Led Class Library History

Led 3.0

The major additions in Led 3.0 were:

• NetLedIt! Netscape plugin version of Led


• Linux (really X-Windows) support

Support X-Windows as a target platform, including special Gtk+ wrappers for Led, making it very easy to integrate Led with Gtk+ (Gtk Toolkit for Gnome). A new cross-platform version of LedIt! - that now works on Linux (X-Windows).
• FULL Unicode support

Mostly this involved fixing RTF and HTML I/O to support UNICODE.
• Support building Led from Win32

Led now supports building from Win32 alone - not using MFC. And there is now a demo application to show how todo this.
• (Partial) support for Borland C++ Builder
• Faster editing in Word Processor classes


• Microsoft Global IME support


• Bullet Lists

Easy to implement, frequently requested addition.
• Syntax Coloring

Builtin support for synxtax coloring, making it easy to incorporate basic syntax coloring into your own application, and flexible enough that you can use that as a basis for more advanced syntax coloring.
• Soft-Returns

Support soft-returns - aka line breaks with a paragraph (SHIFT RETURN).
• Line spacing

Support single space, double space, etc, as well as space-before and space-after, and the full range of fancy spacing options MSWord 2000 supports.
• (Optionally) Show Hidden characters

Separately controllable show hidden paragraph markers, tabs, and spaces.
• Store persistent sizes internally in TWIPS

Provides better handing of zooming and scaling. And eliminates small (rare) loss of precision loading/saving Led documents.
• Hidden text

Ability to mark some regions as 'hidable', and then set global (or per-item) flag saying if that hidable text should really be hidden, or be shown in some (configurable) alternate display (so the user can see its hidden). Integrated this functionality into LedIt! Windows demo app, and ActiveLedIt! OCX.
• LedIt! and LedLineIt! UI enhancements

Many UI enhancements to the LedIt! and LedLineIt! sample applications to improve their usability (like better file D&D etc).
• Rewrite more application/UI layer code to be sharable via templates

There is still alot of cargo-cult, gorpy code you must write to build a typical word processor like application using Led. Though all this code is presented in the LedIt! samples- this way of presenting users with that code forces them to take over its maintainance. It makes it harder for them to upgrade to newer versions of Led. Encapsulate much of that in templates (or some other means), so that it can be refined, but mostly uses as-is. This should also allow sharing more code between LedIt!, LedLineIt!, and ActiveLedIt!
• New Windows Installer support

LedIt! and LedLineIt! for Windows installers now rewritten using the new Windows Installer technology.

Led 2.3

The major additions in Led 2.3 were:

• Ruler support (Windows only)
• Per paragraph, user settable margins, tabstops, and justification support
• Lots of templates to help with mixins, etc. And make application of class lib more flexable and apply to differnet classes (like CWnd vs. CView).
• Fairly complete UNICODE support - except for FILE IO (which imples no StandardStyledTextImager/WordProcessor support) - even under WIN95 (see Led FAQ#024. Does Led support UNICODE?). This has only been carefully tested with Spanish and Japanese.
• Note that between the changes to make it easier to build Led-based edit controls, and the UNICODE support, you can now easily create Led-based UNICODE edit controls that work on Win95.
• MarkerCovers - generalization of old style database, now sharable, and templatef. Used to implement the new paragraph info database.
• PartitioningTextImager now keeps separate a sharable Partition object.

This can make displaying multiple concurrent views of a very large text many times faster.
• Lose private templates like Led_Array, and convert totally to using STL.
• Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF) is now the standard file format for LedIt!

The proprietery ".led" format used in earlier versions of LedIt! is still supported, but the default is now to use RTF.
• Led reads RTF files is roughly twice as fast as in Led 2.2, and slightly faster that MSWord 97
• Numerous improvements (including character set problems, more tags supported, better code structure, and speed) to RTF and HTML reading/writing code (though HTML code is still only marginally usable).
• Much improved programmer documentation (available online - try it now).
• Horizontal scrolling (autoscrolling)
• SimpleTextImager rewritten to no longer inherit from MultiRowTextImager, so much faster
(on 10MB text file, runs about 25% faster, on 20MB file, runs over 100% faster, due to paging)

There were also several changes in the way in which Led is licenced / sold between Led 2.2 and Led 2.3.

• No more non-commercial licensing

Led 2.2 was made available for free to developers of shareware and to students. Perhaps I will do something like this at some point in the future with Led 2.3. But for now - there is no more non-commercial Led license available for Led.
• Led's license is now sold on a per-platform basis.

This is because my costs are closely tied to how many platforms I need to support. And Led's pricing also reflects the lessening costs of support I have when more than one person from a company buys a Led license.
• ActiveLedIt! is now sold separately from the Led Class Library.

Its licensing is totally separate.
• Pay before download

With Led 2.2, you could download Led, and get tech support. And then, if you wanted, eventaully pay. With Led 2.3, payment must be recieved before the source code can be downloaded. There is still the 30-day free trial period. The only difference is that you must pay first to get sources. There are ample forms of documentation, and sample programs available freely now to do a preliminary evaluation of Led before making a purchase decision.

Led 2.2

The major additions in this release were:

• Support for context menus (Windows only)
• Fast file IO - especially RTF
• Colored text
This includes not only the low-level support within the class library to render colored text (often requested feature for building web-browser/hyperlink type applications), but also added support to the LRTF, RTF, and HTML FileIO code to support color.
• Subscripts and superscripts
• Smart cut and paste (and drag and drop)
• Improved HTML reading and writing

HTML support remains weak, but at least somewhat usable.
• Horizontal scrolling


• Fix Drag&Drop of files

DID I DO THIS??? Handle multi-file case. Handle dragging from LedIt! text into explorer/Finder. Handle formats other than plain text INSIDE the file.
• LedLineIt - a line-based text editor applet

A new shareware applet which goes more in the programmers-editor direction (rather than the current LedIt! which is more oriented towards word processing needs). LedLineIt will be line-based (ie no wordwrapping). It will not support embedding, nor style-runs (at least not styled-text in the sense of a word processor; it may support syntax coloring, as is popular in programmer text editors). Also, this new applet will take advantage of a new, optimized for non-word-wrapping TextImager, which should run MUCH smaller, and MUCH faster. The idea is to make it easy & quick to edit really big (ie much more than 3MB) text files.
• Smart Drag&Drop / Smart Cut&Paste

This means being a little smarter about cutting/inserting whitespace on Drag&Drop and Cut&Paste operations. Currently Led drags/cuts etc exactly what is selected. Some word processors do something a little more convenient, which is guessing abit about where to magicly stick in whitespace.

Led 2.1

The major additions in Led 2.1 were:

• Reading/Writing Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer/ActiveX support
• Limited HTML support

Led 2.0

The major additions in Led 2.0 were:

• Style runs
• Embedded objects (pictures, OLE2 objects, URLs, etc)
• Full undo (including MultiLevel undo) support on all platforms
• Support for reading any writing some common rich text formats (MIME text/enriched RFC 1563, STYL)
• Find dialog
• Full OpenDoc support (both part, and container support - Mac-only)
• Full Native OLE2 support including OLE server and OLE container support (Win32, Win95, Windows NT)
• Embedded objects (pictures, OpenDoc parts, OLE2 objects, URLs, etc)
• Metrowerks PowerPlant class library support
• Multiple split views onto the same text
• Arbitrary tabstops

Led 1.0

The major features in Led 1.0 were:

• ASCII, Extended ASCII, or ShiftJIS characters.
• Word Wrapping
• Undo support (Macintosh only)
• No limit on text/line lengths (other than total amount of virtual memory)
• Fast (on pc, empiricly feels faster than word, notepad, or wordpad editing large documents)
• Runs native on 68K and PowerMacintosh
• Mixin-based design allowing configuring which features you want to include and which you don't. And flexible design for adding in your own new features.
• Undo support (TCL only)
• Re-usable marker mechanism (idea for implementing hypertext systems)
• Direct class library support for most major GUI class libraries, complete with examples (MFC and TCL)
• No limit on text/line lengths (other than total amount of virtual memory)
• Flexible, Modular, Object oriented, multiple inheritance based design. Easily refinable output of text behaviors - easy to refine/annotate/adorn text displayed.
• TabStops