What's new in ResourceBundle Editor 0.8.0

After 5 years without a new release, the Eclipse plugin for editing Java resource bundles got an upgrade fixing some serious bugs and adding useful features. Here's what happened.

Added find dialog

We implemented the standard find dialog of eclipse. You can invoke it as always via menu (Edit > Find/Replace) or keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcuts for "Find next" and "Find previous" are also usable, i.e. you can simply select any text and press Ctrl+K (default binding).

The search is performed on all files of the bundle, and in contrast to a search in Eclipse's built-in Properties File Editor, you can search the unescaped strings, like 号の位, instead of \u53F7\u306E\u4F4D.

The replace operations are not yet implemented in this dialog.


Added display option: auto-adjust height

We added an option for auto-adjusting the height of the value field editors. If it is enabled, the fields always take only as much space, as they need and adjust on changes if necessary. Vertical scrollbars are not drawn in that case. If there is excess vertical space however, it is used.

This option is enabled by default, if you prefer the old behavior, please turn it off in the preferences.


Added display option: minimum editor height

For all of you prefering the old behavior, we added another option to spice it up: you can define the minimum editor height for the value field editors.


Added filter for key tree

We added a filter for the key tree, allowing you to quickly narrow down what keys you see on the left.


Editor font configurable

The value editors use the same font as all Text Editors by default now, but can be changed in the Colors and Fonts preference page of Eclipse.

Please bear in mind, that the ResourceBundleEditor still changes the font to display your values, if current font cannot display all characters in your text. In that case, the first font is used, which can display all characters. If no such font is installed on your workstation, the font with the most displayable characters is used.


Fixed memory leaks

Opening and closing large bundles repeatedly led to an OutOfMemoryError. We fixed two memory leaks responsible for this and observed no leaks any more in Eclipse 3.8 or Eclipse 4.2.


Reload editor content on external changes

Bugs 2986394 and 1967702 described a way of losing data: When you worked on a bundle, then updated from CVS/SVN/Git/..., and continued working without re-opening the editor, the remote update was lost. This issue is fixed now, external updates get applied to opened editors.


Performance improvements

We improved the performance of both the parsing of properties files and some UI drawing operations significantly. While this doesn't play a role for most bundles, those who work with thousands of keys in lots of languages will feel the improvements.


All the rest

To see a complete list of changes, look at CHANGES in CVS.