2012-03-19

News

News

We’ve just released an update for Merops 2.8!

19th March 2012

(download here!)

This update contains 49 fixes and improvements, but because it's a minor update, most of these are bug fixes that you won't notice, and installing it is optional. There are however, 4 significant improvements that we'd like to make you aware of. These are listed below, and you can find a full update history for Merops 2.8 below that (in case you're interested).


Significant improvements

  1. reject identical changes Improved Reject/Accept Identical Changes. Many of our users reported that this was unusably slow, and because Word stopped updating the status bar, it also appeared that Word had crashed. We’ve improved this tool so it's more than 330 TIMES FASTER in those slow situations, and you also now get a progress bar on the screen, making it clearer what is happening, and making it easy to cancel half-way through. If you'd previously given up on this feature, please give it another try!


  2. Brand new!: Shrink Tracked Changes. Merops often shows large tracked changes, to help you be aware of why Merops made the change, and to enable Reject Identical Changes to work. So an inserted space in a unit expression is shown like this:

        8kg kg

    If you'd rather changes were as concise as possible, you can now click shrink tracked changes Shrink Tracked Changes on the Merops Ribbon (on the Merops Main toolbar in Word 2003 or earlier). Merops will then shrink tracked changes where possible in the active document, so the example above will become like this:

        8 kg


    Some people may find that clicking this once before editing each document makes it much easier to review. However, please be aware that the Reject Identical Changes tool will be less useful, because it works by comparing the inserted and deleted text, and an inserted space is not enough information for you to want to reject all instances like that.


  3. New Reviewers Brand new!: Reviewers. We accept that while some parts of Merops, like references, are extremely useful, some people don't find Merops as useful in other areas like grammar, or hyphenation. With this new tool, you can see how many changes and comments the different modules of Merops have made, and reject all changes made by certain modules. By using this tool before you edit the document, you can use Merops the way you want to. To use the tool, click reviewers button Reviewers on the Merops Ribbon (or on the Merops Main toolbar in Word 2003 or earlier). This will show a dialog (left).

    Select the authors that you want to reject, then click one of the action buttons below, for example, Reject all changes. Merops will remember which ones you selected next time you use this tool, and it can be used with non-Meropsed documents too.







  4. Improved ribbon in Word 2007 and Word 2010. To fit the new features above, and to give you a better experience at lower screen resolution, We’ve improved the ribbon tab by shrinking and reorganizing it:

    improved ribbon

FULL UPDATE HISTORY FOR MEROPS 2.8:

Merops 2.8.1.436 (released 15th March, 2012)

  1. Fixed: Add numeric reference tool didn't add to an existing reference, if the cursor was inside that reference, as opposed to selected.
  2. Fixed: DeleteFile function rewritten to support Word 2010 (64-bit).
  3. Fixed: Label error on sign in dialog: "Retrying in 20 second":
  4. Fixed: Erroneous error message after merging numeric references, saying the reference that was deleted was not found.
  5. Fixed: Corrected "refererences" spelling error.
  6. Fixed: Fixed an error where entering a full Standard Set path (as opposed to just a name) did not work.
  7. Fixed: Pressing A was selecting all files in the lists for "Process Files", and "Add Open Documents" dialogs - it's now fixed so you have to hold Ctrl and A.
  8. Fixed: Fixed an error reverting files to original from the Process Log, where a path had "//" in it instead of "/".
  9. Fixed: structureHeaderCorrespondenceRole was not saving at all.
  10. Fixed: When Names: Works and Products was disabled, refJournalTitle was still set to 'correct'.
  11. Fixed: Word "end point" was not saving/loading the correct property.
  12. Fixed: chkNameMoveEmailToAfterName now loads/saves the correct preserve original property value.
  13. Fixed: "compatable" and "compatablility" spelling errors in a number of places.
  14. Fixed: addressAlertMissingStreet now loads/saves the correct preserve original property value.
  15. Fixed: An error in Word 2003 applying "Table Note" style from the toolbar.
  16. Fixed: An error in the Standard Set Editor - pasting in custom properties without a value gave a "Word (English)" default.
  17. Fixed: "Wolrd Wars" spelling error in tool tip.
  18. Fixed: Reference renumbering was only working with one of the two client-specific numeric citation character styles.
  19. Fixed: Identical replacements were sometimes not found when combined with format changes.
  20. Fixed: Document Statistics dialog wasn't loading from Word 2007 and 2010
  21. Fixed: Shabash House Style set correctly for "theoretical" and "analytical"
  22. Fixed: Compare Standard Sets and Compare Custom Dictionaries now works with two files of the same name, but in different folders.
  23. Fixed: Fixed the fact that changes made by New Settings dialog in the SSE weren't added to the undo buffer.
  24. Fixed: Fixed graphics handling bug, where Merops would show an "Object has been deleted" message at process start, and add multiple graphics to the top of the document at the end.
  25. Fixed: Document title expand panel (and a few others) didn't synchronize.
  26. Improved: Updated and improved installed Standard Sets.
  27. Improved: Reference renumbering doesn't change the style of dashes in ranges unless there is actual renumbering needed.
  28. Improved: Made confirm merge references dialog wider, to fit more of the reference.
  29. Improved: Merops now records the modified date of the Standard Set in output files.
  30. Improved: Changed reference renumbering to accommodate new client-specific reference tag.
  31. Improved: Merops can be customized to not show toast/popup when processing finishes (useful for running Merops on a server with watchfolders)
  32. Improved: Reorganized Merops Ribbon in Word 2007 and 2010.
  33. Improved: Accept/Reject identical changes is now over 300 times faster in situations where it was slow.
  34. Improved: SSE New Settings dialog changed to make it clearer how to ignore new settings.
  35. Improved: Compare Standard Sets now doesn't show you differences in two controls that are both disabled.
  36. Improved: Standard Sets can now be shared on an FTP site.
  37. New!!!: "Reviewers" dialog. Reject/accept all changes or delete comments by certain authors.
  38. New!!!: "Load/Save" feature on Merops Options. All settings can be saved to a file, then loaded on another machine. Great for quickly applying settings to multiple machines.
  39. Fixed: Error in Detect and Repair saying that Shabash Merops Process Files.exe.dll didn't exist.
  40. New!!!: Self-installing Standard Sets and custom dictionaries make importing files much easier.
  41. New!!!: Shrink Tracked Changes feature can make Meropsed documents much more readable.
  42. Improved: Styles buttons now allow you to apply paragraph styles to a selection within a paragraph.
  43. Improved: Heading 4 button now applies the case for the new heading4Case style.
  44. Improved: Applying heading styles using the styles buttons now also removes Heading: style.
  45. Fixed: Corrected a message box that was referring to the File Locations page of the Merops Options dialog, which no longer exists.
  46. Improved: Merops prioritizes character changes over paragraph changes when right-click rejecting/accepting.
  47. Fixed: Fixed an error where the selection was becoming invisible when right-clicking.
  48. Improved: Suggestions on right-click menu now word wrap on long suggestions to prevent the popup becoming too wide.
  49. Fixed: Fixed an error where clicking Ctrl + S in the Standard Set Editor (to save) was also changing the selected option box to something beginning with S.
  50. Fixed: Updated to work with MathType 6.7.

Merops 2.8.0.380

  1. Improved: Added “About this sentence” grammar button to right-click.
  2. Improved: Ref renumbering - if no citations are found, it says "No citations found", rather than "No references need renumbering".
  3. Improved: Improve title case tool to not use {MeropsCap} tag.
  4. Improved: Title Case tool now accommodates the 4-letter prepositions rule.
  5. Improved: Lookup tool now ignores tracked changes.
  6. Improved: Standard Set Editor (SSE): Now uses less than 25% of the memory to run than before.
  7. Improved: SSE: Changed 'don't sort' on keywords setting to 'preserve original', for consistency.
  8. Improved: SSE: "Preserve graphics in document" checkbox relabelled to say "Delete graphics and replace with comment" and the rule is inverted.
  9. Improved: SSE Remove label repeats has a tip to explain its function.
  10. Fixed: Fixed error meaning ref renumbering didn't work in some client-specific situations.
  11. Fixed: Title Case tool was applying wrong rule for long prepositions.
  12. Fixed: SSE: Corrected "ordely" spelling error in tip.
  13. Fixed: SSE: Surname first reference examples weren't working.
  14. Fixed: SSE: refAuthorSpaceBetweenInitials setting wasn't always saving correctly
  15. Fixed: SSE: Made 12 corrections to the 'preserve original' Standard Set.
  16. Fixed: SSE: An issue that caused an error after opening about 8 Standard Sets at once.
  17. Fixed: SSE: Fixed an issue preventing some old Standard Sets from opening.
  18. Fixed: SSE: Fixed an issue meaning new settings set to the top option were not enabling the save button.
  19. Fixed: SSE: Retrievable parts include… tip was incomplete.
  20. Improved: SSE: Date separator (e.g. 22.10.1981) now influences reference example
  21. Improved: SSE: Ref list example now shows issue number setting.
  22. Improved: Simplified installation, by integrating SMControls.dll into SMDialogs.dll.
  23. Fixed: Detect and Repair was looking for a defunct file ConfirmReplace.dll twice.
  24. Fixed: Label error on Detect and Repair.
  25. Improved: If a server is starts recompiling and the user's machine needs to wait, and the timer-retry dialog is made visible, to show why you are waiting, and allow cancelling.
  26. Fixed: Fixed an error in accept/reject identical insertions/deletions - changes weren't being found if revisions were hidden.
  27. Fixed: Fixed an error in accept/reject identical insertions/deletions - changes weren't being identified if revisions were adjacent to multiple format changes.
  28. Fixed: Label on Open Standard Set and Open Custom Dictionary dialogs said "Select a file to process." Corrected to now say "Open"
  29. Fixed: Open as read only wasn't working.
  30. Fixed: Major error where last file in a batch was given the wrong name.
  31. Improved: You can now process a file using a Standard Set on an FTP site.
  32. Improved: Merops records the modified date of the Standard Set in the properties of the output file.

Merops 2.8.0.349

  1. Fixed: Error causing Watchfolder to crash on Windows start-up, even if watchfolders aren’t set up
  2. Fixed: Error in autoretry functionality where it wrongly thought an error was caused by the Find/Replace dialog was open, could have caused Word to freeze
  3. Fixed: Error message saying “Please check the Shabash.dot template is added in.” (It is now called MeropsLauncher.dot)
  4. Fixed: Misspelling in error message in Standard Set Editor: “An error occured…” (and 7 other places :S)
  5. Fixed: Add term based on this one, in custom dictionary and custom terms was replacing comment with hyperlink, and losing the comment
  6. New: WorldCat added to lookups
  7. Fixed: On some machines, the label on the Process Finished popup was truncated to “Process Fini…”
  8. Improved: Add Paste options for Word 14 right-click menu
  9. Fixed: Error right-clicking on "Consider replacing with 'O'Conner'", which would think the suggestion was ‘O’
  10. Fixed: Error accepting or rejecting all tracked changes in a table column, where other cells not selected were also affected.
  11. Fixed: Error on right-clicking meaning the selection was sometimes lost.
  12. Improved: When files are processed with the watchfolder system, the outputs are now never automatically opened.
  13. Fixed: Fixed an error that occurred as part of the watchfolder process, while downloading from an FTP site, every other file.
  14. Fixed: In watchfolder program, if you clicked Cancel when being asked to confirm exiting, it would still exit.
  15. Fixed: Merops.dot template and MeropsLauncher.dot templates gave compile errors in Word 2010 64-bit.

Merops 2.8.0.330

  1. Improved: Options program disables watchfolders when not needed, and can use setting to disable completely.
  2. Improved: In Word 2003 or earlier, document Standard Set is populated massively faster, and no longer searches for Standard Sets, making Word much more responsive.
  3. Improved: Simplified compile process and installation by merging SMDialogs.dll with SMTip.dll (changed Detect and Repair to not check SMTip.dll).
  4. Improved: Right-click menu now always appears where the cursor is, rather than trying to be clever and moving it around the comment, which often meant you had to move the mouse a long way to click a button.
  5. Improved: Vastly improved handling of most common installation error (failure to connect to Shabash object)
  6. Improved: Added Merops logo to installation program
  7. Fixed: Fixed typo on installation program
  8. Fixed: Right-click Borders and Shading wasn't working in Word 2003 or earlier.
  9. Improved: Added 'floatie' mini toolbar with Merops right-click popup in Word
  10. Improved: Add field code buttons into Merops right-click popup in Word
  11. Improved: Add picture buttons into Merops right-click popup in Word
  12. Improved: Added Grammar… button into Merops right-click popup in Word

Merops 2.8.0.321

  1. Fixed: Merops minimizes then maximizes the window of the output document to work around Word bug where buttons can’t be clicked after processing.
  2. Fixed: Accented characters pasted in to custom terms were changing.
  3. Fixed: Errors with bold pasted into custom terms.
  4. Fixed: Symbols menu in "Edit custom terms" dialog wasn't working.
  5. Fixed: MeropsLauncher.dot now creates a Merops temp folder if it has been deleted.
  6. Fixed: Fixed bug that occurred if the chosen output folder didn't end with '/'.
  7. Fixed: Typo in error message: "This versiom of Microsoft Word…"
  8. Fixed: Removed random rogue label on Spelling page.
  9. Fixed: SSE: Metadata: Source (abbreviation) text box wasn't being enabled by the checkbox.
  10. New: Accommodated Cadmus ref tags in ref renumbering.
  11. Improved: Simplified compile process and installation by merging SMDialogs.dll with SMCustomTermsDialogs.dll (changed Detect and Repair to not check SMCustomTermsDialogs.dll).
  12. Improved: Removed update styles from end of process to: a) process faster, b) prevent inconsistencies in output between Normal and Normal Indent, and c) to fix the copy formatting bug.
  13. Improved: Removed unnecessary message on template splash screen that said it was deleting the Merops menu (the Merops menu no longer exists)
  14. New: Watchfolders now work with FTP sites.
  15. Improved: Installation file reduced from 77MB to 44MB.
  16. Improved: No longer need to uninstall the previous version of Merops to install an update.

Merops 2.8.0.313

First release of Merops 2.8, released April 2011.

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