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What's New...  and version history


Version 3.2  - December 2004

Various new features plus lots of bug fixes
 
New features and improvements:

XP Appearance -  Concordance now uses Windows XP appearance when running on XP

Quicker and easier installation - New installer and smaller download size

Navigate through source text - New navigation buttons in the text viewer let you skip through your source text to the next or previous occurrence of a word. Highlighted words now appear in the centre of the viewer or editor window.

Handle split words as in Version 2.0.0 - Compatibility mode for the way words are split when non-word characters come in the middle of them. See this topic.

New user preferences - Preferences dialog (on the Tools menu) is reorganised and has a new option:

Show Progress Messages and Warnings - Previous versions of Concordance showed all progress messages while a concordance was being made.  Instead of 'All' you can now choose 'High Priority only' to suppress the Progress dialog unless significant warnings occur.

Improvements to Help - changes and additions, including:
- additional Frequently Asked Questions;

- updated macro to add page references to Microsoft Word files

- The help file which accompanies Web Concordances is revised and now opens in a new browser page by itself, instead of in the Web Concordance frameset.

Pick and Stop List improvement -  In the Pick List and Stop List Managers, when you press 'Re-sort, keeping duplicates', a window will open showing all the duplicate words found. 

Clearer controls   - 'Choose Lemma file', formerly on Lemmatiser's Options menu, is now simply 'Open' on Lemmatiser's File menu.

   - 'Choose Pick List file', formerly on the Pick List's Options menu, is now simply 'Open' on the Pick List Manager's File menu.  Same for the Stop List.

   - In the 'Make Concordance from Files' dialog, the controls to generate filename references are labelled in a less confusing way. Also the file list now re-sizes when the dialog is re-sized. 

Better warnings  - A warning is now given if the same characters are chosen for Skip Markers and Reference Markers.

   - A warning is given when a word in the Lemmatiser appears again as a child of itself. Earlier versions produced an 'access violation' error.

Speed   - 'Display while Loading' (on the File menu) is now turned off by default for a new installation.  On faster recent computers, this setting should subjectively improve performance when loading big concordances. 

  - On the Headwords menu, setting or clearing 'Read-only' is now many times quicker than before.

Bugs fixed:
  • Fixed bug which truncated huge texts passed via the Windows Clipboard.
  • Fixed bug which caused program to hang when searching for the phrase  * * (two asterisk wildcards). 
  • Fixed bug which introduced undisplayable characters (like this: ) in Web Concordances in place of references in the HTML version of the source text.
  • Fixed 'Access violation' in the Lemmatiser when a word appeared again as a child of itself.
  • Fixed occasional corruption of .INI file by addition of many blank lines, leading to user settings not being correctly restored.
  • Fixed bug whereby 'Make Full Concordance from Clipboard' could produce no output if run after an error had occurred during 'Make Fast Concordance from Clipboard'.
  • Fixed bug which could cause deleted context lines to re-appear and lines not deleted to disappear.
  • Fixed 'Access violation' after deleting a Headword which had had context lines deleted.
  • Fixed bugs in display of contexts with 'Analyse characters instead of words'.
  • Fixed minor bugs in HTML generation, e.g.  < / a > appearing in the Wordlist of a Web Concordance.
  • Fixed some unwanted changes of sort order when changing views
  • Numerous other smaller bugs fixed

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    Version 3.1 was an internal version, not released.

    Version 3.0  -  19 January 2002

    Many new features and improvements:
  • Five new ways of selecting words
    Phrases.  Find all instances of up to six phrases in your text.  More
    Proximity.  Find words within a specified distance of other words. More
    Samples.  Pick random or consecutive samples of words.  More
    Regular Expressions.  Powerful pattern-matching.  More
    References.  Select words by their speaker, page number, section, or any other references you define in your text.  More
  • Make Indexes
    Book-like indexing - words and a list of their locations, with no contexts.  More
  • More control over words
    Treat upper and lower case separately  - avoid normalising words to upper case when reading your text. More
    Show duplicate words separately - display all instances of headwords in the wordlist, instead of aggregating them. More
    Analyse characters instead of words. More
  • New ways of sorting
    Sort headwords by order of occurrence.
    Sort word endings using a string (as opposed to word) sort.
    Sort contexts by string before and string after headword.  More
  • Improved display and control
    Clicking on a context line now locates the exact word in the full-text view.
    Better control over fitting context column widths to their contents: three new menu options under 'Fit Columns to Contents' on the Contexts menu.
  • New file conversion tool:  Filter a File 
    Filter a File (on the Tools menu under File Conversion Tools) lets you use Concordance's text processing power to produce a transformed text file instead of a concordance.  More
  • User-definable HTML entity translation
    Full control over conversion between Windows characters and HTML entities during both input and output. More
  • Speed improvements
    Concordance now reads text faster, sorts faster, and loads concordances faster.  In particular, very large concordances are now loaded in time directly proportional to size instead of getting progressively slower with size, provided 'Display while loading' is off.
  • New file format
    Backward compatibility: Version 3 of Concordance can read files made with earlier versions, with some limits on what you can do with them.  More
  • Improved language support
    Non-Latin languages are better handled, especially with Windows 2000/XP.  More information in special pages on the program's website, coming soon.  Language and Font Control is re-designed.
  • Minor changes and bugs fixed
     
    Hot Tracking in Wordlist can now be turned on and off. It was always on in Version 2, and is now off by default.  More

    Fixed bug which reported  "File not open" when adding files with long lines to the list of files to make a concordance from.

    Fixed buglet where non-concordance files could get into the recently-used list.

    Fixed bug which produced incorrect width in Save as Text with contexts of selected length.

    Made the Stop button more responsive during a lengthy sort.

    The chosen state of the option 'User-defined alphabet' is now correctly saved in the Pick List and Stop List, and various other user options are now saved.

    Several windows now 'stay on top' by default, to prevent them becoming hidden behind the main window.

    Better control over re-sizing in the Collocations display.

    A large number of other minor improvements.
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    Version 2.0.0 - 18 December 2000 (build 135)

    A major revision with many new features, plus some changes to the way the program previously worked:
  • Lemmatisation. Lets you group together any words you choose.  An Outliner for easy management of lemma lists.   More. 
  • Concordances from other Windows programs - Instantly make a concordance from text on the Windows Clipboard.  More
     
  • Multiple input files - The ability to make one concordance from many input files. More
     
  • Stop List - Lets you specify words to be omitted from your concordance. More
     
  • Word List Managers - for easy construction of Stop Lists and Pick Lists. This is also a useful general tool: it can read any plain text file, put each word on a separate line, sort them, and remove duplicates - a miniature Word Index program in its own right. (Limited file size under Windows 95/98, no limit under Windows NT4.0 and 2000.) More
     
  • Contexts - Better control over contexts, including ability to delete and undelete individual contexts, and to limit the number of contexts displayed (and saved, exported, printed).
     
  • Easier Alphabet control - Characters you've omitted from your user-defined Alphabet can now be added automatically as your text is read.
     
  • Better Wordlist control  - you can now copy all words from the Wordlist to the Clipboard, or select multiple words and copy them.  Also copy the words in the Scratchpad to the Windows Clipboard or save them to a file. 
     
  • Renamer - allows renaming of text files and their associated concordance files easily in one operation.
     
  • Help system - Many additions, including Frequently Asked Questions .
     
  • Web Concordance extras - Word frequencies and percentages can be added to the Wordlist frame in a Web Concordance.  Lemmatised wordlists can use images or indentation to indicate lemmatisation.
     
  • Performance - Program uses less RAM and starts up faster.
     
  • Better error reporting - Proper English error messages for some common errors such as 'File in use by another program' and 'Disk full'. 
     
    Minor improvements and changes:
  • In-place editor for Headwords now uses a language-aware editor instead of the Windows in-place editor.
  • Can now copy selectively out of the Progress dialog.
  • Can copy characters from the character set in the Language Control.
  • Many new options on the Help menu.
  • Added option to remove obsolete file names from Recently used file list (File -> Reopen).
  • Numerous improvements to operation of controls in Print Preview.
  • Made Web Concordance framesets compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 by removing border size specifier in the frameset tag. If you have upgraded to a new version of Concordance, the border sizes will be stored as one of your preferences, and you will have to edit the Editable Sections in HTML Setup if your frame borders are invisible when viewed with Internet Explorer 5.0. See Frequently Asked Questions.
  • Changes to Resource Gauges to show available disk space.
  • In Text View and Text Edit, words selected by double-click are now shown in the status bar using the correct character set of the chosen language.
  • Documented a way of making a PDF file with the output from Concordance.
  • Can use the Delete key to delete words from the Wordlist and Scratchpad, and Contexts from the context Views.
  • Comma is now by default included in sense-unit punctuation for selecting contexts.
  • A new, easier option for applying registration keys.
  • Making a concordance with contexts of selected length should no longer produce occasional 'Read beyond end of file' errors.
  • Contexts of selected length can now consist of zero words before and after the headword (previous minimum was one).
  • New Preferences dialog.
  • Can now choose whether to reload Alphabet with each reloaded concordance.
  • Can now click on a concordance file in My Computer or Windows Explorer to start the program and display that concordance.
  • Additional menu settings now saved automatically ('Display while loading', 'Fit columns to contexts', and all settings beginning with 'Show...' on the Headwords and Contexts menus except 'Show Percentages').
  • Many other minor improvements and bug fixes.
     

    One Drawback of Version 2.0.0

    If you choose Contexts of Selected Length, Version 2.0.0 takes longer to make a concordance than previous versions.  You can avoid this slowdown by choosing the Actual Line as context for your concordance. If you need Contexts of Selected Length, you can minimise the slowdown by choosing short contexts (for example, just two or three words before and after the headword).

    Version 2.0.0 changes to Browser and Multiple Document Editor:
  • MD Editor can now append files
  • Browser is now a MDI application (can browse multiple files)
  • Both programs can open files from the command line, e.g. *.TXT 
  • Both programs can open files by multiple-selecting in the Open dialog
  • Both keep a list of recently-used files to re-open
  • Bugs fixed in MD Editor:
  • If you chose File|Open, then typed a new filename, it asked to confirm that the file does not exist, but then gave an error. Fixed.
  • Saving a file as a text file did not add the .txt extension - fixed. Same bug also fixed when saving a concordance as text.
  • Both programs, plus the Unix and OEM-Ansi converters, now have intelligible English error messages for common errors such as 'Disk Full' or 'File in use'.
     
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    Version 1.1.3  - 11 April 1999 

    New features:
  • Added option to write plain text links (as third alternative to buttons and to text with images) in Web Concordances
  • Consequent re-design of HTML Setup dialog 

    Fixes:
  • The program is now more tolerant of control characters in the input text
  • Some HTML Setup options were not being saved to the .Ini file; fixed.

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    Version 1.1.2  - 29 March 1999

    This release fixed a number of bugs; it did not add any new functionality.

    Users upgrading from a version earlier than 1.1.2 are recommended to delete their Concordance.ini file (in the Windows folder) when upgrading.  As this will cause the program to forget your recent settings, you might want to note down your settings first by looking in various dialog boxes, such as all four on the Text menu and also HTML Setup on the File menu. 
  • Fixed bug causing slow loading of concordance after unloading a concordance while percentage display is on
  • Disallowed two simultaneous instances of print preview form
  • Fixed frame targetting for 'Made with Concordance' message
  • Fixed bug which was allowing CR/LF and other non-alphabetic characters in Alphabet Editor, corrupting alphabet
  • Fixed bug which corrupted alphabet after an attempt to load an invalid concordance file
  • Fixed bug which converted Web Concordance source text to HTML even when it already was HTML, and which did not allow selection of preformatted text, as opposed to tables, for layout of a Web Concordance
  • Additions to help file

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    Version 1.1.0 - 31 January 1999
  • Added ability to view Collocations for up to four words left and right of any headword
  • Added ability to sort contexts by any of the four words to left and right of the headword
  • Fixed bug where File|New in the editor would replace any unsaved file without warning
  • Several minor cosmetic bugs fixed
  • Additions to help file

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    Version 1.0.0 - 19 January 1999
  • First public release