improve performance where JOE would seem to lock up if you tried
    to reformat a very long single word due to O(n^3) algorithm.

  • Prevent filt and blkdel from modifying read-only buffers. This
    could happen if you run them from modifyable buffer but with block
    set in a read-only buffer.

  • Fixed issue when recording paste in a macro. If you tried to
    play the macro, the pasted text is not inserted and JOE is
    stuck waiting for the bracketed paste end string.

  • Fixed issue where syntax could not be set on command line with
    -syntax.

• Minor enhancements

  • Tab completion now works for the command and its file arguments
    after '!' in file prompts. Tab completion now works for the
    filename after '>>' in file write prompts.

  • Tab completion now handles directory and file names with spaces
    in them.

  • Backspace now jumps back to parent menu in ^T submenus (and
    remembers the cursor position within the parent)

  • Macros after :def are now allowed to cross lines in the joerc file

  • Make ^K ^SPACE same as ^K SPACE

  • Quoted insert of TAB always inserts a TAB character, even when
    smart indent is enabled.

  • Add options to control sending of bracketed paste mode command
    to terminal emulator (brpaste) and detection of paste by timing
    (pastehack).

  • Modified ftyperc file syntax to reduce redundancy

  • Added file type (as defined in ftyperc) setting option. For
    example, with "joe -type c fred" JOE will assume fred is a C
    language file. Use ^T F to change the file type from within JOE.

  • Highlighter enhancement: when % is used in place of a character
    list, it matches the save_c delimiting character as-is (vs. &
    which matches the opposite character). For example, if save_c has
    {, then % matches { while & matches }. This allows JOE to
    highlight q{hello { there } } in Perl.

• jmacs fixes:

  • ^X b / ^X ^B were reversed

  • ^X 0 printed an exit message for no reason

  • ^X 0 now can pop shell windows

  • M-^ deleted indentation but did not join with previous line

  • Ignore case for letter commands: ^X i and ^X I are the same

  • Fix bug where regular expressions were not working in incremental
    search when wrap is enabled (which is the case in jmacs).

• ESC g (grep/find) and ESC c (compile) improvements

  • Tab completion now works for the command and its arguments

  • Change to the current directory before running the command

  • Show the current directory in the compile window

  • Show the exit status in the compile window

  • Provide more consistent window setup during compile

  • Parse "Entering directory `/home/xxxxxx'" messages to determine
    the directory containing the file with an error message.

JOE 3.8 Native Windows Version

Download

• Thanks to John J. Jordan we now have a native Windows version of JOE

JOE 4.0

Download

• JOE now has pop-up shell windows with full terminal emulation and shell commands
  that can control the editor. Hit F1 - F4 to bring up a shell window.
  See Pop-up shell feature for a full description.

• The status command (^K SPACE) can now be customized using the same syntax
  as the status bar. Look for smsg and zmsg in joerc to see how to do this.

• parserr (the error parser) will parse only the highlighted block if it's set. Before it always parsed the entire buffer.

• Now there is a per-buffer concept of current directory. This was added to
  make the pop-up shell windows work better, but it's useful in general.

• At file prompts you can begin a new anchored path without having to delete
  the old one. It means that ~jhallen/foo//etc/passwd is translated to /etc/passwd.
  Prompt windows are now highlighted to indicate which parts of the path are
  being dropped. There is a syntax file for this: filename.jsf

• The error parser now ignores ANSI sequences (some versions of grep
  color their results, now JOE can still parse it).

• Temporary messages are now dismissed by keyboard input only. Before, they
  could also be dismissed by shell input.

• Tags search now supports multiple matches. ^K ; can be configured to
  either provide a menu of the matches or to cycle through them.

• Tags search will now match on the member name part of member functions
  ('fred' will match 'myclass::fred').

• Tags search will prepend the path to the tags file file name in the tags
  file. This is important when JOE finds the tags file via the TAGS
  environment variable.

• Remove ` as quote character from incremental search.

• Clean up documentation, convert much of it to Markdown.

JOE 3.8

Download

• Search JOE image for :include files referenced by the joerc file.
  Include ftyperc file in the JOE image.

• Change default indent from 2 to 4. Add quick menu to change to common
  indent values: ^T = (1, 2, 4, or 8). Switch to + and - for definitively
  setting or clearing options so that 0 and 1 can be use for quick select.

• Added option to suppress DEADJOE file

• Jump to matching delimiter (Ctrl-G) has been improved. It can now use the
  syntax files to parse the document in order to identify strings and
  comments which should be skipped during the matching delimiter search.
  (patch by Charles Tabony).

• When 'notite' mode is enabled, JOE now emits linefeeds to preserve the
  screen contents in the terminal emulator's scrollback buffer. This can be
  suppressed with a new flag: nolinefeeds.

• JOE now starts up quiet (prints no extra messages when starting).
  Messages are collected in a startup log (view with ESC x showlog).

• There is a new flag 'noexmsg' which, when set, makes JOE quiet when it shuts
  down (suppresses "File not changed so no update needed" message).

• Use 80th column if terminal has xn capability (patch by pts and Egmont
  Koblinger).

• Support italic text (on some terminal emulators) with "\l" (patch by
  Egmont Koblinger)

• Support bracketed paste (patch by Egmont Koblinger)

• Fix line number in syntax highlighter error output

• Prevent infinite loops caused by buggy syntax definitions.

• New and improved syntax definitions for:

  • Ant: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • Batch files: contributed by John Jordan
  • C#: contributed by John Jordan
  • Debian apt sources.list: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • Elixir: contributed by Andrew Lisin
  • Erlang: contributed by Christian Nicolai, Jonas Rosling, Andrew Lisin
  • git-commit messages: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • Go: contributed by Matthias S. Benkmann
  • HAML: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • INI: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • iptables: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • Javascript: contributed by Rebecca Turner, Christian Nicolai
  • json: contributed by Rebecca Turner
  • Markdown: contributed by Christian Nicolai, Jonas Rosling
  • Powershell: contributed by Oskar Liljeblad
  • Prolog: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • Puppet: contributed by Christian Nicolai, Eric Eisenhart
  • Sieve: contributed by Christian Nicolai
  • YAML: contributed by Christian Nicolai

  (from github.com/cmur2/joe-syntax)

• Syntax definition fixes for: C, Python, Java, Lua, sh, Ruby, PHP, TeX,
  CSS, and XML

• Save/restore utf-8 and crlf modes when changing in/out of hex edit for
  better display

• Fix autocomplete for paths containing spaces

• Accept mouse events beyond column 208 (patch by Egmont Kobligner)

• Adjust guess_indent behavior based on user feedback

• Fix infinite loop in search and replace

• Add a new command 'timer' which executes a macro every n seconds. I use
  this for periodically injecting a command into a shell window for
  overnight testing of some device.

• Convert double to long long (if we have it) when printing hexadecimal.

• Fix bug where undo was acting strangely in shell windows.

• Fix crash when hitting -----------.. wordwrap bug.

• Check for math functions

• Use joerc if fancyjoerc not there.

• fix segfault from -orphan

• fix window size detection bug: can't take out types.h
  from tty.c

• update status line immediately on resize.

• va_copy fix.

• don't smartbackspace when smartbacks is off.

JOE 3.7

• backspace/DEL means 'n' in replace prompt for better Emacs
  compatibility

• Menus are now made up of macros instead of options.

  New commands:

  * menu  Prompt for a menu to display with tab completion.
  
  * mode  Prompt for an option to change with tab completion.
  

  Menus are defined in joerc with ':defmenu name' followed
  by a set of menu entries.

  Menu entries are the pair: 'macro string'. String is a
  format string displayed in the menu. Macro is executed
  when then menu entry is selected.

  Use this to add your own macros to ^T.

• ^T is now a user definable menu system

• Treat \ as a quote character for file I/O. Now you can edit
  files like !test with \!test

• Print NULs in default search string. Handle many \s properly.

• Allow backslashes in file names

• Fix %A to print Unicode

• Charles Tabony's (vectorshifts's) highlighter stack patch

• ! is replace all in replace prompt

• Turn off UTF-8 when we enter hex mode

• Call ttsig on vfile I/O errors.

• Abort cleanly when malloc returns NULL

• Add reload command to reload file from disk

• Modify configure scrips to use docdir for extra documents and
  datadir/joe for syntax and i18n files.

• Don't use bold yellow, it's bad for white screens

• Fix TeX highlighter: don't highlight "

• Make mail.jsf more forgiving for those of us who still use old UNIX mail

• Fix file rename bugs

• Improve ubop: can reformat a block of paragraphs again. Reformat
  of adjacent indented paragraphs working again.

• Improve XML highlighter: allow \r in whitespace

JOE 3.6

• Preserve setuid bit

• Fix bug where backup file did not get modtime of original

• New diff highlighter

• Fix paragraph format when overtype is on

• Fix non-french spacing

• Fix bug with joe +2 on single line files

• Add syntax file for .jsf files

• Add ASCII table to joerc help

• ^KD renames file

• Improve HTML highlighter... if you see <? it's probably a script...

• Check for EINTR from ioctl

• allowed in xml content

• Add -flowed option: adds a space after paragraph lines.

• Fix German and French .po files: they were cause search&replace to break.

• Look at LC_MESSAGES to get the language to use for editor messages.

• Added -no_double_quoted and -tex_comment for TeX

• Added -break_symlinks option and changed -break_links option to not
  break symbolic links.

• Paragraph format of single line paragraph is indented only if autoindent
  is enabled. (jqh)

• Guessindent no longer overrides istep if indentation is space.

• Fix low limit of lmargin

• Allow inserting file in rectangle mode even if selected rectangle is
  zero-width.

• .js is Javascript

• Fix ^G in Perl mode when you hit it on second brace in:

  {\'
  \'}

• Fix LUA highlighter (dirk_s)

• Improved conf.jsf (dirk_s)

• Added local option (-nobackup) to suppress backup files (peje)

• Add Matlab syntax file (neer)

• Improve mail syntax highlighter (jqh)

• Fix crash when calling syntax file as subroutine (hal9042)

• Get "ctags" tag search to work again

• Fix crash when JOE tries to write to unwritable file

• Fix crash when entering blank macro ESC x <return></return>

• Improve Verilog highlighter

• Fix crash when typing ESC x !ls

• Add C++ keywords to highlighter (otterpop81)

• Added RPM spec file syntax spec.jsf

• Improve 'istring' (.jsf command) (hal9042)

• Update French .po file (jengelh)

• Fix infinite search/replace loop bug (yugk)

• New feature: insert status line format string using 'txt' (tykef)

• Update Russion .po file (yugk)

• Update Russian manpage (yugk)

• Update jicerc Russian rc file (yugk)

• Fix lock prompt message (yugk)

• Add Ukrainian .po file (yugk)

JOE 3.5

• Query windows now expand to multiple lines if necessary

• Single key queries are now internationalized (set local versions in the
  .po file)

• Spell check language can be set in the editor

• New syntax files: m4, joerc

• New debug window for highlight file syntax errors.

• Macros can be typed at the ESC X prompt (before it used to accept only
  commands).

• Built-in joerc file allows JOE to run even if /etc/joe directory is
  missing.

• Support for 'long long' allows editing parts of files larger than 4GB.
  For example, you can say: joe /dev/hda,0x100000000,0x1000 to edit the 4KB
  block at offset 4GB of a hard drive.

• Option which allows you set how many undo records to keep.

• You can give a path to the tags file in the TAGS environment variable.

JOE 3.4

• Paragraph reformatter and word wrap now handle '*' and '-' bullet lists.

• Better internationalization (i18n):

  JOE now uses gettext(), so that internal messages can be translated to
  the local language. The /etc/joe directory now has a lang subdirectory
  for the .po files.

  Internationalized joerc files are now possible. If LANG is en_GB, JOE
  tries successively to load joerc.en_GB, joerc.en and joerc.

• Multi-file search and replace:

  There are two new search and replace options:

  'a': the search covers all loaded buffers. So you can say:

      joe *.c
      and then ^KF foo <return>
               ra <return>
               bar <return>
      to replace all instances of foo in all .c files.
  

  'e': the search covers all files in the error list.

      You can use grep-find to create a list of files:
  
      ESC g
       grep -n foo f*.c
      ^KF foo <return>
      re
      bar <return>
  
      You can also use 'ls' and 'find' instead of grep to
  create the file list.
  

• JOE now restores cursor position in previously visited files.

• Build and grep window work more like Turbo-C: the messages window is
  forced onto the screen when you hit ^[ = and ^[ -.

• Syntax highlighter definition files (.jsf files) can now have subroutines.
  This eases highlighter reuse: for example, Mason and PHP can share the HTML
  highlighter.

• I've changed the way JOE handles '-' and redirected input:

  joe < file A shell process is started which 'cat's the
  file into the first buffer.

  tail -f log | joe A shell process is started which 'cat's the
  output from 'tail -f' (watch a log file) into
  the first buffer.

  joe - JOE does not try to read from stdin, but
  when the file is saved, it writes to stdout.

  echo "hi" | joe - | mail fred
  "hi" ends up in first buffer. When you
  save, mail is sent.

• Many bugs have been fixed. I've tried to address every issue in the bug
  tracker. Hopefully I didn't create too many new ones :-)

• You can now define which characters can indent paragraphs. Also the
  default list has been reduced so that formatting of TeX/LaTeX files works
  better.

• Highlighting now uses less CPU time and always parses from the beginning
  of the file (the number of sync lines option is deprecated). Here is a
  CPU usage comparison for scrolling forwards and backwards through a 35K
  line C file:

  JOE .58
  JED .57
  NEDIT 3.26
  VIM 7.33
  EMACS 11.98

• JOE now matches Thomas Dickey's implementation of my xterm patch (but
  configure xterm with --paste64).

• File selection menu/completion-list is now above the prompt (which is more
  like bash). Also it is transposed, so that it is sorted by columns
  instead of rows.

• "Bufed" (prompt for a buffer to edit), works like other file prompt
  commands: it's a real prompt with history and completion.

• Automatic horizontal left scroll jumps by 5-10 columns.

• New syntax files: troff, Haskell, Cadance SKILL, REXX, LUA, RUBY. Many of
  the existing syntax files have been improved.

JOE 3.3

• The default background color can now be set.

• JOE now supports 256 color xterm.

• The mouse can now resize windows and select menu entries.

• During selection with the mouse, the window will autoscroll when you go
  past the edge.

• An xterm-patch is included which makes "-mouse" mode work better. (With
  the patch, also set "-joexterm").

• Syntax files are provided: ADA, AWK, COBOL, SED, Postscript, and SQL

• Improved jpico: search now looks more like real pico

• Grep find: use ESC g to grep. Then use ESC space to jump to
  to indicated file/line.

• Cygwin setup.exe support

JOE 3.2

• A Perforce SCM "p4 edit" macro has been supplied (along with the hooks
  within JOE which support it) so that when you make the first change to a
  read-only file, JOE runs "p4 edit". (look in joerc file to enable the
  macro).

• Hex edit mode has been added. For example: joe -hex /dev/hda,0,1024

• New '-break_links' option causes JOE to delete before writing files, to
  break hard links. Useful for 'arch' SCM.

• JOE now has GNU-Emacs compatible file locks. A symbolic link called
  .#name is created, "pointing" to "user@machine.pid" whenever the buffer
  goes from unmodified to modified. If the lock can't be created, the user
  is allowed to steal or ignore the lock, or cancel the edit. The lock is
  deleted when buffer goes from modified to unmodified (or you close the
  file).

• JOE now periodically checks the file on the disk and gives a warning if
  it changed when you try to modify the buffer. (JOE already performed this
  test on file save).

• The built-in calculator (ESC m) is now a full featured scientific
  calculator (I'm shooting for Casio Fx-4000 level here :-), including
  hexadecimal and ability to sum (and perform statistics on) a highlighted
  (possibly rectangular) block of numbers. Hit ^K H at the math prompt for
  documentation.

• You can now change the current directory in JOE (well, it prompts with
  the latest used directory).

• Colors can now be specified in the joerc file

• Macro language now has conditionals and modifiers for dealing with
  repeat arguments. Jmacs now works better due to this.

• Tab completion works at tags search prompt ^K ;

• ^G now jumps between word delimiters (begin..end in Verilog, #if #else #endif
  in C, / .. / and XML tags). If it doesn't know the word, it
  starts a search with the word seeding the prompt. It is also much smarter
  about skipping over comments and quoted matter.

• TAB completion is now much more like bash (again :-). The cursor stays
  at the file name prompt instead of jumping into the menu system. Also
  ^D brings up the menu, as in tcsh. Also, tab completion now works on user
  names for ~ expansion.

• Now there is a ~/.joe_state file which stores:
  all history buffers
  current keyboard macros
  yank records

• Joe now has xterm mouse support: when enabled, the mouse can position
  the cursor and select blocks. The mouse wheel will scroll the screen.
  When enabled, shift-click emulates old xterm mouse behavior (cut &
  paste between applications).

• More syntax files: TeX, CSS, OCaml, Delphi, SML and 4GL. Thanks to
  all of the contributers.

• Vastly improved highlighting of Perl and Shell due to the highlighter now
  understanding word and balanced delimiters.

• Many bugs have been fixed (every bug which has been entered into the
  sourceforge project page has been addressed). Hopefully I didn't add
  too many new ones :-)

JOE 3.1

• Regex and incremental search (jmacs ^S) now work for UTF-8

• More and improved syntax highlighting files, including Mason

• Use ^T E to set character set of file (hit <tab> <tab> at the
  prompt for a list of available character sets).</tab></tab>

• Can install custom "i18n" style byte oriented character set
  definition files.

• No longer depends on iconv() (easier to compile)

• Fix bug where right arrow was not doing right thing on last line

• Fix UTF-8 codes between 0x10000 - 0x1FFFF

• Now prints <xxxx> for Unicode control characters</xxxx>

• Improved smart home, indent, etc.

• TAB completion is now more "bash"-like

• When multiple files are given on command line, they end up in
  same order on the screen in JOE (before they were shuffled).

• Menu size is now variable (40% of window size or smaller if
  it's not filled).

• Added -icase option for case insensitive search by default.

• Added -wrap option, which makes searches wrap

• Added status line sequence %x: shows current context (function
  name if you're editing C).

• Added tab completion at search prompts and ESC-Enter for tab
  completion within text windows.

• Warn if file changed on save.

• Added Ctrl-space block selection method

• Added Ctrl-arrow key block selection method

• ^K E asks if you want to load original version of the file

• jmacs bugs fixes: uppercase word, transpose words, ^X ^C is
  more Emacs-like., ^X k and ^X ^V more like Emacs.

• Much improved compile system ^[ c

• Much improved jpico

• Aspell support.

JOE 3.0 (23 APR 2004)

• UTF-8
• Syntax highlighting
• Fixed ^C and ^D in shell windows
• Auto detect CR-LF (MS-DOS) files
• Fixed (or improved, anyway) shell windows for Cygwin
• During search & replace, the scroll found text on to screen
• File selection window is now 4 lines instead of 1
• David Phillips "smart home" key.
• Enhanced ^K , and ^K .
• Enhanced overtype mode
• Added picture drawing mode (can hit right arrow at ends of lines)
• Auto detect preferred indentation character TAB or SPACE

Overview of changes in JOE 2.9.8 (5 May 2003)

• fixed signal handling
• return of the context help
• fixed segfault when moving rectangular block
• code clean up
• killed deadlock when reformatting paragraph
• fixed skiptop handling
• SECURITY: drop suid and sgid bits when creating backup files
• fixed segfaults in isalpha()-like functions

Overview of changes in JOE 2.9.8-pre1 (14 Dec 2001)

• BUGFIX: don't exchange start and end point of the block in some cases
• defaulting to turn off -asis (locales take care of this; if JOE doesn't
  print characters with 8th bit set properly, check if you have properly
  installed and set locales or simply turn on -asis option in joerc)
• fix to make JOE compilable on *BSD
• fix to make JOE compilable on systems without siginterrupt()
• added "support" for End key
• code cleanup: warnings removal (some still remaining, working on it)

Overview of changes in JOE 2.9.7 (7 Nov 2001)

• BUGFIX: always save (even not-modified) file
• BUGFIX: solve problem with freezing after saving unmodified file
• small documentation update

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9.7-pre3 (29 Oct 2001)

• BUGFIX: wordwrap bug fixed (again and I'm sure forever)
• BUGFIX: don't change window when setting mark in multiwindow mode
• BUGFIX: use automake-1.5 to make JOE compile on irix-6.5 with non-GNU make
• continuing code clean up: this code adds strict prototypes which raises
  a lot of warnings (they seem harmless) - we're working on their removal

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9.7-pre2 (10 Oct 2001)

• use automake and autoconf for configuration system (for now versions
  automake-1.4-p4 and autoconf-2.52)
• a lot of warnings of compiler were removed
• SECURITY:: use mkstemp() for temporary files if available
• code clean up

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9.7pre1 (19 Jul 2001)

• help system was slightly modified
• a lot of warnings of compiler were removed
• BUGFIX:: problem with freezing when save was solved (at least partially)
• BUGFIX:: undo after save of file (again same patch)
• FEATURE:: suffix of backup copy from SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX environment
  variable

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9.7pre0 (02 Jul 2001)

• major BUGFIX:: wordwrap problem
• BUGFIX:: indentation
  ?? JOE can be compiled on Windows platform again
  ?? BUGFIX:: problem with ${sysconfdir}/joerc was solved

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9.6 (13 Apr 2001)

• BUGFIX:: resizing window
• JOE can be compiled on Windows platform again
• BUGFIX:: problem with ${sysconfdir}/joerc was solved
• BUGFIX:: security patch for sprintf
• BUGFIX:: partially solved problem on Solaris with SegFault
• BUGFIX:: patch joe-2.8-security (slightly changed)
• BUGFIX:: patch joe-2.8-port
• BUGFIX:: patch joe-2.8-mips
• BUGFIX:: patch joe-2.8-vsmk
• BUGFIX:: patch joe2.8-time
• *rc files where moved from $(prefix)/lib to $(prefix)/etc or $sysconfdir
• Makefile.in (and Makefile) was rewritten
• special prefix for package (more in Makefile.in)
• use of system independent 'mkinstalldirs'
• rc files are not rewritten
• TEST FEATURE:: added autoconf support
  program can be installed by ./configure; make; make install
• BUGFIX (v2.9.4):: go to previous word problem solved
• JOE can be compiled without locale.h again
• BUGFIX:: patch joe2.8-axphack.patch
• BUGFIX:: patch joe2.8-resize2.patch
• BUGFIX:: fixed problem with :include in rc files
• BUGFIX (v2.9.5):: portability problem with is_blank on nonGNU systems

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9.5 (28 Mar 2001)

• new BUG:: can't be compiled on non-GNU systems (is_blank()) fixed in v2.9.6
• BUGFIX:: Fixed problem with resizing.
• SECURITY:: .[joe|rjoe|jpico|..]rc in actual directory is ignored
  because in this file can be defined which program run.

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9.4 (27 Mar 2001)

• new BUG:: go to previous word; goes one character before this word
  fixed in v2.9.6
• FEATURE:: locale (LC_CTYPE) is accepted when skipping/deleting/... words

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.9 (22 Mar 2001)

• version 2.8 with patches from RedHat/Suse

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.8

• Fixed problem with TERMPATH string
• Added stupid two-letter names to termcap file
• Improved jmacs help and command set
• Improved README file

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.7

• putenv() was not portable
• utime was not portable
• special utime handling for NeXT
• forgot to \\ the \s in the default termcap entry
• changed some key defaults in jpicorc
• add IXOFF in termio/termios list
• left margin limit was incorrect
• allow '.' and '/' in file names for error parsing
• Needed ptem.h and stream.h for SCO_UNIX window size structure (?)
• wordwrap no longer propogates indent prefix
• paragraph format was broken for tab indented paragraphs
• pipe through shell now goes through stderr too
• added '-crlf' option
• looks for termcap file in JOERC/termcap

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.6

• Fixed stupid bug in termcap.c which prevented terminfo from working
• ESC h was missing from jpicorc
• Changes suggested by Dan Nelson:
• backup files now attempt to have same permissions and times as original
• Stat command now ands chars with 255 (don't know why this worked on my system
  without this...)
• Maybe change shell invocation name- have to check this more

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.5

• No longer use ^[ O, ^[ A, ^[ B, ^[ C, or ^[ D for anything because they
  interfere with arrow keys.
• Couldn't create new files because of bug in readonly setting
• fwrdc/bkwdc were crashing the editor except when called from wordstar
• 'tr' command was not called in a portable way in jmacs
• 'tr' was causing problems with the spell-check macros as well
• filter region was not working: had to add 'query' in ^[ | macro
• Changed incremental search so that whatever key the command is bound to
  can be used to repeat the search (used to only be able to use ^S)

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.4

• Closing message was incorrect when exit macros (macros where the last
  command is abortbuf) were used.
• SuperPico rc file added
• Write block now writes the entire file if no block is set
• Added pico kill function for pico emulation
  (tried to do this with 'psh,markk,blkdel' where blkdel deletes lines if
  no block is set, but it didn't group the deletes right in the yank
  buffer)
• Filter block would leave the marks set
• Fixed ^@ in JOE mode
• Fixed help screen glitches in wordstar mode
• If JOE can't make a backup file it now prompts for you to save anyway
• Eliminated IDLEOUT compile option. Now is the user gives - on the
  command line, JOE uses /dev/tty.
• Added %o %O %a %A %X and %R status line messages
• Starts out in read only mode if loaded file can not be written to
• If JOE can't find the termcap/terminfo entry, it instead uses the default
• termcap routines are now included even if you use terminfo. If your
  terminal can't be found in the terminfo database, it will look in
  the termcap database too.
• The JOETERM environment variable can be used to bypass the TERM
  environment variable setting.

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.3

• Search & Replace bugs fixed
• replace would mess up the end mark of a marked block
• a search would trash ^KB if only ^KB was set
• regex problem with \*
• Was using TCSANOW in posix driver. Should have been using TCSADRAIN
• Format paragraph now correctly formats quoted news articles
• Attempted fix for SCO
• Fix for coherent
• Fix for old IRIX/SGI
• Fixed bug where if you used search & replace in a macro, and exiting the
  search & replace loop with right arrow key, then when you played the macro
  you got an extra ^[ in the input queue
• Added file hooks
• Added function to insert current keyboard macro into current file
• Added range checks to numeric option settings
• Restricted joerc file added
• Added ':def' feature for rc files

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.2

• First attempt at MS-DOS version of JOE
• Direct screen write
• Modifications for dos file/drive names
• Use TEMP variable to figure out where to store temporary file
• Smaller virtual memory page size
• Backslashes in file name problem
• CR before an LF looks like an LF
• Backward search ignore-case was not working
• Scalable window height was not working fully
• Spaces in file-names gave a problem with backup file creation
• TILDE option is not available in all versions of BSD
• Allow : as separate for termcap filename list
• Next error / Prev. error was not tracking right
• tabs not displayed right in nxterr/prverr messages
• Block moves where the cursor was to the right of the block was broken

Overview of Changes in JOE 2.1

• rc file wasn't giving correct error messages for missing options
• the '-nobackups' options was mispelled: '- nobackups'
• editor was crashing because of problem in undo
• update bypass in utype has a problem when wordwrapping and scrolling