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CodeSnip v4 Development Notes
$Rev$
$Date$
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This document contains general notes about the development of CodeSnip v4 along
with details of changes made. The document's purpose is to provide a source for
other documentation, including writing the release 4 change log.
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Notes
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* Development started 26 Nov 2010.
* Version numbers set to 3.99.0.0 - will bump third number by one for each
released alpha or beta version and fourth number will be set to an appropriate
build number at the time of release.
* Periodic merging of changes from v3 development tree (trunk). Some trunk
changes ignored where they clash with v4 changes.
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Changes
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* Added a "Tests" directory and project for unit tests.
* Refactorings:
o View unit - complete rewrite
o Snippet Kind Info and Initial Letter code - complete rewrite
o Alpha grouping code
o TDOSDateTime class.
* Bug fixes:
o #3120962. This was a separate fix to that created for v3 - the two were
incompatible.
o Fixed XML validation bug that was rejecting XML processing instructions with
"encoding" attributes. This is a copy of v3 fix.
o Fixed long standing bug that was crashing when database was updated or
restored after editing, adding or deleting any user defined snippet. This is
a different fix to that made in v3.
* Help file:
o Privacy statement topic updated.
o Snippets Editor topic updated re change in snippet name rules.
* Documentation:
o Privacy statement updated re config file name change.
o Readme updated re v4 changes.
o Noted new export file version 5.
o New documentation for file formats in linked HTML files.
* Added support for full Unicode Pascal identifiers to be used as snippet names.
Modified alpha grouping to handle this.
* Dialog boxes:
o Config Compilers Dialog Box: Changed caption of button that detects
compilers to "Detect Delphi Compilers".
* Database:
o Changed user database dir name to UserData.4.
o Added support for main database files with .4.* extensions.
o Main database files now stored in UTF-8 with BOM. Database reader code
maintains support for reading files in Default encoding because another
version of CodeSnip may update database using that format.
o User database file format updated. Now v5.
* Import / Export / Backup
o Updated export file version to v5. All files use v5 regardless of REML
version used.
o Code that reads / writes backups completely overhauled.
o Updated backup file format to v4. Reader maintains backward support for v1
to v3 and no longer tries to read later formats.
* Encoding:
o Added explicit UTF-8 encoding attribute to XML processing instruction of
export files.
o User database files now all use UTF-8 encoding (from v5 file format).
Ability to read earlier formats in default encoding retained.
o Code submission dialog now sends data to web service as UTF-8.
o New encoding helper class.
o Updated data stream reader and writer code to work with specified encodings
(now defaults to UTF-8 if no encoding provided).
o Removed all explicit use of Windows-1252. (*** check this ***)
* Web Services
o Updated database update web service code changed to work with v5 of the
codesnip-updt.php web service. Checksums no longer in download but in HTTP
header.
o Database update code changed to detect actual encoding used to send data
from web service and to use that for all encoding / decoding of received
data.
* Revised splash screen to include version number 4.
* Changed syntax highlighter code to no longer use streams to pass text data
between classes but to use Unicode strings instead.
* Changed per-user config file name to User.4.ini.
* Increased use of TStringBuilder to build strings where string concatenation
was used excessively.
* Added support for specifying encoding when writing / reading text files.
* Refactored data stream reading / writing code and added code to read / write
binary formatted data streams. Removed code that writes text formatted data
streams.
* Installer:
o Updated installer scripts to recognise and copy config files and databases
from former locations to work with new v4 user config file and database
directory names.
o Installer changed so that v4 installs can co-exist - new app id, install
folder and program group.
