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twander / WHATSNEW.txt
WHAT'S NEW

twander 2.xx:

*** PRELIMINARY BETA COMMENTS ***


- The licensing terms have been clarified.  Non-Commercial use of the
   program is free with a $20 US per user donation recommended.
   This fee is mandatory for commercial users.

- *MANY* bug fixes and code cleanup including a nasty one with
   RH linux that prevented 'twander' from opening the user's
   home directory.

- The -b, -f, -n, -w, and -s command line options have
  been removed.  You can now set color and font values as
  options in the configuration file (as well as color and
  font values for menus and help information - see below
  for more details).  

- Default width has been changed to 110.

- You can now include references to any of the variable types
  in a manually entered command line.  Syntax is the same as for
  command definitions in the configuration file.

- Command History has been implemented.  All commands, regardless of
  how   they were invoked are saved in a history buffer and available
  via a History Menu.  Commands entered manually are saved as typed.
  Other command invocations are saved with any variables (Built-In,
  Environment, User-Defined) dereferenced and substituted.

- There is now a Help Menu.  

- There are now accelerator key and mouse shortcuts for each of the
  menus:

    Menu             Accelerator           Mouse Shortcut
    -----------------------------------------------------
    Command          Alt-c                 RightButton
    Directory        Alt-d                 Shift-RightButton
    History          Alt-h                 Control-Shift-RightButton
    Help             Alt-l                 None

- A new "Directory Shortcuts" feature has been added.  This
  is done by adding statements of the following form to the
  configuration file:

      DIRSCnn = some path  # left side must be all caps as shown
                           # nn is from 1-12 
                           # or 01-12 (leading 0 is optional)

   Each such statement will do two things:  Preload "some path"
   into the Directory Menu and Bind the function key associated
   with 'nn' to the path so pressing that key navigates there.
   For example this command will cause twander to move to
   /usr/local/bin when you press F10:

     DIRSC10 = /usr/local/bin

- twander debug facilities have been vastly improved.  The -d
  command line argument (and the DEBUGLEVEL option - see below)
  now takes an argument whose value is understood to be a 
  bitfield with these assignments:

         Bit 0 - Dump selected items and quit
         Bit 1 - Dump internal variables
         Bit 2 - Dump symbol table
         Bit 3 - Dump command table
         Bit 4 - Dump execution strings (as program runs)
         Bit 5 - Dump key bindings
         Bit 6 - Dump directory stack (as program runs)
         Bit 7 - Dump command history stack after each command execution

  So, for example, 'twander.py -d 3' dumps the internal variables 
  on stdout and exits immediately.

- You can set your default twander command line arguments
  in an environment variable called TWANDER.

- You can now set a great many twander options, including those
  set via environment variable/command line directly in
  the configuration file.  This provides access to even more
  program features than available on the command line.

  The priority of options processing, from lowest to highest is:

             1) Defaults coded into program
             2) Options set in configuration file
             3) Options set in environment variable
             4) Options set on command line.

  Options are set in the configuration file using this syntax:

     OPTIONNAME = value    # OPTIONAME must be all upper-case

   
  Available options - values shown are their defaults coded into
  the program:

    Booleans - RHS must be "TRUE" or "FALSE" - case-insensitive
    -----------------------------------------------------------

    AUTOREFRESH = TRUE       # Automatically refresh dir view
    NODETAILS   = FALSE      # Never allow details to be seen
    NONAVIGATE  = FALSE      # User can't leave starting directory
    USETHREADS  = TRUE       # Unix Only: False means use traditional spawned system calls.
    USEWIN32ALL = TRUE       # If FALSE, will not use win32 even if present
    WARN        = TRUE       # Show warning
  
    Numerics - RHS must be a number
    ------------------------------------------------------------

    DEBUGLEVEL  = 0          # Set how much debug output you want
    FSZ         = 12         # Display Font size
    MFSZ        = 12         # Menu Font size
    HSZ         = 10         # Help Font size
    HEIGHT      = 25         # Initial window height
    MAXDIR      = 32         # Max entries in Directory Menu
    MAXDIRBUF   = 250        # Max size of directory buffer
    MAXHIST     = 32         # Max entries in History Menu
    MAXHISTBUF  = 250        # Max size of command history buffer
    MAXNESTING  = 32         # Max level of variable nesting allowed
    REFRESHINT  = 3000       # ms between refreshes - inaccurate, but bigger=longer
    WIDTH       = 90         # Initial window width


    Strings - RHS cannot be blank
    -------------------------------------------------------------

    BCOLOR      = black       # Background color
    FCOLOR      = green       # Foreground color
    MBARCOL     = beige       # Menubar color
    MBCOLOR     = beige       # Menu Background color
    MFCOLOR     = black       # Menu Foreground color
    HBCOLOR     = lightgreen  # Help Background color
    HFCOLOR     = black       # Help Foreground color
    FNAME       = Courier     # Font name
    FWT         = bold        # Font weight
    MFNAME      = Courier     # Menu Font name
    MFWT        = bold        # Menu Font weight
    HFNAME      = Courier     # Help Font name
    HFWT        = italic      # Help Font weight
    QUOTECHAR   = "           # Character (or string) to use when quoting substitutions
    STARTDIR    = $HOME or ./ # Directory in which to start


  All of these except STARTDIR will be observed on a configuration
  file reload while the program is running, so you can edit the
  configuration and see how these variables change things.


- There is a new Built-In variable called [YESNO:some text].  It
  allows you to put a Yes/No popup anywhere in a command definition.
  This is most useful in warning the user they are about to do
  something dangerous:

  d BigTimeDelete  xterm -l -e [YESNO:Are You Sure You Want To Delete Selected Entries?] rm -rf [DSELECTIONS]

  A "Yes" response causes normal program execution, "No" aborts the
  command.

- Since Win32 file/directory names are case-insensitive,
  twander now sorts them as such.  Previously, 'ZEBRA' would
  appear before 'echo' in a twander display.

- Most previous error conditions have been changed to warnings so
  that the program is more forgiving and will keep running after
  such a condition.  This is especially true of problems in
  the configuration file, which formerly cause the program to
  exit.  Now, the offending line is just ignored.

- The various interactive popup dialogs allow intra-line editing
  with both the local conventions as well as emacs-style key
  editing.  This was true previously, but was not documented.

- If you are running on Win32 and have Mark Hammond's 'win32all'
  extensions installed, a number of Win32-specific features are
  enabled:

     a) You can now navigate ".." from root or use the Ctrl-k key to
        get a Drive List View of all available Win32 drives.

     b) The file/directory mode will be displayed showing Win32
        attributes:

             d - Directory
             A - Archive
             C - Compressed
             H - Hidden
             N - Normal
             R - Read-Only
             S - System

     c) The Win32 user/group names will appear for each displayed
        item, instead of "win32user" and "win32group".

  Set the USEWIN32ALL option to False in the configuration file
  to disable these features.

  You can also toggle between the Unix view and win32all view
  via a new program function, TOGWIN32ALL which is mapped to
  Control-w by default.


- You can now resize fonts while running 'twander' without having to
  change the respective configuration file parameters.  Two commands
  have been added to do this:

  Control-[   Reduces font size     (FONTDECR)
  Control-]   Increases "    "      (FONTINCR)

  The fonts for Menus/Menu Contents/Help (but not About) are resized
  by subtracting/adding 1 to each respective font size.  This means
  the fonts will stay propportionally different in size if you've
  originally set it up this way.

  This feature is handy if you log into the same machine different
  ways (directly, various X-Servers) and need to use different fonts
  with different displays.

  Each time you press one of these keys, the font will be de/increased
  by 1.  If you use a TrueType font on Win32, each such change becomes
  immediately visible.  On Win32 using Fixed Fonts or on X-Windows,
  every font is usually not available in every size so it will take
  multiple font sizing keystrokes to actually see a difference on
  screen - i.e., You have to keep de/increasing font sizes until
  'twander' finds one of the requested size in your font
  installation.  On X-Windows systems you may also see the font
  type/face change as you do this ((because X-Windows does "closest
  match" font substition).

  A config file reload (^r) will reset everything back to your
  "normal values".


------------------------------------------------------------------------
twander 2.34:

Initial public release of program