DocFetcher Pro 1.9 has just been released. There's good news for people working with plain text files in general, and source code in particular: DocFetcher Pro now shows line numbers when displaying plain text files in the preview pane. This feature was ported from a code contribution to the upcoming DocFetcher 1.1.23 release.
In addition to the new line numbers feature, an indexing crash was fixed, and a small index optimization step that is run after each index update was added. For details, see the changelog.
The one big news item for this release is that the program finally runs on macOS, specifically on macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) and later. For those who have used the free DocFetcher on macOS before, a notable improvement of DocFetcher Pro on macOS is that the latter comes with the DocFetcher Pro daemon, the small companion of DocFetcher Pro that provides automatic index updating while the main program isn't running. Please note that on macOS, the daemon needs to be manually added to the startup apps (also known as Login Items). How this is done is explained on the page "Daemon Setup" in the user manual.
For Windows and Linux users, this 1.8 release brings a critical Outlook-related bugfix (email bodies were no longer indexed) and two minor improvements, as explained on the changelog.
The next items on the development agenda are:
a long-overdue bugfix release for the free DocFetcher (v1.1.23)
support for the v0.4 format of 7z archives
DocFetcher Pro Server, a variant of DocFetcher Pro with multi-user support
As stated in the previous post, due to the complexity of the above items it’s hard to give any reliable release date estimates, but hopefully they will all be completed in 2021.
On the planned 7z v0.4 support: DocFetcher Pro inherited its 7z support from DocFetcher, so currently they both support 7z archives up to v0.3 of the 7z format. However, the recent versions of 7-zip create 7z archives in the v0.4 format, so those archives cannot be read by DocFetcher and DocFetcher Pro. That's kind of a big deal, considering the relative popularity of 7z archives. Adding v0.4 support in DocFetcher Pro requires completely rewriting the 7z handling, so this is going to be a major item on the development agenda.
DocFetcher Pro 1.7 has just been released. Two indexing-related crashes and one search-related crash were fixed. See the changelog for details.
DocFetcher Pro now comes with a proper user manual, replacing the one copied from the free DocFetcher. With the inclusion of the new user manual, the beta phase has now officially ended. As a consequence, bugfixes and the accompanying announcements will be released at a slower pace, so as to free up developer time for the upcoming items on the agenda:
a macOS release of DocFetcher Pro
a long-overdue bugfix release for the free DocFetcher (v1.1.23)
DocFetcher Pro Server, a variant of DocFetcher Pro with multi-user support
Due to the complexity of the above items, it's hard to give any reliable release date estimates, but hopefully they will all be completed in 2021.
DocFetcher Pro 1.6 has just been released. The DocFetcher Pro daemon is now fully functional, and two indexing issues were fixed. One of the two issues concerns the indexing of HTML files, the other was an IOException crash due to files with very long filenames. For details, see the changelog.
As for the DocFetcher Pro daemon: If you didn't know, the daemon's purpose is to work together with DocFetcher Pro to ensure that your indexes are always in sync with your indexed files. Specifically, here's how it works:
DocFetcher Pro is capable of monitoring your indexed folders for any file changes, and will automatically update your indexes when such file changes occur, assuming you haven't turned off automatic index updates.
Of course, when DocFetcher Pro isn't running, it can't monitor your indexed folders, so any file changes occurring during that time will be missed. This gap is filled by the DocFetcher Pro daemon. It becomes active when DocFetcher Pro isn't running, and by itself it doesn't do any indexing, it just records detected file changes so that the next time DocFetcher Pro is started, the latter will know which indexes need to be updated.
If you install DocFetcher Pro via the Windows installer, the daemon will be installed automatically. In all other versions of DocFetcher Pro, you will have to manually add the daemon executable to your startup applications.
DocFetcher Pro 1.5 has just been released. This release fixes some issues with type-ahead search, an Outlook indexing crash, and a problem with invalid characters in filenames that caused indexes to silently disappear from the Search Scope pane. For details, see the changelog.
DocFetcher Pro 1.4 has just been released. This week's release comes with two minor bugfixes and a couple of changes to smooth out a few usability wrinkles, such as the program's "success" sound no longer playing in the background every time you modify some indexed files. For details, see the changelog.
More importantly, sometimes emails sent to Support did not go through due to issues with the mail server. If you sent an email to support and didn't get a reply, that was the likely reason. The server issue should be fixed now, but just in case, there's now also a fallback email address on the support page.
Finally, a little tip for users of the portable version of DocFetcher Pro: How to upgrade to the new version without losing your settings and indexes is explained on the FAQ page, under the question "When upgrading portable DocFetcher Pro, how can I keep my settings and indexes?".
DocFetcher Pro 1.0 has just been released, so now it's official: The open-source DocFetcher has gone into retirement, and from here on its commercial big brother on steroids DocFetcher Pro will take over.
DocFetcher will continue to receive bugfixes and be supported through funding from DocFetcher Pro, but new features will only be implemented in DocFetcher Pro, perhaps with a few exceptions here and there.
If you're familiar with DocFetcher, please see the Going Pro page and its subpages for an overview of the numerous improvements DocFetcher Pro has to offer over DocFetcher. If you're new to DocFetcher, you may find the About page and the Features page more helpful. In either case, you may want to check out the free demo of DocFetcher Pro.
The previously posted release schedule still applies. In addition, at some point in the future DocFetcher Pro will probably have its own forum, bug tracker and/or feature tracker somewhere on this site. Until then, if you have anything to say, write an email to Support or post on this thread in the DocFetcher forum.
Thanks for reading, stay home if you can, and don't let the virus eat you!
