* configure.in: Bump version to 4.5.55. Release mc-4.5.55.

[midnight-commander.git] / NEWS

Version 4.5.55

- Mostly bugfixes and portability fixes.  Making things work as they
  were meant to work.

- Text edition improvements.
        - Ctrl-O supported in the viewer and editor.
        - Better terminal support.  Should not need "Learn Keys" on rxvt
          and xterm in most cases.

- GNOME edition improvements.
        - Find dialog rewritten.
        - Editor and viewer ask whether to save modified file when
          closed from window manager.

- Editor.
        - New syntax rules - S-Lang, PO files, Octave.
        - Alt-B goes to matching bracket.

- Portability improvements.
        - Should compile out-of-box on Cygwin and QNX Neutrino.
        - Can be compiled by BSD make.
        - Subshell and VFS code are safer and more portable.

- Experimental features (disabled by default).
        - Charset conversion support.
        - Large (64-bit) file support on 32-bit systems.


Version 4.5

- Too many new features to list.

- This is the last version to be actively maintained.  The GNOME
  edition is in stabilization and maintenance phase only.  A new file
  manager is being written for the GNOME project.


Version 3.5

- New hotlist code.
        - The bookmark code has been completely revamped and now it supports
          folders.  New format for the hot list file.
        - It is possible to copy a selected path name into the input line 
          (C-Enter).

- Tk enhancements.
        - New built in GUI designer to help developers modify the look
          of the program at run time (no penalty for users).
        - Many dialog boxes now work.
        - Right button now pops up a context sensitive action menu.
        - Added many visual enhancements.
        - The Tk edition is not yet finished though.

- File management.
        - Now we do background copy and move operations.
          (you can ftp your files in the background now, for example).

- Built in text editor
        - This is an easy to use text editor with pull-down menus.
          The features it presently supports are: Block copy, move,
          delete, cut, paste; key for key undo; file insertion; macro
          definition; regular expression search and replace (and our
          own scanf-printf search and replace); shift-arrow MSW-MAC
          text highlighting (for the Linux console only);
          insert-overwrite toggle; and an option to pipe text blocks
          through shell commands like indent.  

          Comes with Emacs keybindings as well.

          mcedit is a link to mc which bring it up in editor mode. 

- FTP File system
        - Many fixes and enhancements, better support for proxy
          machines.
        - Now we support both active and passive opens.
        - Estimated time of arrival for ftp transfers.
        - stalled detection.
        - Much better support for proxies.
        - ftp URLs now allow a password to be provided.

- ext2fs Undelete File system
        - Minor enhancements.

- TAR File system
        - Now we flush the tarfs if the tar file has been modified

- External File systems:
        - Speeded up RPM file system.
        - New LHA file system.
        - New ARC file system.
        - New DEB file system (for those users of Debian).
        - New RAR file system.
        - Fixed problems with different zipfs.

- MC file system:
        - We get can use a mc file system by using either mc: or mc:// prefixes. 

- Viewer changes:
        - Now we include a program that preprocesses mail if you view it
          so, you get colored mails in the viewer.
        - A simple ruler has been implemented (press Alt-r to enable it).

- New hex editor
        - Now you can do hex editions in your files with a single keystroke.
          (invoke it by using the hex-viewer and then clicking on edit).

- Find file command:
        - Now we can search inside files using a piped grep (particularly
          interesting to search inside virtual file system: tar files, 
          tar files on remote ftp sites, or searching information on an 
          ftp site)

- Widgets:
        - Input lines now support control-left, control-right movement on the
          Linux console.

- Extension file:
        - We now support extra entries in a given rule with the Include=
          tag.
        
- Ports:
        - Windows NT, Windows 95 by Juan Grigera
        - OS/2 by Alexander Dong.


- Many many many bug fixes and memory leaks have been fixed.


Version 3.2

- External File system:
        - Mtools file system works.
        - New Cpio file system.
        - New RPM file system.

- FTP file system:
        - support for HSC firewall

- Lots of subshell fixes

- Regexp-extension:
        - Editing of non-local files works now.

- Bunch of bug fixes.

- Panelize now works properly.

- Can work on Nextstep now.

- Windows NT port by Juan Grigera.

- Midnight Commander file system server:
        - Fixed errno handling in the server.
        - Fixed time handling in the server.
        - Better caching.
        - Works with PAM if supported on the system.

Version 3.1

This has been finished:

- Enhanced ftpfs:
  - Displays progress bars.
  - Supports Netware and Windows NT servers
  - Better support for symlinked files.
  - Handles those warez sites file names.
  - Increase the directory cache timeout.
  - Cache flushing (C-r)
  - If you append a /~ to the directory, you will log into your home
    directory (this is done by default if you use the menus to connect).
  - More robust.
- Subshell fixes (it should not hang any longer).
  - Fixes prompt handling for zsh and tcsh users.
  - Fixes variable expansion for tcsh (now you may edit files).
  - Rewrote the sync code between the parent and child, should not hang
    any longer.
- Better command completion.
- Keypad handling enhanced:
  - Special key treatment for +, -, \ and now may be configure to
    only take place if you do not have a command typed in.
  - Now the + and \ bindings when ran on the Linux console work
    may use the keypad and M-+ and M-\ and leave the + and \ keys
    free.
- Better handling of the line drawing chars on OSF/1 and AIX.
- Enhanced tar/compressed tar file systems.
- Global kill ring.
- Added undelete feature for Linux systems: now you may recover deleted files
  on ext2 file systems with the Undelete file system.
- Symlink commands (for symlink lovers).
  see the docs on C-x C-r,  C-x C-l, C-x C-s keystrokes.
- New macros:
  %b and %B return the basename of the selected filename
  %var{ENV-VAR} expands to the contents of ENV-VAR variable.
- MC may be invoked as a viewer (mc -f flag).
- Added Unicode support on the Linux console (run with mc -N)
- Tons of bug fixes, the code is cleaner and hopefully 
- Allow a vfs pathname to be passed as a startup directory.

This is a list of people that put their effort into making the 3.1
release:

Adam Tla/lka, Antonio Palama, Carl Thompson, Ching Hui, Dugan Porter, Gerd
Knorr, Ilya Rybkin, Jakub Jelinek, Janne Kikonlehto, Juan Grigera, Juan Jose
Ciarlante, John Davis, Marcelo Fabian Roccasalva, Perry Francis Nguyen,
Sergey Ya Korshunoff Steven Hirsch, Thanh Ma and Torben Fjerdingstad.

Version 3.0

This has been finished:

- Virtual File System: You now can browse tar, compressed tar and 
  file systems over the network as if they were local subdirectories;
- Slang support, you don't need ncurses anymore (but you can still compile
  with ncurses, if you want).
- New mc.ext format, for details see the sample mc.ext file provided.
- Append option if you try to copy/move a file onto already existing one.
- Internal cd command uses CDPATH variable if set (like in BASH).
- Find file command is much faster.
- External panelize command - finding files using unlimited number of
  criteria - actually spawns an external command and it can be find, awk,
  grep -l or anything else.
- Learn keys makes setting up of mc on terminals with broken
  terminfo/termcap databases easier. It just asks you to press keys which
  are not working.
- Advanced chown command.
- C-PgUp and C-PgDn takes you to the previous and currently selected
  directory respectively on the Linux console.
- You can choose between 7 data bits, iso-latin-1 (0-127+160-255) or
  other (0-255).
- Confirmation for overwriting, deleting and exiting added.
- Viewer has growing buffers.
- Filename, username, hostname and variable completion (M-Tab) on all
  input lines plus command completion on appropriate places of command
  line.
- Following of symlinks at changing directory.
- Viewer now supports bold faces and underlines, and it fits the 
  information on the screen better.  Now you can also specify the starting
  mode for the viewer depending on the contents of the viewed file.
- Mask rename and copy.
- Colors now let you specify the intensity of the colors you want.

This is being worked on:
- Virtual File System: FTP file system.
- Tcl/Tk and XView versions of the program (preliminary versions are
  up and running).


Version 2.0

Now users are able to define their own display 

- User defined display formats.

  Now you can configure the file display to suit your needs.
  For example, you can say which information you want to see displayed
  instead of our defaults.

- User definable program layout.

  Panels could be shown vertically or horizontally;
  panels could be different sizes, you can hide or show most
  program windows (command line, keybar or menubar).

- Output window.

  Now, it's possible to see part of the last program output on the Linux
  console without having to switch screens via an option in the layout
  menu.

- New View modes:

     Quick view: as you browse your files, each one is displayed on
                 the other panel on the idle time.

     Tree view:  let's you browse your directories by traveling a tree.  
                 We have two traveling modes available.  And the tree does
                 not take your precious time: it's build on the fly, as you
                 browse your disk (you can always loose your time if you
                 want to :-).

     Info view:  Gives you information on the currently select file and
                 the current file system as you move.

     User view:  Let's you define a directory listing and the format you
                 want to use.

- New subshell support (concurrent shell execution)

  The Midnight Commander will now spawn one copy of the shell, so you
  get better performance and you can use shell functions, define variables
  and execute complete shell commands.  Supported shells: bash, zsh and
  tcsh.  If your shell is not supported, then the old mode is still
  available.

- Dialog box manager

  Almost all the new configuration options are configured with this
  new dialog manager, easy to use if you are familiar with dialog boxes
  in DOS and Windows. 

  Available widgets: check buttons, buttons, radio buttons, 
  input lines and list boxes (So you can take our code and use it on
  your applications).

- New option configuration.

  Now the program options are configured with a dialog box.

- Chmod and Chown commands:

  For changing permissions as well as ownership of files and
  directories, uses our new dialog manager.  

- Color customization support

  Now you can change the default color of the program with any of
  these:
  environment variable, Colors section in the init file (colors per 
  terminal type) and command line.

- User menu and extension enhancements:

  Execution understand the %t macro (tagged files). 

  User menu also has a new macro to let the user specify options.

  You can hide and show entries in the user menus by using conditions.

  Auto detect best match depending on a regexp.

- Viewer: 
     Goto line command,
     horizontal scrolling,
     on the fly decompression (and we don't eat unneeded cycles of CPU),
     allow non gunzip operation.

- Internal move command:

  Now, we don't rely anymore on system commands in /bin, so the
  program is more robust and is much faster.  Bunches of code come
  from the GNU fileutils.

- The Tree view and normal views allows wrapped incremental searches of
  file names.

- Mask rename:

  Now it's possible to do things like rename *.pas in *.bak

- Compare directories command

- Allow panels to be in Long mode without forcing the user to a single panel.

  (You can even have two long panels).

- F10, C-g cancels as well as ESC ESC.

- Improved help system.
  
  We updated and spelled the help system and added a lots of links.
  The Web page is constructed with the same tools.

- Allows tagging of directories:

  Now you can copy, rename, move and delete complete directories.  You
  are not limited anymore to files.  

- View output (screen save/restore) on Linux console.

  On old Linux systems, only b&w is supported, on newer Linux systems
  (1.1.67 and newer), we also support color screen save/restore and
  cursor positions.

- 8 bit clean support.

- Visual feedback while i-searching files.

- Much more intuitive, you have to use it.

- It's better than aspirin.

- New memory allocation debugger.

  During testing time, we used a powerful memory allocation debugger,
  so the program will not eat all your memory, and will make a good use of
  your memory.  

- Now it also runs on hppa-hp-hpux9, hppa-hp-hpux7, m68k-apple-aux and
  sparc-sun-netbsd1.0.  The best platform to run it is Linux, of course,
  since that's where most of us develop it.

- Inode sort option.

- Nice progress status indicator.

  We have two of them: a moving dash indicator and a progress bar
  indicator for file operations.

Version 0.15

- Uses GNU autoconf.
   Currently, it has been ported to this configurations:
   i386-*-linux1.0
   i386-*-linux1.1
   mips-sgi-irix5.2
   mips-dec-ultrix4.3
   rs6000-ibm-aix3.2.5
   sparc-sun-sunos4.1
   sparc-sun-solaris2.3

- Improvements to the internal file viewer:
   Wrap/Unwrap mode.
   Hex mode.
   Hex searches.
   Now you can view compressed files (gzip, compress, zip, pack and lzh).
   Performance enhancements, now it's much faster.
   Works on systems without mmap.

- Mouse Support now also works on xterms.
   If you run in the Linux console, you will still need the gpm mouse server
   to use the mouse support, but if you use xterms, then you're lucky 
   and can use the mouse support when using xterms.

- Help system and man page.
   Both were updated and has many more hypertext links inside, the
   help system can also be used with a mouse.

- If running on xterms, now you can see the output of the last program
  you ran by using the C-o key combination.

- Switch panels command (C-u)
- With filter command per panel.
- With auto mounting/umounting on chdir feature.
- cd now expands tildes (~, ~user).
- Much more portable.
- Many bugs were fixed.

Version 0.14

- Now can handle directories with an unlimited number of files.
- New link and symlink commands (C-x l, C-x s).
- New insert tagged files or selection command (C-x t).

Version 0.13

- Behave more like the Norton Commander.
- Added menu file edit.
- If there is no permission to load a directory, now it loads a dummy
  directory.
- When a panel is re-sorted, keep the selected file selected.
- forward_word and backward_word command on the input line now skip
  over letters and numbers.
- Fixed backward scrolling in the internal viewer.
- The internal viewer now computes the percentage in a more natural
  way.
- Added handling of the Home and End keys to the internal viewer
- Bug fixes.

Version 0.12

- Preliminary support for System V compilation.
- Bug fix: didn't call closedir in all cases.
- bug fixes.

Version 0.11

- Support cd -.
- Corrected Makefile.

Version 0.10 

- Added new Alt-G, Alt-H, Alt-J to select the top file, middle file
  and bottom file in the current panel.
- Now it's allowed to select option in query boxes by the first initial
- Fixed mouse repeat rate.
- Fixed a bug that prevent copying individual files to another file.
- Some minor bug fixes.

Version 0.9

- Mouse Support.
- Internal Copy command (it no longer uses cp).
- Verbose Copying of files.
- Confirmation on Overwrite and on Delete.
- Support reverse sorting.
- Many visual enhancements.
- Per panel options are saved and restored.
- New truncation of names in the panels.
- History in Input Lines (M-p and M-n).
- Input line enhancements.
- Dialog boxes are nicer than before.
- Cache in gid and uid translators.
- More keybindings for the Input lines.
- Better kill management in Input Lines.
- Bug fixes.

Version 0.8

- The online help now comes with the complete man page.
- Input lines now support M-b and M-f for movement by word.
- Unlimited input lines (command line).
- Filename searches now must be started with C-s or M-s.
- Many bug fixes.

Version 0.7

- The stat() reloading optimization is now a configuration option.
- Many bug fixes went to the find file command.
- New history in the hypertext viewer. 
- ESC-Tab will copy the name of the other-panel selected file to the
  input line.
- Now it's possible to display files and directories mixed together or
  separated (like the Norton Commander).
- Many bug fixes, see the ChangeLog for details.

Version 0.6 

- Extension dependent execution implemented (now you can execute
  things like tar tzvf over compressed tar files, just a tap in the
  Enter key).
- Added simple expansion of useful variables in the user menu.
- Avoid unnecessary reloading of subdirectories using stat (suggested
  by Torben Fjerdingstad <tfj@olivia.ping.dk>).
- Added options to disable colors and display version number.
- Allow start up directory specification (ex: mc /usr/local/bin /tmp).
- Fixed bug that operated on the selection instead of the tagged file
(when only one file was tagged). 
- Some cosmetic changes.
- Bug fixes.

Version 0.5

- Fixed bug in the help browser that crashed the program.
- New internal viewer.
- New long directory listing format.
- some bug fixes.

Version 0.4 

- User Menus (F2 key).
- Quick search of files in a panel (Alt-filename takes you to that file).
- Char quoting (C-q).
- exec() enhancements.
- now you can suspend the program (C-z).
- The find file command now seems to be very stable.
- misc bug fixes.

Version 0.3

- Setup loading/saving.
- Support for any size screen.
- Many, many bug fixes.