AntConc Changelog

What's new in AntConc 4.2.3

Sep 16, 2023

Bug fixes:
The keywords tool statistics measure in versions 4.2.1 and 4.2.2 ignored the sign of the keyness value causing all positive and negative keywords to be displayed.

New in AntConc 4.2.2 (Aug 24, 2023)

New in AntConc 4.2.1 (Aug 19, 2023)

New in AntConc 4.2.0 (Jan 7, 2023)

New features:
Major improvements have been made to the startup timeNow, AntConc show display almost immediately
and then display the progress as each individual tool loads.
In the Corpus Manager, creating corpora from raw files is now around 3x faster.
In the Corpus Manager, the Corpus Database Library viewer has been updatedNow the status of a corpus
is displayed using color coded buttons, which change color depending on how the status is changed by the
userThis color-coding reduces the chances of users clicking the buttons (previously displayed as checkboxes
next to color coded indicators) to select a corpus.
In the Corpus Manager, it is now not possible to deselect all default or user corpora in a single clickThis
reduces the potential for mistakes.
In the Corpus Manager, the option to directly load and use a corpus database without adding it to the corpus
database library has now been removedThis simplifies the interface and reduces the potential for
misunderstanding how the interface works.
In the Corpus Manager, new “Export Library” and “Import Library” options have been addedThis allows the
entire corpus database library to be backed up and restored after a new version of AntConc has been
installedOn Windows systems, previous corpora are not lost when the version is updated, but on MacOS
and Linux systems, corpora are lostSo, this feature should assist in making an update smoother.
In the Corpus Manager, AmE06 and BE06 corpora are no longer pre-installedThis greatly saves download
timesThe corpora are still available through download from the online corpus repositoryFor demonstration
purposes, a simple demo corpus is now included.
In the Corpus Manager, it is now possible to hide all corpora in the online corpus repository that have not
yet been downloadedThis should greatly simplify the Corpus Database Library viewer.
In the Corpus Manager, a new “Row Processor” option has been added to the Raw Files Corpus Builder to
allow each row of an input file to be treated as an individual new corpus text.
In the Corpus Manager, building a corpus using the Raw Files Corpus Builder is now over three time faster
than before due to optimizations to the corpus building engine.
In the Corpus Manager, a new “Simple Word List” option has been added to the Word List Corpus Builder to
allow the creation of a corpus based on a simple word list showing types, type frequencies, and optional
range (document frequency) valuesThe size of the corpus is guessed from a sum of the type frequencies,
and the total number of texts in the corpus in guessed from the maximum range (document frequency) value.
In the Word list tool, you can now generate different types of lists based on a “list type” setting (Type, POS,
Headword, and combinations of these) that will collate the results in different ways as appropriateThis
feature in linked with the Keyword tool to allow for key POS lists, key Headword (lemma) lists, in addition to
the standard key Types (Word) lists.
In the Keyword list tool, you can now generate different types of lists based on a “list type” setting (Type,
POS, Headword, and combinations of these) that will collate the results in different ways as appropriateThis
feature in linked with the Word list tool to allow for key POS lists, key Headword (lemma) lists, in addition to
the standard key Types (Word) lists.
In the Wordcloud tool, the Scratchpad option has been moved to the top of the list of appearance options
for greater transparency of use when the tool is first selected.
In the Wordcloud tool, various mask categories have been added making it easier to find a suitable oneAlso,
the load time is now faster as a result.
In the Wordcloud tool, the number of color maps have been greatly reducedThis makes it easier to find a
suitable color map and also the improve the tool load time.
In the Wordcloud tool, all foreground and background colors can now be set with a transparency (alpha)
value.
A new File menu action and shortcut (CTRL + SHIFT + T) has been added to allow for quick swapping of the
target and reference corpora.
The global Tag Setting has been revised and improved to allow all tools to display results as just types, POS
tags, or headwords, or combinations of theseThe setting can also be changed for each tool independently.
Bug fixes:
After changing the "Words", "Case", and "Regex" options in a tool, the interface changes would be reflected
in other tool interfaces, but the subsequent results generated in those other tools would still represent the
earlier settingsThis has now been fixedChanges to settings in one tool will now properly propagate through
all the other tools.
Standard queries that included a pipe symbol “|” were processed as a regular expression (regex) OR search
even when the Regex option was deselectedThis is now fixed.
Queries that included a combination of non-word (i.e., string) and case-sensitive searches would result in no
hitsThis is now fixed.
When any of the “Clear” options from the File Menu were selected, the statistics at the top of results window
in each tool were left unclearedThis is now fixed.
In the Wordcloud tool, the color transparency option was not workingThis is now fixed.
When saving tab results, the name of the tool was not shown correctly in the save dialog file nameThis is
now fixed

New in AntConc 4.1.4 (Oct 26, 2022)

New in AntConc 4.1.3 (Oct 18, 2022)

New in AntConc 4.1.1 (Aug 7, 2022)

New in AntConc 4.1.0 (Jul 8, 2022)

New features:
The Corpus Manager now offers access to an online repository of corpora
The Corpus Manager interface has been re-designed to simplify its use and accommodate the online
repository feature Now, all available corpora appear in a tree-like format
The Corpus Manager now includes an “Ignore Footer” option (in addition to the other filter options) when
creating a corpus from raw files The new filter can be accessed with the Token Definition settings
A new Wordcloud tool has been added as a core tool in the software
The advanced search context option now allows for logical OR or AND context searches
The Windows installer now includes Arabic and Korean step-by-step instructions
The session settings can now be saved and restored automatically via the Global Settings->Restore Settings
option
A new “File name column width” option has been added to the KWIC tool This prevents long file names from
stretching the column too much
Bug fixes:
Several bugs in the import, export, and restore settings file menu options that caused several settings to not
be correctly stored or retrieved have been fixed
Various widget resizing issues have been fixed and scroll areas have been introduced where windows may
grow too large depending on the font settings
Although not technically a bug, in previous versions, the KWIC tool would show the context around a search
word that would span across documents This has now been fixed
Although not technically a bug, if an advanced search involving context words was used, hits would be found
even when the context spanned across documents This has now been fixed
Although not technically a bug, several dialog windows appeared without icons or titles These have now
been fixed
The “Ignore Header” filter in the Corpus Manager->Raw Files Corpus Builder tool has been slightly changed
to avoid edge cases of multiple hits through a file being considered as the header and subsequently removed
Several buttons throughout the interface have been given the focus after certain actions to allow for a
smoother user experience

New in AntConc 4.0.11 (May 24, 2022)

Bug fixes:
In the Corpus Manager - Reference Corpus tab, no default indexer was set for processing raw files This is fixed with the default setting matching that of the Target Corpus Tab
When target or reference corpora were cleared or switched via the Corpus Manager, the progress bar in the main window would not be reset This is now fixed
When the "Clear Tool", "Clear All Tools", or "Clear All Tools and Files" menu options were selected, the progress bar in the main window would not be reset This is now fixed
After changing the font settings in the Global Settings menu, the fonts used in the Advanced Search dialog and Token Definition dialog would not be updated These are now fixed
After resizing the Corpus Manager dialog, the new size would not be remembered when the dialog was reopened This is now fixed
The "Time taken" displayed in each tool show the unit of time incorrectly as "ms" (milliseconds) The unit of time now correctly shows as "sec" (seconds)
The "Time taken" displayed in each tool was calculated based on the time taken for the internal database to return the set of results This time could sometimes much shorter than the actual time to display the results on the screen This has been corrected and the complete time from hitting the "Start" button to the results
showing on the screen is recorded
Although not strictly a bug, the Plot tool performance was quite slow when the default 'table' view was used The performance has now been hugely improved, with a speed increase of over 50 times
Although not a bug, the Plot tool would only display results for files that included search query hits Now, a new tool setting display option ("Show files with no hits") has been added that allows the user to see all files regardless of whether or not the file contain hits
Although not a bug, the labeling of columns in the Plot tool display was inconsistent with other tools Now
the columns use the term "file" instead of "doc"
Although not a bug, the "Create 'Quick Corpus'" File menu option has been renamed to "Open Files as 'Quick
Corpus'" to avoid confusion

New in AntConc 4.0.10 (Apr 25, 2022)

New in AntConc 4.0.9 (Apr 23, 2022)

New in AntConc 4.0.7 (Apr 11, 2022)

New in AntConc 4.0.6 (Apr 4, 2022)

New in AntConc 4.0.5 (Feb 20, 2022)

New in AntConc 3.5.8 (Feb 21, 2019)

New in AntConc 3.5.7 (Apr 23, 2018)

New in AntConc 3.5.6 (Mar 28, 2018)

New in AntConc 3.5.5 (Mar 25, 2018)

New in AntConc 3.5.4 (Mar 25, 2018)

New in AntConc 3.5.2 (Feb 8, 2018)

New in AntConc 3.4.4w (Jun 27, 2015)

New in AntConc 3.4.3w Build 3430 (Sep 22, 2014)

New in AntConc 3.4.0w Build 3400 (Jan 25, 2014)

This is a semi major upgrade fixing a few small bugs and adding several important features to improve the output display of the Concordancer and Plot tools.
New Features:
The Concordancer tool output now correctly centers the search terms regardless of language. This is especially useful for Asian languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean that have two-byte character widths. Note that this is achieved by using two columns in the 'KWIC' pane. If you click CTRL-A in the pane, only one of these hidden columns will be selected. Use ALT-A to select all columns.
Line breaks in the Concordance Tool output can now be replaced by a user defined character (default being a single space). Again, this is especially useful for Asian languages because traditional replacement by a single space might inappropriately split words that cross line-break boundaries.
The Collocates Tool no longer includes the center word in the collocation table. This results in more meaningful collocate values.
Not exactly a feature, but Concordance Tool searches are now only centered on completion rather than after finding the first line. This is generally a more pleasant experience.
Whitespace options in the wildcards menu have now been extended.
A database now runs in the background and is used to store KWIC and Plot concordance results. This alleviates out of memory problems with earlier versions and also allows much faster sorting of the KWIC. The new database model also improves the performance of general KWIC and Plot searches.
In the Advanced Search, if you add multiple context words, AntConc will look for *any* of these in surrounding context of the search term rather than *all* of them (as in earlier versions). This change has been implemented as a result of many requests for this function. I hope it does not inconvenience too many people.
In the Collocates tool, if you click on a word, if will search for that word in the Concordance Tool but restrict results to only those where the original search term is in the neighborhood of the collocate as set by the Collocates tool. Again, this change has been implemented as a result of many requests for this function.
Colors for the highlight and ordered words in the KWIC display have been changed to be a little easier to see.
The font size for the main results is now a little larger.
Bug fixes:
The Collocates Tool sometimes use to report values of "-1" (when the only collocates of the center word was itself) and "-2" (when the collocate value was not able to be calculated due to an out-of-sync word list). The first case ("-1") no longer exists (see feature 3 above). In the second case ("-2"), the value has now been replaced with "0" to avoid confusion.
In the Word List Tool, Alt-A now correctly selects all the panes including the Lemma list.
When no corpus file names were selected in the left panel, sometimes the “Close file” menu option would delete the first file name in the list instead of reporting that no file was selected. The has been fixed.
After changing the size of the Search Entry font option in the global settings, the new font size would not be reflected in the sample display. This is now fixed.
If the "invert sort" option was activated in any tool with this feature, an "Array XXX" error was produced in the results window. I apologize for this very inconvenient bug.
Several other minor bugs including one that sometimes led to tags not being hidden properly after applying tag settings have been fixed.

New in AntConc 3.3.5w Build 3354 Beta (Aug 3, 2013)

New in AntConc 3.3.4 (Aug 3, 2013)

New in AntConc 3.3.3 (Aug 3, 2013)

New in AntConc 3.3.2 (Aug 3, 2013)

New in AntConc 3.3.1 (Aug 3, 2013)

New in AntConc 3.3.0 (Aug 3, 2013)

This is a major upgrade introducing many new features and addressing bugs that appeared in previous 3.2.x versions.
New Features:
The “range” information for a word has now been added to the Clusters Tool. This allows ‘lexical bundles’ of a certain minimum range to be generated.
The full path of a corpus file is now shown by hovering the cursor over the file name in the main window.
Loading of lemma lists is now greatly simplified.
Loading of reference corpus lists are now greatly simplified.
When loading reference corpus lists, checks are now made to see if the format is correct.
The interface has been simplified a little by removing little-used buttons, in particular, the “Reset” button and “Exit” button on each tool tab. Also the ambiguous “Save Window” button has now been renamed “Close Results” to more accurately reflect its action.
Hit and frequency counts now appear above the results window in all tools.
The Clusters tool has now been renamed “Clusters/N-Grams’’ to more accurately reflect its functions.
The actions associated with spinbox arrows have now been reversed. This is perhaps a more natural way for them to work.
The term “Language Encoding” used in 3.2.x versions has now been corrected to “Character Encoding”.
Various default settings have been changed to reflect modern corpus linguists’ preferences. In particular, the default character encoding has been changed from Latin 1 to UTF-8.
This user file has now been updated to be a little easier to read and understand.
After opening or saving files, AntConc will now remember the folder location.
Bug fixes:
Selection highlighting of corpus files now accurately reflects which files can be viewed in the File View tool.
AntConc now correctly remembers the positions of window panes after global and tool preferences have been accessed.
AntConc now correctly remembers which was the last preference window accessed by the user.
Numerous interface oddities associated with 3.2.x versions of AntConc should now be fixed with the introduction of a native interface for all platforms (see New Features 1 above).
File names with a different character encoding the file contents will now appear correctly.

New in AntConc 3.2.4 (Aug 3, 2013)

New in AntConc 3.2.3 (Aug 3, 2013)

This is a major upgrade introducing several new features and addressing bugs that appeared in version
3.2.2.1.
New Features:
Massively simplified the engine used for sorting and displaying results. This will allow for improved performance later.
Introduced a Concordance preference setting allowing tab spaces to be added around the search hit in the KWIC concordance view. Introducing this means that
the toggle shortcut key ‘x’ to show/hide the KWIC search term has had to be removed. This function can now be accessed via the (fixed) menu option. I also hope to reintroduce this toggle shortcut key later.
Introduced the option to use word list(s) of reference corpus files instead of directly processing the raw files. This allows fast generation of keywords and
also allows users to generate keyword lists even when the reference corpus is not available (but a word list is). See the Keyword List section for further details.
Introduced feature to output the counts of types and tokens for each tool when saving results as a text file.
Changed some of the default settings in response to user feedback:
Concordance Tool sort level s are set as 1R, 2R, 3R.
The Collocates Tool Stats measure is now displayed and calculated.
Bug fixes:
The splash screen that appeared when a user settings file was added has been removed. Now, the words “User Settings” appears next to the title of the software at the top of main window, whenever a user settings file is used.
The layout of the main window has been improved so that the main work area is maximized for all sizes of main window.
Unicode “Marks” can now be added/removed in the token definition settings Occasionally, the last bar of the progress bar remained blank at the end of processing. This has now been fixed.
Under tag settings, the “Hide Header Tags” option will now work for headers than span across multiple lines.
The main window and all pop-up windows now appear centered in the display.
When viewing the global settings preferences, it was possible to accidentally activate the main window by clicking on it. This has been fixed.
The list of files in the left pane was often too narrow to view easily. This has been fixed by introducing a two-pane approach, with the left pane showing
the files, and the right pane showing the results and controls. The width of both panes can be adjusted with the default size being the minimum size.os
It was possible to adjust the main window to be smaller than the default size of 800px by 600px. This caused the positioning of some widgets to become misaligned. Now, 800px by 600px has been set as the minimum size of the main window.
Various problems experienced when cutting, copying, and pasting text to/from the Search boxes in each tool have been addressed by removing the “Spinbox”
widget type and replacing this with a standard “Entry” widget. The history of previous searches can be now accessed using the “Up” (previous) and “Down” (next) arrow keys.
After moving the cursor over the corpus files list while using the File View Tool, it should change into a “Pointing Finger” cursor. However, this cursor
shape was returned incorrectly back to a standard “Edit” cursor when one of the files was selected. This has now been fixed.
Changed foreground to white when AntConc reports that the KWIC analysis has finished or has no results. This should be easier to read.
Fixed a bug that caused the Concordance preference option “Hide search term in KWIC display” to only show the hit. (The opposite of the stated function!). This is now fixed.
Fixed some typos in this Read Me document.
Fixed a major bug that caused a warning to always appear when using the T-Score statistical measure with the Collocates Tool. Note that the warning could be ignored as the results would always be correct.

New in AntConc 3.2.2.1 (Aug 3, 2013)