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Running FAR 4 & FAR 5 on the same PC

FAR v4 reads/saves files in ANSI format, while FAR v5 saves files in Unicode format. See a problem here?
So once FAR v5 saves .FAR, .FarRun, FAR_Settings.ini files, FAR v4 probably wont be able to read them any more. FAR v5 on the other hand can read any file format. So if you run FAR 4 & 5 together on the same PC...

1. Make sure FAR 4 & 5 save settings to different locations (see Options > Preferences > Settings ).
2. Workaround: FAR 4 can open FAR 5 files if you convert them back to ANSI format (use FAR or NotePad SaveAs).

What does full Unicode support give me?

FAR 5 can run on Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 which support Unicode.
This means that even on an English PC you could for instance...

1. Enter Japanese characters as if you were on a Japanese PC.
2. Search files for Japanese text.
3. Open and save files with Japanese file names and directory names.
4. Author Japanese help projects.. including MS Help 2.x, MS Help  3.x and Web Help (FAR Uncompressed Help).

All this on a non-Japanese PC.
Note: MS HTML Help 1.x is in fact ANSI technology and must still be authored on the correct language PC (a limitation of HH not FAR).

FAR v5 - We need your help!

Migrating an application as complex as FAR into Unicode is a huge job.

We encourage you to try FAR v5 and report any bugs you find to us. As an incentive we are giving aware FAR v5 licenses to those that help us catch bugs in this pre-release version. Thanks for your support.

 Beta release information

FAR 5 Unicode pre-release - Incremental updates as we migrate FAR to a full Unicode application.

• Far 5.0 Build 711
  - New: Added File Difference command to FAR Main file list. Select 2 files, right+click and select File Difference.
  - Default setting store is now FAR.EXE folder\UserData only if installed outside Program Files Dir, and is read/write folder.
• Far 5.0 Build 710
  - Uncompressed Help: Build options now saved with section settings (was global).
  - Tweak Install. No longer prompts for settings.ini overwrite unless there is an actual change.
  - Warn that Windows 7 does not support MS Agent (h2 Viewer).
  - Can now enter relative paths when specifying a text editor etc.
  - Default settings stored now to file. If Far.exe folder is writable then store there in .\UserData folder.
• Far 5.0 Build 709 - Unicode Migration: Reports dialog; H2Viewer; H2 Dialogs; Help Wizard; Help Explorer;
  - Enabled Unicode tool tips - but 3rd party Shell controls wont show Unicode tips.
  - Fix: Batch mode /B /BB command line switches.
  - Fix: ListView control flicker problem.
  - Tag Editor: Added embedded warning message if 2 or more HTML files share the same Microsoft.Help.Id (Help 3 meta tag).
  -  New Help3 tags:  "Keywords" tag now called Microsoft.Help.Keywords & "Language" tag now Microsoft.Help.Locale (from MS).
• Far 5.0 Build 708 - Migrated: Adv Search dialogs;  Search Confirm dialog; Tag Editor;  Hex Viewer;
  New: Add Font option to Search Confirm dialog (helps with reading Far eastern text). Hex Viewer displays Unicode text.
• Far 5.0 Build 707 - Build JS Search - New Search.js now breaks text entered at Space and Ideographic Space.
  Also Building SearchData.JS improved (was missing some valid non-Alpha/non-punctuation  chars).
• Far 5.0 Build 706 - Build JS Search - Added all CodePages to the list.
• Far 5.0 Build 704 - Add Code Page select to "Build JavaScript Search" for accurate reading of ANSI files. Added Recently Used files list to Make Uncompressed Help window. Fixed auto create Index file.  Now reads UTF-8 .FAR files.
• Far 5.0 Build 703 - FAR 4 would convert every file to ANSI before searching. FAR 5 now works in Unicode.
• Far 5.0 Build 702 - Fix FAR setting no saving to registry location.
• Far 5.0 Build 701  - Problem installing Build 700. Fixed now in Build 701.

Far 5.0 Build 700:

• New: FAR is now fully Unicode making it much easier to work with foreign language files.
  ** The Unicode conversion is not completed yet.  This release is really at Beta status. 
        FAR Find and Replace is still ANSI at this stage. **
  - Enter and view foreign language characters (German, French, Japanese, Chinese) within FAR even on an English Windows PC.
  - Uncompressed help search database can now hold multiple languages.
  - Create MS Help 2.x and 3.x using foreign language filenames and Unicode content. EG. Enter Japanese filenames on and English PC.
  - Help 2 projects and Uncompressed Help - Default file type now UTF-8 (was ANSI).
  - Remember that MS HTML Help 1.x (.CHM) is an ANSI technology. However FAR will at least allow you to browser foreign language files and folders while editing HTML Help projects.
• FAR File Encoding:
  - The encoding error dialog now shows a Unicode file with the characters that failed to convert under the selected ANSI code page.
  - Encoding dialog: You can now select the ANSI code page by selecting a language from the 2nd drop down. Easier than using the first CodePage dropdown.
• New: Uncompressed Help dialog can now specify the test Browser. Improved layout and saving options.
  Can now use Unicode HxT/HxK navigation files as well ANSI .Hhc/.Hhk navigation files.
• Other
  - Fix bug where screen size/pos save/restore is a touch out.
  - HHP project editor window can now be resized.

Far 5.0 Build 698:

• New: MS Help 3 support (Help for Visual Studio 2010). See MS Help 3 Information page.
  - TOC Editor - Added H3 page and commands to import/export meta tags.
  - Added "Authoring > Tag editor" - Support for editing mass Help 2 and Help 3 tags.
• New: Ctrl + Drag+Drop onto FAR will now append (even if you have "Options > Clear File List on Drop"
• Toc Editor
  - Add: Files tab, can now show files from the file system or the FAR file list. Added "Show Containing Folder" to popup list.
  - Expanded Link Checker options.
  - Fix: "Use Topic File if Label is Empty" did not work if a #Anchor was used in the link.
  - Fix: Index link checker - Now checks for 2 level Keyword Link - "XXX, YYY"
• Fix: Uncompressed Help
  - Script for Search pane added a #FF0000 style for the listbox border. This looked red in FireFox. Now removed.
• Update: Commands to open Explorer now select the current file in Explorer.

Far 4.3 Build 696:

• Update: tweaked "Normal (replace all)" $A$ replacement mode (introduced B694). Fix a minor off-by-one bug. If the replace string was empty then matches could be missed.
• New: Batch script. A [default] section (in a .farrun batch script file) can now run [default] sections in other files.
   

Far 4.3 Build 694:

• Search: "Dos \ = Unix /" setting is now OFF by default and only works in Adv Search and Batch Search.
  - Also if you search for a slash and /=\ is ON, you will now get a warned popup.
• Fix: Uncompress Help - Now works in HTML with a DOCTYPE and a DTD file.  Previously some resizing script failed.
• Adv Search: $A$ Substrings - Added additional replace mode = "Normal (replace all)" since the current "Normal" only does a single replace.

Far 4.3 Build 693:

• FTP Copy Browser
  - Opens at the specific folder. Was opening always at the root folder.
  - Also no longer displays [.] and [..] folders items returned by server.
  - Now has a chmod UNIX command context menu and popup. Currently you can view the UNIX folder/file permissions but not set them.
• Batch: Find and Replace
  - Fixed: Replace mode was not being recognized. This was broken with a previous Beta update that saved Adv Search settings.
  - Now report "Total Files Changed/Matched: x/x" (we already report "Total Repl/Matches: x/x")

Far 4.3 Build 692:

• Reports - Added Total file count for matches and replacements.
• Reports - Now prompts you to save changes when you generate a report (if changes were made).

Far 4.3 Build 691:

• Reports - Added Total matches and replacements.
• Uncompressed help - Index list is now single click to open a page. Double-Click can still be used if you add UncompHelp_Index_DoubleClickToSelect=Y
  to the FAR settings.ini file.

Far 4.3 Build 690:

• Added Encoding Column to FAR file list (Can switch on/off via the View menu since reading the first part of all files can slow the list down first time). Displays file Encoding type = ANSI, UTF-8, UTF-16 LE/BE. Also: added EncodingColumnExtSkip= to settings.ini so user can specify Binary files to skip when populating the Encoding column.
• FAR File List Sort: Usually when we sort we restore the selection to the same item. Now if the selected item is at the top of the list, then after we sort we reselect the top item.
• The Search insert command $DT$[now] has been expanded $DT$[now:%format%] so that the current date/time can be formatted.
• Fixed problem where the Backup command (run from Explorer) would not check the Enable Filter box and thus enable the Backup drop filter.

Build 689:

• Adv Search settings can now be saved to multiple files. This helps those who need to manage large numbers of search definitions. Each file can contain up to 200 search definitions (the maximum number of definitions that FAR can hold in memory at one time). The files are .FarRun batch script files so this will help those who create search script for batch jobs.

Build 687:

• Added: FAR file list now displays a file Attr column (file attributes). RSHA (ReadOnly, System, Hidden, Archive).

Build 686:

• Tweak Export Adv Search: Added Master.FarRun to Search Batch export. And default .FarRun filename is the name of the Search definition.
• Tag Editor (a work in progress) - Added Delete Tags command.

Build 685:

• Tweak Import TOC or HTML file.. now creates the correct relative path even if the file is not found.
• New: Adv Find & Replace dialog - Added "Export Search settings to .FarRun batch file" command.
  Added popup menu (mini button in top-left corner) to allow user to export settings out to a batch job file.

Build 683:

• New (Main window): "Edit > Group Selections" - Selected file items are grouped together and moved to the top of the file list.
• Added (Main window): Add FTP Copy command to the toolbar.
• New (Main window): Added command "Authoring > Tag Editor" -  (a work in progress). See what you think.
• New (Main window): Added ability to auto-load and auto-save the file list at startup/shutdown. New menu check items...
    "Options > Auto-Save File List at Shutdown"
    "Options > Auto-Save File List at Startup"
• New (Main window): Added "File > Reopen File List" command - An easier way to quickly load a previously saved FAR file list.
• New (TOC Editor): Added "TOC > Import from HTML File" - Creates a TOC from <h1>, <h2>.. header tags in a HTML file and inserts them into the selected node.
• Renamed (TOC Editor): menu item "TOC > Import File Contents" to "TOC > Import from TOC File".

Build 682:

• Fix: Converting TOC to DHTML Toc. TOC nodes with Short Icon (19) were ignored (as if they were from an Index). If the entire branch was made up of Shortcut icons (19) the output would be malformed (missing div closing tags).