FAR 2.0 is released

This morning I discovered that FAR 2.o was released in Feb 2016.

FAR is one of those great tools that you might not need to use every day, but that can save gobs of time for you when you do need it.

I love this example from the FAR download page:

Recently I used regular expressions (regex) in Dreamweaver to slash an estimated 50 hours of text editing into just a few hours of investigation and experimenting. Regex is also available in FrameMaker and RoboHelp, Indesign and others.

Needless to say, my client was thrilled (and not surprisingly, is still on this email list!)

You may have already seen the post, but here’s the link, just in case
http://www.techcommtools.com/save-time-with-regex/

But as I’ve found out, regex strings get more complex when you have to deal with whitespace and linebreaks. That’s where an open-source tool (GNU license) called Find and Replace can come in handy.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/findandreplace/

Here’s the description from the SourceForge page for Find and Replace (FAR):

Search and replace operations on file content accross multiple files. Recursive operations within entire directory trees. FAR comes with support for regular expressions (regex) over multiple lines, automatic backup and various character encodings.

The bottom line: FAR lets me do the same sort of work as strict regex, but for me is more intuitive for static text across multiple lines.

What are your favorite text edit hacks?

Tell me about them and I’ll add the best ones to the blog post so we can all benefit!

Here are some more related RegEx posts:

Tutorial
Regular Expressions in FrameMaker
While this may discuss regex in FrameMaker, it’s one of the best regex writups I’ve seen!

Webinar
Advanced Tips: FrameMaker 12 and Regular Expressions
Here’s a webinar from Rick Quatro (who authored the ExtendScript section of my FrameMaker book) on regex.

I sent this post out via email on 1 April, 2016. If you’re reading this after 1 April, join my email list to get more good stuff delivered to you as soon as possible!