Welcome to Europa Release Notes Interim Builds

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New Features

• Unlimited Structure Handling

  Helix can now save/apply millions of icons, making it essentially unlimited in scope. (You will exceed the memory limitations before you exceed the new size limit.)

  It is now possible to save/apply (or copy/paste) clippings of entire collections in one step.

• Revised Apply Structure Dialog

  With the ability to paste millions of icons, this dialog required revision. Changes are detailed in this technote.

• Delete Records Dialog

  Rewritten for macOS, with improved reporting. Changes are detailed in this technote.

Graphic User Interface

• Miscellaneous Improvements:
  • R6115: The Delete Records confirmation dialog is updated for macOS
  • R7412: Helix can now reopen a collection that fails the structure check (aka: a ‘cracked’ collection)
  • R7404: The ability to ‘jump to’ an icon type in a collection or relation window has been restored.

    Hold down the Option key and the New Icon hierarchal menu changes to Show Icon, and the commands within that menu change from “New …” to “Show …”

    By adding the Option key to the keyboard shortcuts for creating a new icon type, the command changes to show (and select) the first instance of that icon type. For example: Shift-Command-A creates a new abacus; Shift-Command-Option-A shows and selects the first abacus in the window.

    When an icon is selected, the window is scrolled the minimal amount required so show the icon. A selected icon may therefore appear at the bottom of the window instead of the top, as was the case in Classic RADE.

    Warning: Classic Helix has two modes for collection/relation widows: editing and finding. In edit mode, typing characters renames the selected icon, while find mode uses the keyboard input to move down to the first icon of matching characters. Jumping to a specific icon type in Classic RADE automatically switched into find mode. macOS RADE currently only supports edit mode, so using keyboard input to select a specific icon will not work. Use the up/down arrow keys to navigate instead.

  • When a window is reopened, a previously selected icon is now shown in the window.

    The window is scrolled the minimal amount required so show the selected icon, so the selected icon may appear at the bottom of the window instead of the top.

    These rules also apply to selection done via AppleScript.

  • Keyboard control of the collection/relation window is now more like it was in Classic:
    • Pressing Return in a non-editable cell now switches to editable, when possible
    • Pressing Return in an editable cell now switches it to non-editable
    • Pressing Tab in a non-editable cell now switches to editable, when possible
    • Pressing Tab in an editable cell now tabs to the next cell and makes it editable, when possible
  • R7239: The minimum height/width of collection and relation windows now allows much smaller resizing.
  • R7411: When an icon window that can not be opened in macOS RADE is left open in Classic RADE, a warning is presented when the collection is opened. However, macOS RADE was not completely handling this situation, so reopening the collection in RADE would produce those warnings again. macOS RADE now closes those windows after the first warning.
  • The problem of keyboard equivalents in dialog boxes has been resolved, but not yet fully restored. However:
    • The new Delete Records confirmation dialog (see above) has command key equivalents Delete & Cancel.
    • The Session Log Recovery Alert now has command key equivalents for Locate, Ignore, and Cancel.
    • Dialogs that do not respond to the natural (first letter) command key equivalents should all respond to CMD-1, CMD-2, & CMD-3 to trigger dialog buttons in right to left order until we can complete the work.
    • The return & escape keys can also be used to trigger the default and cancel buttons, respectively. (Command-period also triggers the cancel button.)
  • All dialogs now include an event filter that should make them less prone to locking up Helix. (A Client should no longer be able to bring the Server to its knees by leaving a dialog open on screen.)
  • RADE has a new, simpler application icon.
• Bug Fixes:

  Some of these bugs reach back to the earliest days of Helix; others were only seen in recent interim builds.

  • R6468 old bug: Unexpected look up failure on modification of target key abacus
  • R6473: “Save Changes before Quitting” dialog is no longer sometimes bypassed on Server
  • R6766 very old bug: Pasted structure fails with 36/xxxx error. (Rebuild SULs)
  • R7387 major fix!: save/apply structure mechanism now supports millions of icons. (See above)
  • R7388: Clear Form returns the cursor back to the Home field once again
  • R7423: Delete All Data no longer triggers a crash when the FRT becomes too large
  • R7427: Pasting a view with subforms no longer changes the host view delete setting
  • R7429 old bug: Creating icons in a relation now updates the count in the collection window
  • R7433: Abaci that contain Use/From tiles should no longer repeat values in a list
  • R7439 very old bug: When pasting a list view with subform on top of itself, the subform now correctly shows linked records
  • R7445: SUL rebuild (introduced last month) is now optimized. The process is now almost instantaneous, even on a very large collection.
  • R7448: Pasting an entry view with a form query that contains an abacus with a lookup and was last closed with an invalid Quick Query no longer triggers a 36/xxxx (SUL) error.

AppleScript

• Miscellaneous Improvements:
  • R7390: Changing an index element no longer requires minor maintenance.
  • R7419: delete all data now supports a direct parameter. Previously, the only syntax that worked was:

      tell someIcon
         delete all data
      end tell
    

    Now these works as well:

      delete all data someIcon
      delete all data of someIcon

  • Accept inert as a synonym for includes inert field as an abacus property.
  • The abacus format property can now be handled as a nirvana record.
  • Enhance handling of references to collection and relation items so that constructs such as this now work:

    repeat with r in every relation
       tell r to repeat with a in every abacus
          tell a to repeat with e in every abacus element
             tell e
                -- do something
             end tell
          end repeat
       end repeat
    end repeat

• Bug Fixes:
  • R7409: It is now possible to set decimal places for a Number or Fixed Point abacus.
  • R7417: A constant in a tile can now be retrieved.
  • R7422: The direction of a repeat rectangle can now be set.
  • R7430: Creating a post icon works much better.
  • R7431: Modifying post triplets works again.
  • R7438: Creating or modifying indexes works again.
  • R7441: Setting the ascending/descending order of an index works again.
  • R7444: When an index is changed, the index is now rebuilt.
  • Attempting to put invalid icons (such as templates) in an index are now reject with an error code.
• Terminology Updates: The repetitive use of certain Helix terms (e.g. view, template, query…) for AppleScript commands and properties can cause conflicts when attempting to compile AppleScript code. To resolve this, some terms have changed. If a previous script no longer runs, you may have to recompile it or modify some of the terms used.
  • None!

Europa remains backwards compatible with all versions of RADE from 6.0 forward.