This replaces the previous v5 feature thread.Sorry again about the formatting, it is directly copied from the README
The main changes are some additional script commands, and enhancements to a couple of script commands.
Please feel free to post comments or questions
=============================================================================
4. Changes between this version (5) and the previous versions
================================================================
The following is a summary list of the changes and improvements in version
5.00 as compared to the previous 4.22 version.
If you are familiar with a previous version of Activ E-Book Compiler then
this may be of interest. If this version is the first version of Activ E-Book
Compiler that you've used then we suggest you ignore this section and proceed
directly to using the software.
=======================
CHANGES IN VERSION 5.00
=======================
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CHANGES TO PACKAGE CONTENTS
---------------------------
LICENSE CHANGES
The license agreement has been modified. By using the latest version, you
are agreeing to the revised license agreement.
Specifically the changes are:
(1) We have rewritten the section on governing law for increased clarity.
README
* Update: Updated this readme file.
ADDITIONS
* Added the ASCC program to the package. This program is intended for authors
who wish to share their .as scripts with other authors, but without revealing
their script source code. It is a command line utility.
-----------------------------
CHANGES TO HELP DOCUMENTATION
-----------------------------
* Bug fix: Corrected some typos in documentation.
* Update: Changed copyright to 2000-2005 where applicable.
* New feature: Changed Search to display results in a formatted page.
* New feature: Now highlights matching words when you do a Search in when
viewing the help.
* Update: Numerous changes and additions to the text (too many to list
individually).
INI FILES etc
* Information about the bookmark if any is now stored in AEBMARK.INI
-----------------------
CHANGES TO INSTALLATION
-----------------------
* New feature: Additional information about the compiler location and version
is recorded by the installation. This informaiton is intended for use by
other compatible software, such as Answers 2000's "Web Authoring Wizard".
* New program ASCC added to installation.
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CHANGES TO COMPILER
-------------------
FILE OPEN
* New feature: Checks for .EXE, .HTM and .HTML files being open and
displays a nice error message telling the user to read the instructions.
These are (apparently) surprisingly common errors.
GENERAL
* Bug fix: Uses 64bit timer. This should eliminate any problems which would
otherwise occur in 2038.
* Bug fix (cosmetic): The ellipsis next to Build... on Build menu was missing
one period character.
FILES TAB
* New feature: Support for search templates (see below). Please note:
The search template feature in 5.00 is "experimental", and may change in
future versions of the software.
EDIT SECURITY
* Bug fix: The Perl code generated by Save in Edit Security contained a
syntax error.
* New feature: In Edit Security you can choose whether which password to
select (if Password System is enabled) is determined by the ESBN, User ID
and number of passwords, or just the User ID and number of passwords.
EDIT SECURITY - ADVANCED
* New feature: .AS (and the new .ASE format) script files can be processed
via memory only. There is a separate option for this in Advanced Security
("High Security"
.
EDIT ICON
* This screen has been revised.
* New feature: "New" create a new icon
* New feature: "Edit Clone" create a copy of an existing icon into "My Icons"
* New feature: "Edit" edit any icon in "My Icons"
* New feature: "Delete" delete any icon from "My Icons"
* New feature: Icon Editor, invoked by New, Edit Clone or Edit
EDIT STARTUP
* New feature: Validates splash file, if any, is a .BMP format file.
EDIT SYSTEM PAGES
* New feature: You can limit the number of Search Results in Edit System
Pages (recommended you limit this to a reasonable value for very large
E-Books).
EDIT ALL FILES
* New feature: Exclude all files.
* New feature: Do not exclude all files.
VARIABLES
* New feature: Support for password protected rebrandable fields. Affects
variables tab, and Add/Edit Variable.
BUILD
* New feature: The text of several errors messages (and the layout of
all error messages) that may occur during a Build have been improved.
* In both cases: if there is no index file, as opposed to the index file
being excluded - an error message is displayed. From version 5.00 these
are now different error messages.
* The build process now verifies the existance of EVIEW.DAT / REBRAND.DAT
at the start, this should detect if the installation is corrupted.
* In previous versions of the compiler, if you were using My Own Page
for the Password page (in Edit System Pages), it didn't matter if the
selected page was itself password protected. From 5.00, the Password
page must not be password protected itself.
* The build process now builds a log which can be used to analyze
compile errors (if forwarded to Answers 2000). To display it, press
ALT+L on the Build Successful dialog box.
HELP MENU
* New feature: E-Book Covers menu, links tohttp://www.coverfactory.com/
* New feature: E-Book Discussion Forum, links tohttp://www.ebookfriends.com/
* New feature: E-Book and Internet Publishing news, links to
http://blog.ans2000.com/
E-BOOK PACKING/UNPACKING CHANGES
* New feature: E-Book Compiler now supports three different methods of
compressing files (plus not compressing files). Version 4.2x supported
only a single compression method. The most suitable compression option for
each file to be included in the e-book is selected automatically. The new
compression options *tend* to help most noticeably with the size (i.e.
reduce the size of) of the following file types:-
- most GIFs (generally a small reduction per file)
- most JPGs (generally a small reduction per file)
- some BMPs (can be quite significant on some files)
- some WAVs (can be quite significant on some files)
- some SWFs
* New feature: Password information is now stored differently (and more
securely) in the E-Book EXE file.
* New feature: In Edit Security you can choose whether which password to
select (if Password System is enabled) is determined by the ESBN, User ID
and number of passwords, or just the User ID and number of passwords. The
unpacker reflects this change.
* New feature: .AS (and the new .ASE format) script files can be processed
via memory only. There is a separate option for this in Advanced Security
("High Security".
INI FILES ETC
* Information about the password entered, if any, is now stored differently
in AEBPASS.INI
SEARCH TEMPLATES
Please note: The search template feature in 5.00 is "experimental", and may
change in future versions of the software.
* New feature: Support for Search Templates
(i) Create a file called __searchtemplate.htm or __searchtemplate.html
in your source folder.
(ii) Edit/Scan Folder in the compiler will detect this file, and not
include it in the Table Of Contents or Searchable. (You may enable
the PreProcessor file this file).
(iii) The Password, Searchable and Contents attribute in File Properties
will be set to N/A.
(iv) The Edit Properties for this file will not allow you to set
Password, Searchable or Table Of Contents.
(v) The Build option for the file will never make it searchable or
Contents.
(vi) Edit/This File options for Password, Searchable or Table Of Contents
are disabled for this file.
(vii) Edit/All Files options for Password, Searchable or Table Of Contents
do not affect this file.
(viii) The __searchtemplate.htm is not selectable as "My Own Page" in
Edit/System Pages for About, Password or Table Of Contents
(ix) The viewer will use this file to display the search results. You
may use the following markers to denote places in the file to fill
in the results.
*PHRASE* - (HTML) - The user's search phrase
*MATCH* - (HTML) - A phrase indicating the number of matches
(or none)
*RESULTS* - (HTML) - A table contain the search results
(may be empty)
REGISTRATION
* Bug Fix: Title of Registration dialog box was incorrect in (at least) 4.2x
* Bug Fix: Part of text of Registration dialog box still referred to 10 file
limited in unregistered version, from 4.20 the limit had been raised to 25
but this text had not been updated, now fixed.
* The text on the unregistered version initial page has been changed.
----------------------
E-BOOK RUNTIME CHANGES
----------------------
GENERAL
* Bug fix: Uses 64bit timer. This should hopefully eliminate any problems
which would otherwise occur in 2038.
* Update: More functions use the fast calling convention and other memory
savers.
* Bug fix: Fixed an intermittent bug which can occur if filenames of HTML
pages contained upper case letters - sometimes the status bar text for mouse
over a hyperlink to that page, or the subsequent page for Next/Previous was
not found in this case.
E-BOOK VIEWER USER INTERFACE CHANGES
* Bug Fix: If the E-Book is set to add itself to the Start menu or
Desktop, this operation is now performed differently. Previous versions
had a bug which caused this to fail on some Windows installations. Please
note: In Windows XP, the Start menu icon appears under Start/All Programs,
whereas on old Windows versions the icon appears directly under Start.
* Bug Fix: If E-Book was set to expire after a given number of days the
count down began immediately the first time it was run (i.e. 3 days
means exactly 3 days). Because of rounding down, this would display as
one less time (2.999999 rounds down to 2 etc.). The has been changed
to add approximately 0.1 of a day to the count down (the user gets a
couple of extra hours) which avoids the rounding down issue.
* New feature (partially implemented): The viewer now supports absolute
expiry dates. Please note: This has not yet been implemented as an option
in the compiler user interface, so while this feature is there it can
not currently be used.
* Bug Fix: Drag and drop is disabled if Copy to clipboard is disallowed by
compiler's security settings.
* Bug Fix: When Copy to clipboard is disallowed by the compiler's settings,
the PrintScreen message is no longer displayed. This to prevent them
PrintScreen-ing waiting for the message and then PrintScreen-ing again.
Note: If they copy a bitmap to the clipboard in another application, no
message will be displayed but the copy will be prevented.
* New feature: Support for search templates (see above). Please note:
The search template feature in 5.00 is "experimental", and may change in
future versions of the software.
* Update: Search feature improved.
- More accurate, especially in the case of partial word matching
- Percent match calculation improvement
- Scans a larger proportion of text for very long pages
- Limits results according to the setting for the maximum number
- Faster
* Bug fix: Hyperlinks to Activ Scripts do not appear as a link to current
page in the status bar, when the mouse is placed over them.
* Change: The dialog box for entering a password into a password protected
E-Book is laid out slightly differently (it uses the same layout as the
DLGTEXT dialogs to save space in the finish E-Book EXE).
* Change: The password dialog box now forces uppercase, lowercase or digits
if applicable:
- If all characters in all passwords are digits, forces digits
- If all characters in all passwords are uppercase or digits, forces
uppercase/digits/other characters
- If all characters in all passwords are lowercase or digits, forces
lowercase/digits/other characters
E-BOOK PACKING/UNPACKING CHANGES
* New feature: Supports multiple compression options during unpacking.
* New feature: Password information is now stored differently (and more
securely) in the E-Book EXE file.
INI FILES ETC
* Information about the password entered, if any, is now stored differently.
* Information about whether the E-Book has been added to the Start menu,
desktop, etc., is now stored differently in AEBSHELL.INI.
* Information about the E-Book font settings is now stored differently in
AEBFONT.INI
ACTIV SCRIPT COMMANDS/FEATURES
* The #! and #@ Activ Links now handle forward and backward slashes in
file names. This improvement also applies to the new CHAINEXT and
POSTCHAIN script commands.
* New feature: Activ Script files can be precompiled (to an encoded form)
using the ASCC program. The runtime will now read these files. This facility
is intended for authors who wish to share their .as scripts with other
authors, but without revealing their script source code. An additional
benefit of running scripts through ASCC before compiling them into an
E-Book is that the files are smaller. This is because unnecessary white
space, comments and carriage return characters are removed.
* New feature: PRINT now takes an optional parameter controlling the printing
mode.
* New feature: PRINTMODE sets the default printing mode.
* New feature: SEARCHRESET resets the predefined Activ Variables
describing the most recent search.
* New feature: ENTERPASSWORD - now takes an optional parameter indicating
the password to enter.
* New feature: GOSUB can take between 1 and 10 parameters. The second
parameter onwards are optional. The first parameter (as before) is the name
of the label to call. The second to tenth parameters are parameters passed
to the subroutine called.
* New feature: RETURN can take between 0 and 9 parameters. These parameters
are optional, and contain the return values of the subroutine called.
* New feature: LOCAL used to create local variables.
* Improvement: FILEREAD can not handle unlimited file sizes (note: NUL
characters, as before, are converted to spaces).
* New feature: FILESAVEPROMPT2 supports .PNG files, or rather adding the
extension for these automatically and showing it in the list of File types.
This relies on the having a 5.00 language file (or .PNG will not appear in
the list of file types, but .PNG will still get added).
* New feature: FILEDELETE can be used to delete files.
* New feature: FILEAPPEND writes to the end of a file
* New feature: FILEMOVE move/rename a file or directory
* New feature: FILECOPY may have a further optional extra parameter to
determine whether to unhide a file after copying.
* New feature: DIRCREATE create a directory.
* New feature: DIRREMOVE remove an empty directory.
* New feature: VOLUMEGETINFO can be used to retrieve Volume Name/Serial.
* New feature: FILEOPENPROMPT prompt for an existing file name.
* New feature: FOLDERPROMPT prompt for a folder.
* New feature: SHA1 calculates the SHA-1 Hash of a string (returns as
hexadecimal string)
* New feature: HEX converts an integer to hexadecimal string.
* New feature: UNHEX converts a hexadecimal string to an integer.
* New feature: MAPSET sets a map element.
* New feature: MAPGET retrieve an element (by key) from a map.
* New feature: MAPREMOVEALL emptys a named map.
* New feature: MAPREMOVEKEY removes an item from a named map
* New feature: MAPGETCOUNT retrieve number of items in a named map.
* New feature: MAPGETITEM retrieve an element (by position) from a map.
* New feature: MAPFIND retrieve the position of an item in the map.
* New feature: MAPFILES create a map of files matching a wildcard.
* New feature: MAPDIRS create a map of directories matching a wildcard.
* New feature: MAPKEYTOSTRING creates a string from map keys.
* New feature: MAPVALUETOSTRING creates a string from map values.
* New feature: MAPKVTOSTRING creates a string map keys and values.
* New feature: MAPVKTOSTRING creates a string map keys and values.
* New feature: MAPCOPY copies one map to another.
* New feature: MAPMERGE merges one map into another.
* New feature: MAPSORT sorts a map, so you can retrieve items in order
using MAPVALUETOSTRING, MAPKEYTOSTRING, MAPGETITEM and MAPGETCOUNT.
Note: the map only remains sorted until you make any change to the
map contents.
* New feature: MAPSPLIT splits a string into map items.
* New feature: MAPREAD reads a map from a file.
* New feature: MAPWRITE writes a map to a file.
* New feature: STREXTRACT extracts a string from a longer string.
* New feature: STRSECTION removes a section of a string from a longer
string.
* New feature: STRINCLUDE return the subset of a string which consists of
characters in a second string.
* New feature: STREXCLUDE return the subset of a string which consists of
characters not in a second string.
* New feature: STRFINDANY return the position of the first occurance of
any of a set of characters in a string.
* New feature: INETREAD reads a URL into a variable (note: NUL
characters in the response are converted to spaces).
* New feature: INETDOWNLOAD downloads a file from a URL to local
hard-disk (can handle NUL characters correctly).
* New feature: DLGTEXT displays a dialog prompting for text.
* New feature: DLGCOMBO displays a dialog prompting from a dropdown list.
* New feature: CLIPISTEXT test if clipboard contains text.
* New feature: CLIPSETTEXT copy text to clipboard.
* New feature: CLIPGETTEXT get text from clipboard.
* New feature: CHAIN terminates current script, and run another one.
The script is assumed to be compiled into the E-Book.
* New feature: CHAINEXT terminates current script, and run another one.
A full path of the script is required.
* New feature: POSTCHAIN sets another script to run after this one
terminates (provided current one terminates without error).
The script is assumed to be compiled into the E-Book.
* New feature: POSTCHAINEXT sets another script to run after this one
terminates (provided current one terminates without error).
A full path of the script is required.
* New feature: SHGETFOLDER gets the path to a shell folder.
* New feature: SHCREATESHORTCUT creates a shortcut file.
* New feature: New numerical function BCOMP calculates 1's complement of
a number.
* New feature: New numerical operator XOR performs a logical XOR.
* New feature: New numerical operator BAND performs a bitwise AND.
* New feature: New numerical operator BOR performs a bitwise OR.
* New feature: New numerical operator BXOR performs a bitwise XOR.
ACTIV VARIABLES
* New predefined variable: {searchphrase} - the most recently used search
phrase.
* New predefined variable: {searchcase} - is the most recently used searhc
case sensitive.
* New predefined variable: {searchmatch} - the number of matches found by
the most recent search (0 if none were found or no search has been done).
* Special predefined variables: {param0}..{param9} parameters passed to
the last GOSUB call. These variables only work when running a script file
(not for example in the PreProcessor).
* Special predefined variables: {ret0}..{ret9} are the return value
parameters from the last RETURN. These variables only work when running a
script file (not for example in the PreProcessor).
--------------------
CHANGES TO REBRANDER
--------------------
* New feature: Support for password protected rebrandable fields.
* Update: Some minor changes to text.
* Update: Some improvements to minimize code size.
------------------------------
CHANGES TO ACTIV QUICK PROJECT
------------------------------
ACTIV QUICK PROJECT
* Bug Fix: If the folder or project name contained a space and the open
compiler option was checked, the compiler didn't open successful at the
end of the process.
