EmEditor v21.6.0 released (including technical review)!

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Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.6.0.

The previous version of EmEditor allowed you to visualize specified characters, but you had to specify character ranges by character code values if you selected the specified ranges option. This could become a tedious task when character code values of your interest are scattered all over the Unicode chart. The new version allows you to specify character ranges by Unicode Script and Unicode General Category. For instance, if you write only Latin text, it is a good idea to select the Latin (Latn) and Common (Zyyy) scripts, and set the Warn characters outside of the specified ranges option. You can combine Unicode Script with Unicode General Category. For instance, you can set

"Latn,Zyyy,Ll,Lu"

meaning Latin (Latn) OR Common (Zyyy) scripts AND lowercase letters (Ll) OR uppercase letters (Lu).

To make this feature possible, we have updated the Unicode database included in the EECommon.dll library to allow you to specify character ranges by Unicode Script and/or Unicode General Category. The new information is also included in a dialog box displayed when you select the Character Code Value command. The EECommon.dll library will not be loaded into memory until information is requested, so EmEditor load time will not affected by this feature addition. The EECommon.dll library was first developed by Makoto Emura.

EmEditor v21.1 supported all emoji sequences in Emoji Sequences and Emoji ZWJ Sequences, but they were not comprehensive and not future-proof if new emoji sequences are introduced in the future. The new version of EmEditor used the definition specified in Unicode Technical Standard #51 – Unicode Emoji to support all possible emoji. Supporting emoji means that these emoji characters are displayed correctly as long as they are supported by fonts, and the cursor movement around emoji is correct. While we were working on these changes, we updated the Unicode database to the latest version (Unicode v14.0.0).

A customer asked if it is possible to convert various date formats in a text file to one date format. EmEditor v21.3 supported date/time formats in Number Ranges. While this feature was useful for finding and filtering specific date/time ranges, it was useless if you need to convert them to one specific date/time format. The new version introduces \D and \T expressions to the Replace Expression Syntax. For instance, if you have a text file containing dates with various formats such as:

3/23/2022
03/23/2022
March 23,2022
Mar 23,2022
23-Mar-2022
2022-03-23
2022年3月23日

and if you want to convert all of these to one format “2022-03-22“, you can press CTRL+H to bring up the Replace dialog box, set the Number Range option, and enter:

Find:

[1/1/1900 , 1/1/2200 "M/d/yyyy|MM/dd/yyyy|MMMM d,yyyy|MMM d,yyyy|dd-MMM-yyyy|yyyy-MM-dd|yyyy年M月d日" ]

Replace with:

\Dyyyy-MM-dd

This Find expression will search for these formats between 1/1/1900 and 1/1/2200, and the matched dates are converted to the yyyy-MM-dd format.

While I was working on the replacement expression syntax, I also added new \Nc, \Nd, \NC, and \ND expressions to normalize strings, using the Unicode Normalization commands introduced on EmEditor v19.8. These new expressions are useful when you need to normalize characters that match certain search criteria.

All of the aforementioned features are supported on EmEditor Professional and EmEditor Free.

The main feature of EmEditor Professional v21.6 is significantly improved speeds of Advanced Filter and Multi-Find with many simple non-regex search strings. A customer asked if it was possible to search a file for 25 million phone numbers. This was not easy on earlier version of EmEditor because it became very slow when more than thousands of search strings are specified. I came up with a new algorithm for this situation, and optimized the code significantly so that it is now possible to accept 25 million search strings simultaneously. While I was working on this optimization, I also made it possible for Advanced Filter and Batch Find/Replace dialog boxes to accept a linked file. A linked file may contain multiple search strings separated by newlines. You can drag and drop a linked file from Explorer to the list box in Advanced Filter or Batch Find/Replace dialog box. You may also drag and drop a linked file to the Filter box on the Filter toolbar to start Advanced Filter immediately. A linked file makes it easier to maintain a set of search strings and to apply the changes instantly to Advanced Filter or Multi-Find. Since EmEditor internally sorts search strings (by length and by alphabetical order) before making searches, you can improve the speed by presorting your linked files. If you decide to presort linked files, set the Fast Binary Comparison and Stable Sort options in the Sort page of the Customize dialog box. The Ignore case option should be set if you don’t match case on Advanced Filter. Open a linked file, select Sort A to Z first, and then select Sort Shortest to Longest. Presorting linked files is not required, and will not change the search results, but will improve the speed.

Furthermore, the Extract All button on the Filter toolbar is now a drop-down button, and clicking the button will display a menu where you can select between the Extract All Lines and Extract Matched Strings commands. The Extract Matched Strings command will extract only one string per line if multiple strings are matched.

I also optimized the speed of the Join CSV command when the … contains …, … starts with …, or … ends with … conditions are selected, using the similar algorithm to the Advanced Filter command.

A customer requested a new option, which is the Selection Mode item in the Status page of the Customize dialog box. If this is set, the status bar indicates “Vertical” while the vertical selection mode is active, and “Lines” while the line selection mode is active.

A customer reported a crash while launching EmEditor, and sent me a crash report file. I looked into the crash report and found that EmEditor crashed by an out-of-memory situation due to a very large file history. This customer was setting 30000 days to the Save Cursor Position option and set the Never Clear Bookmarks option in the History page of the Customize dialog box. This caused a very large file history to be created. To prevent this kind of issue from happening, the new version removed the Never Clear Bookmarks check box, and limit the saving time of cursors and bookmarks to 100 days.

Finally, I hope you like EmEditor, whether you use the Professional or Free version. Please contact us or write in forums if you have any questions, feature requests, or any ideas in the future.)

Thank you for using EmEditor!
— Yutaka Emura

Please see EmEditor v21.6 New Features for details and screenshots.

This release also includes the following bug/issue fix:

  • Fixed a bug where the Find Next/Previous Warning Character/Unicode command might have missed surrogate user-defined characters.
  • Fixed a bug where EmEditor could crash at the BatchReplace method if the batch array is empty.
  • Fixed issues related to Layouts.
  • Fixed a bug where the Find Next/Previous button in the Find dialog box did not work well with surrogate characters.
  • Fixed a bug where character spacing might become irregular.
  • Fixed a bug where the vertical scroll position might be at the bottom if a window is split vertically and when switching documents.
  • Fixed a bug where syntax errors appeared when opening certain CSV files but clicking the Check Syntax button cleared all the errors.
  • Fixed a v21.5 bug where EmEditor might have shown the “File changed by another program. Reload with changes?” message box sometimes when network files are opened.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1).

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.5.2 released!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.5.2.

Updates from v21.5.1 include:

  • Fixed a bug where EmEditor could freeze on certain emoji sequences if the Warn invisible characters option is turned on.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.5 issue where bookmarks could disappear on the Line Up/Down command.
  • The new version stops Find in Files if a regex error occurs.
  • Changed the behavior of the Word Left command when spaces following after a word.
  • Adjusted the vertical scroll position after the Encode/Decode Selection commands when lines are wrapped.
  • Fixed an issue where EmEditor could not stop macros at alert(), confirm(), prompt() methods if run asynchronously on some computers.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1).
  • Fixed a potential crash while opening XML files (avoided syntax check while reading a file).
  • Supported more Emoji ZWJ Sequences, and fixed behaviors of the character check.
  • Fix an issue where the In Selection Only option in the Find/Replace dialog box was set in sticky vertical selection mode even if only one line is selected.

Please see EmEditor v21.5 New Features for details and screenshots.

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.5.1 released!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.5.1.

Updates from v21.5.0 include:

This release also includes the following bug/issue fix:

  • Fixed a bug where EmEditor could crash on the Find Next Warning Character/Unicode command.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1, 2, 3).

Please see EmEditor v21.5 New Features for details and screenshots.

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.5.0 released (including technical review)!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.5.0.

The biggest advantage of using Unicode is that you can include any character you want into a document. The drawback is that it can include any unwanted characters for some people. Those unwanted characters may include invisible characters such as U+200B (ZERO WIDTH SPACE) and control characters such as U+0081. Try copying the following text and paste it to Notepad or other text editors.

"​" invisible character (U+200B)
"" control character (U+0081)

Since these characters often become invisible in Notepad and many other text editors, they could become security issues if used unintentionally. Untrusted source code containing invisible characters could contain a hidden backdoor. If you copy source code from code-sharing sites such as StackOverflow and paste it to your text editor, you want to make sure the source code is free of those unwanted characters. Another example is that you might be editing a data file that contains user input text data. Since users could input any text data, the text might include invisible or control characters that need to be cleaned up before being parsed. If a text editor couldn’t show those characters, it would become difficult to find those characters.

The new main feature of v21.5 becomes useful in these cases. v21.5 can visualize these invisible and control characters. While you can use this feature with its default settings, you can optionally customize which characters to warn, or which characters to approve. If you edit data files that consist of only certain character types (such as English alphabets, numbers, and a few symbols), you might want to define those characters as approved characters. You can set EmEditor to warn characters in the specified character ranges, or characters outside of the specified character ranges. Moreover, you can have EmEditor check for those unwanted characters automatically while saving documents. This feature is supported on EmEditor Professional and EmEditor Free.

Another new feature of v21.5 is the EditorConfig support. If you work as a team, and if each member of the team uses a different text editor, the team can create .editorconfig files that define coding styles such as indent styles, newline characters, and file encodings. Since v21.5 conforms to the EditorConfig specifications, you don’t need to change EmEditor options manually to conform with the team project settings as long as the options are set in .editorconfig files.

For instance, if your team wants you to use a line-feed (LF) as the newline code and to use the indent size of 4, your team can create a .editorconfig file in the same (or parent) folder containing the following lines.

[*.txt]
end_of_line = lf
indent_size = 4

All text editors supporting EditorConfig, including EmEditor v21.5, will look for this file and will set their options accordingly and automatically for the specified file types.

This feature can be useful even if you don’t work with a team. For instance, if you want to have “a.txt” and “b.txt” files to show without lines wrapped, but if you want other text files to have lines wrapped, you can create a .editorconfig file containing the following lines:

[{a,b}.txt]
max_line_length = off

This technique will avoid a need to create a new configuration in EmEditor just for simple options supported in EditorConfig.

While I optimized the code for speed, the EditorConfig support can slow down opening files especially if you open files from slow drives or network. In that case, you can turn off the option by clearing the Use .editorconfig option to the Edit page of the Customize dialog box. The EditorConfig feature is supported on EmEditor Professional and EmEditor Free, but the Use .editorconfig option is available only on EmEditor Professional (the feature is always enabled on EmEditor Free).

Since we supported the insert_final_newline property of EditorConfig, we also added the Ensure a newline exists at the end of each file option to the Save Details dialog box. This feature is supported on EmEditor Professional and EmEditor Free.

A customer has asked if he can utilize the Sum of the selected numbers displayed in the Status bar in his macros. The new Sum and Average properties of the Selection object allows you to use those numbers. Since these properties work faster, the included Sum.jsee macro was rewritten to use the Sum property. This feature is supported only on EmEditor Professional.

Finally, I hope you like EmEditor, whether you use the Professional or Free version. Please contact us or write in forums if you have any questions, feature requests, or any ideas in the future. I also welcome you to write a review by selecting the Write a Review command on the Help menu, because I read them periodically. (You might need to download the Store App version before you are able to write a review.)

Thank you for using EmEditor!
— Yutaka Emura

Please see EmEditor v21.5 New Features for details and screenshots.

This release also includes the following bug/issue fix:

  • Fixed a pre-v21.4 issue where the Find in Files command might not have worked correctly if a very long path exists under a certain condition.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.4 issue where Find without Match Case might have failed if the Count Frequent Strings option was set.
  • Fixed a v21.4.1 issue where Regex searches with the Search All Documents in the Group option might have failed.
  • Fixed the horizontal scroll bar issue when a window is split horizontally.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.4 issue related to mouse selection while scrolling up.
  • Fixed a potential crash when right-clicking on toolbars.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1, 2).

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.4.1 released!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.4.1.

Updates from v21.4.0 include:

  • Allowed $(DocText) in Argument of external tools can be up to 32768 characters long.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.4 issue where the Character Code Value command might have displayed blank text in very large files.
  • The new version always parse all lines when switched to a CSV mode to count all delimiters.
  • Fixed an issue where stopping a macro should not show the Unspecified Error message.
  • Fixed an issue where the Transpose command did not work with only one column CSV.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.4 issue where the Find in Files command might not have worked correctly if a very long path exists under a certain condition.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Please see EmEditor v21.4 New Features for details and screenshots.

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.4.0 released (including technical review)!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.4.0.

Since EmEditor Free supported very large files in the previous version, it was pleasant to see that more people have used EmEditor Free. However, since EmEditor Free showed the Upgrade Information notification as a balloon tip on the right bottom corner, a user asked me if it was possible to hide this balloon tip. Thus, v21.4 allows you to hide any notifications or balloon tips on EmEditor Free. Another new feature for EmEditor Free is Automatic Updates, which allows you to update EmEditor to the latest version with a single click or have it apply new updates automatically on exit. Because of these new features, the Customize dialog box now includes the Notifications and Update pages in EmEditor Free (previously, only the Language page existed in EmEditor Free).

The main feature of EmEditor Professional v21.4 is a set of new data-analysis commands—Transpose, Pivot Table, and Unpivot—used for CSV documents. Last month, a customer asked me if I could add these commands. I was not familiar with these commands when I was first asked, but I thought they would become so powerful in analyzing big data that I wanted to implement them as soon as possible. The Transpose command simply switches the rows and columns of a CSV document. The Pivot Table finds all distinct values for a specified column, and for each distinct value, the command counts the occurrences or calculates the total values in another specified column. The Unpivot command is the reverse of the Pivot Table command. When I developed these commands, I wanted to make sure they are simple enough to use even if users aren’t familiar with them. For instance, I placed each option of the Pivot Table dialog box visually as the actual location of a pivot table. These commands can be recorded to a macro, which you can reuse later for repeated use. I also wanted to make sure they run as fast as possible, so I’ve spent much of my time optimizing the code for speed. Moreover, I added new options to the Combine Columns dialog box, and spent much time to improve the speed of the Combine Columns, Split Column(s), and Encode/Decode Selection commands while columns are selected in the CSV mode. Therefore, EmEditor Professional v21.4 allows you to analyze big data more quickly while you deal with CSV files.

We added these toolbar buttons for Transpose, Pivot Table and Unpivot commands but the existing CSV/Sort toolbar became too big. Thus, v21.4 separates the CSV/Sort toolbar into the CSV toolbar and Sort toolbar. Some people might think that the new Sort toolbar also contains CSV-related buttons, so why not call it “CSV/Sort”? Well, I just wanted to make the title short, but you can customize toolbar titles as well as buttons in the Toolbars dialog box.

As I wrote in my previous message, we refreshed the dialog box fonts for Japanese, Korean, and other languages, but this was met with some negative feedback. Therefore, I made the font face names customizable as well as the size in the Window page of the Customize dialog box.

A customer reported that the Uppercase/Lowercase commands do not convert some letters correctly. For instance, in Turkish, the uppercase of i is İ (U+0130, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH DOT ABOVE), and the lowercase of I is ı (U+0131, LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I). All the previous versions of Uppercase/Lowercase commands were using locale-independent conversions. v21.4 added the Locale-dependent Uppercase/Lowercase option to the Edit page of the Customize dialog box, which you can use for locale-dependent conversions. The locale is customizable in the Sort page of the Customize dialog box. The locale-dependent conversions require more time to process, and the option does not apply to other features including searches and replaces.

Some customers reported that macros do not finish correctly when a message box appears, for instance, by the alert method. I couldn’t reproduce the issue, but the issue appears on customers’ computers when macros run asynchronously. Thus, I added the Run macros asynchronously by default option to the Options page of the Customize Macros dialog box, and turning this option off will fix this issue.

We receive many inquiries regarding the recent Log4j vulnerability issues, but EmEditor does not use Java components, thus EmEditor is not vulnerable for CVE-2021-44228, CVE-2021-45046 (Log4j).

Finally, I hope you like EmEditor, whether you use the Professional or Free version. Please contact us or write in forums if you have any questions, feature requests, or any ideas in the future. I also welcome you to write a review by selecting the Write a Review command on the Help menu, because I read them periodically. (You might need to download the Store App version before you are able to write a review.)

Happy Holiday!
— Yutaka Emura

Please see EmEditor v21.4 New Features for details and screenshots.

This release also includes the following bug/issue fix:

  • Fixed a pre-v21.3 issue where the Combine Lines command might not have worked correctly when the Remove empty strings option is set.
  • Fixed an issue with certain fonts while using DirectWrite.
  • Fixed an issue where the “Error: Update installation failed” message might have appeared even though the installation was successful.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1, 2, 3, 4).

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.3.0 released (including technical review)!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.3.

This new version supports very large files in the Free version as well as the Professional version. I believe this will benefit many students at school and home, who need free text editors supporting very large files. What I mean by “very large file support” is the ability to open very large files without loading all contents into the memory. EmEditor will read a file directly from the disk if the file size is larger than 300 MB by default. For a long time, the file loading has been optimized for speed by using multithreaded code using SIMD instruction sets. In other words, EmEditor Free opens very large files as fast as EmEditor Professional. Even though EmEditor Free supports very large files, the Large File Controller is available only on EmEditor Professional. Please see EmEditor Free for the updated comparison table.

The main feature of v21.3 is a new date/time support in Number Range expressions. The feature was requested by several customers including this question. For example, when you analyze server logs or sales reports containing dates/times, you often want to focus on a certain date/time range, and the new feature becomes useful in these situations. You could use regular expressions to search for a certain date range, but regular expressions often become complicated and slow. Thus, I’ve decided to support date ranges in existing Number Range expressions. When I developed this new feature, I wanted to make sure it would be optimized for speed. I also understand that you want to take full control over which date format you would want to match. Therefore, the date expression allows you to specify a date/time format surrounded by double quotation marks. For example:

[1/1/2021 , 31/1/2021 "d/M/yyyy" ]

matches “5/1/2021”.

You may combine multiple date formats with a pipe (“|”). For example:

[1/1/2021 , 31/1/2021 "d/M/yyyy|yyyy-MM-dd" ]

matches “5/1/2021” and “2021-01-05”, but it does NOT match “05/01/2021” or “2021-1-5”.

However, you can’t specify multiple date formats that conflict with each other. For example,

[1/1/2021 , 31/1/2021 "d/M/yyyy|M/d/yyyy" ]

is invalid because EmEditor can’t determine whether “5/1/2021” is the 1st of May or the 5th of January.

You may use almost any characters between year, month, and day like this:

[2021年1月1日 , 2021年1月31日 "yyyy年M月d日" ]

You may also use month names such as “January” or “Jan” by using “MMMM” or “MMM”, respectively, or use 24-hour time format: “HH:mm” or “HH:mm:ss”.

The new date range feature is available both in EmEditor Free and in EmEditor Professional.

Other new features include the ability to split a window into 3 panes! This feature has been requested for a long time. To split a window into 3 panes vertically or horizontally, select Split Vertically or Split Horizontally on the Window menu twice. This new feature is included in EmEditor Free and EmEditor Professional.

A customer wanted to move the current cell selection to the right when you press the ENTER key while in the CSV Cell Selection mode in EmEditor Professional. Previously, EmEditor can only set the focus into the Cell toolbar when you press ENTER. The new version allows the ENTER key customization, and introduces 4 new commands including the Next Cell (Cell Selection Mode Only) command. Thus, you can assign the ENTER key as the Next Cell (Cell Selection Mode Only) command.

A customer requested the ability to change the font size used in dialog boxes. While it is not easy to change the font name, it is relatively easy to change the font size. So, the new version allows you to change the font size in the Window page of the Customize dialog box. Another customer using the Chinese UI requested the ability to change the font face name. EmEditor’s dialog boxes use MS Shell Dlg, which is automatically substituted with an appropriate system font in each language of Windows. The font substitutes are defined in the Registry key: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes. The issue is that this substitution table is old. I’ve learned that the old SimSun font was used in Simplified Chinese Windows by default, but it isn’t easy to read. While modern fonts like Microsoft YaHei are used in Windows and even recommended by Microsoft, the font substitution table still points to the old font, which is not updated even now. I thought that Microsoft forgot to update the font substitution table, but maybe they worry about compatibility issues with older apps, so they intentionally didn’t update it. We have decided to hard-code Microsoft YaHei for Simplified Chinese, and Microsoft JhengHei for Traditional Chinese. We have not changed the other language UI yet but will test the other languages in beta versions for the next version. We will use Meiryo UI for Japanese, Malgun Gothic for Korean, and Segoe UI for other languages. We will release beta versions soon, so please try the new beta versions with the new dialog boxes when they become available, and let us know if you like the new look and feel.

Latest updates of Windows 11 include bug fixes that I have previously mentioned. I have tested EmEditor on Windows 11 thoroughly, and I don’t see any issues with EmEditor on Windows 11 anymore except that some plug-in dialog boxes don’t look good on the Very Dark mode. The dark mode is still undocumented for desktop apps, and I am still looking into the issue. Unless you use the Very Dark option of EmEditor, there are no issues with EmEditor on Windows 11.

Finally, I hope you like EmEditor, whether you use the Professional or Free version. Please contact us or write in forums if you have any questions, feature requests, or any ideas in the future. I also welcome you to write a review by selecting the Write a Review command on the Help menu, because I read them periodically. (You might need to download the Store App version before you are able to write a review.)

Thank you for using EmEditor!
— Yutaka Emura

Please see EmEditor v21.3 New Features for details and screenshots.

This release also includes following bug/issue fix:

  • Fixed visual issues in CSV mode.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.2 bug where #async = “off” did not work without spaces.
  • Fixed a potential issue after asynchronous macro errors.
  • Fixed an issue with proportional fonts where clicking on the right edge of a wide character might slip to the right side of the next narrow character.
  • Fixed an issue where the keyboard focus moved to the main window after Find in Files even if the Close when Finished option is clear.
  • Fixed a bug where DirectWrite was not off by default on Windows 7.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.2 bug where the Move/Copy Column(s) command did not work correctly under a certain condition.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.2 issue where selecting a column without headings in a CSV document and clicking the Select All button in the Find dialog box might have searched the headings.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1).

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.2.1 released!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.2.1.

Updates from v21.2.0 include:

  • The new version will display the Jump dialog box when clicking the File Position at Cursor in the Status Bar.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.2 bug where EmEditor could crash while opening a very large file containing a very long line.
  • Fixed an issue where the Main Menu could disappear after restoring the Full Screen mode by menu.
  • Adjusted detection timing of Repeated Steps.
  • Fixed localization issues on v21.2.0.
  • Fixed an issue where the menu items could become empty if the menu was customized before.
  • Made DirectWrite off by default on Windows 7 SP1.
  • Fixed customer-reported issues (1, 2).

Please see EmEditor v21.2 New Features for details and screenshots.

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days.

Thank you for using EmEditor!

EmEditor v21.2.0 released (including technical review)!

/in /by

Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.2.

Some customer asked me to write a technical review on major releases, and I thought it’s good idea. Many customer interactions and reasons often exist behind all new features, and I would like to share those behind the scenes stories with you, which might not fit in formal release notes.

First of all, I think many people would welcome the fact that this new version (v21.2) includes many new features for the Free version (EmEditor Free). In the past, my focus was updating the product for paid customers. However, more free text editors become available these days, and I want more users use EmEditor as an alternative to other free text editors. Some users wrote not-so-good reviews just because the Free version lacks many features that were available only for the Pro version. The new Free version features on v21.2 include Bookmarks, Markers, Compare files (with default options only), Spelling, Numbering, Full screen view, Workspaces, Macros (Record and Run only, no scriptable macros), Outline, Start window, and many options in configuration properties. In the past, some users complain that the process to downgrade from Pro to Free is confusing. In recent versions, the Downgrade and Upgrade commands exist on the Help menu, but the default was still Pro version. There is no default on v21.2 anymore. When EmEditor is launched for the first time after a fresh install, a new dialog box to select EmEditor Professional or EmEditor Free appears, and you can start using is as the Free version without even finding the Downgrade command.

Second, v21.2 includes the new Repeat Steps feature. This idea initially came from an informal talk with Mado-no-mori editors in Tokyo before the pandemic. They suggested using AI to detect next movements of EmEditor. I didn’t want to create any significant background tasks in EmEditor just to make the app slow down (remember Office assistant Clipper?), but I agree that some repetitive tasks should be simplified more easily. When you have repetitive tasks in a text editor, experienced users know how to record them as a macro, and repeat the macro as many times as necessary. However, it is often true that you want to try those steps without recording a macro first. By the time you decide to record steps as a macro, it’s often already half done, and you just want to finish the repetition without thinking more. The new Repeat Steps feature comes handy in this situation. Usually if you repeat certain task 3 times (might be adjusted in the future), a notification tip appears with the Enter Repeat Count hyperlink. Clicking on the link brings up the Repeat dialog box, where you can specify the number of times to repeat the steps. You can also select the Repeat Steps command on the Edit menu to bring up the Repeat dialog box without waiting for the notification tip appears. Basically, v21.2 permanently records a macro no matter the Start Recording command is turned on, and you will just need to pick a starting point of the macro when you want to repeat the recent steps.

Another convenient feature I’ve come up with is the Assign Keyboard Shortcut command displayed on the right-click menu on almost all menu items and toolbar buttons. This command opens the Keyboard page of Properties for All Configurations, and the command you right-clicked is pre-selected. This should save some time to find the command in the Keyboard page of configuration properties. From v21.2, All Configurations becomes the default setting for the Keyboard Map. It was a little confusing in the past that EmEditor allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts both only for the current configuration and for all configurations. I don’t believe most users would care assigning shortcuts for a particular configuration, so I wanted to make All Configurations the default for keyboard assignments.

Some customer complained that EmEditor didn’t show “ (0x93, U+201C) and ” (0x94, U+201D) characters in Western European HTML files correctly, and the HTML file had the charset=iso-8859-1 tag. The customer already acknowledged that this was due to difference in encoding in the ISO-8859-1 and the supserset Windows-1252 encodings. In fact, “ and ” characters were not defined in the ISO-8859-1 encoding, but defined in the Windows-1252 encoding. The fact is that many Western European HTML files were often mislabeled as iso-8859-1 while they should be labelled as windows-1252. According to the WHATWG community Living Standard, HTML5 interprets these HTML files as Windows-1252 encoding even if they are labeled as ISO-8859-1, and so does EmEditor v21.2 if the Detect HTML/XML Charset option is set.

There are a lot more stories while developing v21.2, but I will end this blog with introducing the new Notification feature when the Auto Copy feature is on when EmEditor is launched. I sometimes receive emails when their Copy and Paste went something wrong. This is most likely caused by the Auto Copy feature being turned on without their notice or being forgotten to turn off. So the new Notification will remind users that the Auto Copy feature is on.

I know some people are anxious about updating their OS to Windows 11. I usually trust my neighbors in Redmond, but this time, I don’t know. A customer has reported an issue related to this particular Windows 11 bug. EmEditor allows a user to select non-ASCII names for configurations and file types to be associated with EmEditor, and these names will become Registry keys. I would recommend waiting for a little while until Windows 11 becomes stable.

Finally, I hope you like EmEditor, whether you use it as Professional or Free version. Please contact us or write forums if you have any questions, feature requests, or any ideas in the future. I also welcome you to write a review, which I read them periodically. You might need to download the Store App version before you are able to write a review.

Thank you for using EmEditor!
— Yutaka Emura

Please see EmEditor v21.2 New Features for details and screenshots.

This release also includes following bug/issue fix:

  • Fixed a potential crash when opening a very large file on a certain computer such as a virtual computer.
  • Fixed a CSS/HTML Validator issue where it shows an error at Hiragana/Katakana only title tags.

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days. If you use winget, you can type “winget install emeditor” to install the latest version of EmEditor (64-bit or 32-bit detected automatically).

EmEditor v21.1.5 released!

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Today, we are releasing EmEditor v21.1.5.

Updates from v21.1.4 include:

  • Fixed a certain layout issue with the Full Screen mode.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue related to negative decimal number ranges.
  • Fixed a v21.1 issue where the Replace All (with a newline) could become very slow when the Direct Write is on.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue where the IME candidate window might not appear immediately after EmEditor opens.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue where EmEditor might have displayed the “EmEditor abnormally terminated in the previous session. Do you want to recover a previous unsaved workspace?” message after log off the previous Windows session without closing EmEditor last time.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue where multi-line comment highlighting was not always updated after pasting without a newline.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue where the CSV Converter/Large File Controller custom bar may not be scrolled correctly at second time.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue where double clicking the AutoFill handle while pressing the SHIFT key might not have filled correctly while filtered.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue where pressing SHIFT + RIGHT after the Find Next Occurrence command did not make selection correctly.
  • Fixed a pre-v21.1 issue related to copying text in the status bar on the Simplified Chinese locale.

Windows 11 information (Known issues and current status)

Please see EmEditor v21.1 New Features for details and screenshots.

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates on the Help to download the newest version. If this method fails, please download the newest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to download the newest version. The Store App versions can be updated through Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days.

Thank you for using EmEditor!