Portable DocFetcher Changelog

What's new in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.25

Jun 2, 2021
  • Major bugfix: The highlighting in the preview pane was broken. This was a side effect of the recently added line numbers feature. For each line of text in the preview pane, DocFetcher would only highlight the first match in the line, not any subsequent matches. (Bug #2157)

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.24 (May 11, 2021)

  • Emergency bugfix:
  • Index saving was broken because one of the index files, called "tree-index.ser", was not properly written to disk. As a result, the program would later fail to load newly created indexes and warn about index incompatibility. This release fixes the index saving issue. Note that you can manually repair indexes that fail to load by closing DocFetcher and then renaming all "tree-index.ser.temp" files on your computer to "tree-index.ser".

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.23 (May 8, 2021)

  • Features:
  • The preview pane now displays line numbers for plain text file formats, such as source code
  • Improved MS PowerPoint text extraction: Now notes, comments and master text are extracted
  • Improved MS Excel support: Now cell comments are extracted
  • MS Office support: Added various file extensions (Word 2007+: dotm; Excel 2007+: xltm; PowerPoint 2007+: ppsm, potx, potm; PowerPoint before 2007: pot; Visio before 2007: vss, vst, vsw)
  • Added GUI und manual translations for Chinese Simplified, Turkish and Ukrainian
  • Advanced setting "CheckSingleInstance" to suppress the warning message that DocFetcher displays when it detects after launch that another DocFetcher instance is running or was not cleanly terminated
  • Advanced setting "ShowPathsDuringIndexing" to display file paths instead of filenames during indexing This is useful for locating files that cause DocFetcher to hang
  • Advanced setting "WriteIndexingLog" to write the paths of files being indexed to a log file This helps with identifying problematic files DocFetcher chokes and crashes on during indexing
  • Advanced setting "PdfPreviewVisualOrder": If the preview pane shows the words in PDF files in a jumbled order, experimenting with this setting may help
  • Advanced setting "OpenLimit" to adjust the maximum number of files that can be opened all at once from the search results
  • Any changes you've previously made to the values in the advanced settings file (program-conftxt) will now be preserved when upgrading to this DocFetcher version or a later version In earlier versions, such changes were lost when the upgrade added new entries to the advanced settings file
  • Bugfixes:
  • The global hotkey (by default Ctrl + F8) is now disabled by default due to known stability issues (eg, bug #1514) You can enable the hotkey at your own risk via the new advanced setting "HotkeyEnabled"
  • Upgraded the GUI library SWT for 64-bit systems (SWT 49 ? 419) This fixes a NullPointerException crash on macOS that prevented the program from being started
  • Added an extra macOS launch script in portable DocFetcher, as a fallback in case of launch problems
  • On macOS, DocFetcher can now be run on the current Java runtimes from Oracle The legacy Java 6 runtime from Apple is not required anymore
  • On Java 9 and later, the -Duserhome variable in the various launcher scripts was ignored
  • The startup message about launching another DocFetcher instance was opened under all other windows
  • On Windows, the taskbar pinning of the program did not work entirely correctly
  • Previously, it was possible to add new indexes via the indexing dialog despite index creation being disabled in the advanced settings
  • ClassCastException crash during indexing of PDF files
  • On Java 10, DocFetcher was unable to read certain EPUB files, displaying a "Use a Path constructor or method instead!" error (bug #1559)
  • Fixed an issue with the indexing of old MS Word files
  • When writing the tree-indexser file (a vital part of the index files) to disk, the program will now first write to a temporary file instead of overwriting the old file directly This is a safeguard against potential corruption of the tree-indexser file
  • Since DocFetcher 1120, the wildcard '?' did not match numbers preceded by a dot anymore, due to changes in the underlying Lucene search engine As a workaround, there's now a "Whitespace" word segmentation option in the preferences to somewhat restore the old behavior (bug #1558)
  • On KDE-based Linux distributions such as Kubuntu, double-clicking files in the search results did not open them
  • The icon in the top right of the file size filter was always in the state "minimize" after program launch, even if the file size filter is already minimized
  • On macOS, the program erroneously showed the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut instead of ?C in several places, eg, in the context menu of the result pane
  • Changes:
  • New DocFetcher*exe launchers with 12 GB and 16 GB memory limit
  • Added documentation in the DocFetcherbat file
  • Increased default memory limit from 512 MB to 1 GB
  • Upgraded PDFBox library for reading PDF files (PDFBox 209 ? 2013)
  • Added default exclusion rules for git and svn folders on the indexing dialog
  • DocFetcher no longer considers the file extensions "php", "asp" and "jsp" as HTML file extensions
  • Indexing: The keep-discard dialog now takes the "platform dismissal alignment" into account, meaning the order of the dialog's buttons now follows the conventions of the platform
  • Slight design change with respect to the borders of the filter controls in the left part of the GUI
  • Added a link to the DocFetcher Pro website in the status bar, and an info message about DocFetcher Pro

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.22 (Jul 31, 2018)

  • DocFetcher could not be started on OS X with Java 9 or newer.
  • Crash on Windows due to hotkey issues (bug #1466 and others).
  • Crash on some PDF files (bug #1477 and others).
  • MS Office files containing very large amounts of text could not be read.
  • DocFetcher could not read the metadata of certain JPEG files (bug #1493).

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.21 (Jun 22, 2018)

  • Bugfixes:
  • The previous version of DocFetcher could not be started on OS X when running Java 8 or older.
  • Crash with “root cannot be null” message on certain malformed PDF files (bug #1443).
  • Crash with “ClassCastException” error on certain PDF files (bug #1459).
  • Crash on certain EPUB files (bug #1463).
  • Crash when trying to set strings like ”(zip jar” in the plain text or zip extension field on the indexing dialog (bug #1457).

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.20 (Jun 22, 2018)

  • Features:
  • Type-ahead search: Typing in the search field starts the search without the user having to press Enter. This feature is disabled by default and can be enabled in the preferences.
  • Chinese word segmentation: When enabling the Chinese word segmentation algorithm in the preferences, DocFetcher will search on whole Chinese words rather than on individual Hanzi.
  • Python scripting API for programmatically launching searches and accessing the search results. See the explanation at the top of the file search.py, which can be found in the DocFetcher program folder.
  • Improved HTML processing: Now HTML files without body element (e.g., Chrome bookmark files) can be indexed.
  • Italian translation of GUI, manual and website.
  • Chinese translation of main manual page.
  • Bugfixes:
  • DocFetcher could not be run on Java 9 and newer.
  • On certain machines, DocFetcher could not be started due to issues with the global hotkey or the embedded web browser.
  • Crash on 7z archives containing unnamed entries (bug #1369).
  • The indexing process was halted by a password prompt when encountering a password-protected zip archive. Now the latter is automatically skipped with an error message.
  • DocFetcher failed to create an index if the folder to be indexed contained zip archives using an unsupported encryption scheme (bug #1309).
  • DocFetcher failed to index plain text files with certain less common text encodings, such as HZ-GB-2312 (bug #1410).
  • DocFetcher failed to index MS Office files with unusually high compression ratio. These were identified as “zip bombs”.
  • Crash on Abiword files with missing metadata element (bug #1358).
  • On Windows, the HTML preview did not display files accessed through a UNC path. This caused portable DocFetcher to fail to find its program manual if it was run on a network location without drive mapping (bug #1351).
  • Changes:
  • On Windows, DocFetcher now uses Lucida Sans Unicode as the default font for non-monospace text in the preview pane. This is to ensure that Unicode characters can be properly displayed.
  • Upgraded POI library for reading MS Office files (POI 3.13 → 3.17, fixes bug #1415).
  • Upgraded PDFBox library for reading PDF files (PDFBox 1.8.7 → 2.0.9, fixes issues with encrypted PDF files among other things).
  • Slight change in the behavior of the Regex test widget on the indexing dialog (paths are automatically normalized with ”/” instead of “” as path separator).

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.19 (Feb 5, 2017)

  • Features:
  • Polish GUI translation.
  • DocFetcher now ships with Windows launchers with up to 8 GB of memory. Note that more than 1 GB requires a 64-bit Java runtime.
  • Advanced settings: Option for disabling the text preview. This is useful for searching the contents of very large text files.
  • Advanced settings: New entry AllowIndexRenaming for hiding the “Rename Index” context menu entry in the Search Scope pane.
  • Bugfixes:
  • The Windows installer couldn't detect an installed 64-bit Java runtime.
  • Crash during startup saying “invalid sash weights” (bug #1223 and others).
  • The GUI translations were not loaded in the OS X application bundle.
  • Fixed Outlook PST indexing issues.
  • Crash on certain CHM files (bug #1232).
  • Crash on RTF files containing images (bug #1230).
  • IndexOutOfBoundsException crash (bug #1298 and others).
  • NullPointerException crash during indexing (bug #1236).
  • Directory paths as long as or longer than 260 characters were incorrectly identified as NTFS junctions, causing some directories to be ignored during indexing.
  • Crash when trying to rename a folder beneath an index (i.e. a top-level folder). Now the renaming operation is only enabled for indexes.
  • Crash under certain circumstances when clicking on the buttons in the toolbar above the preview pane (bug #1252).
  • Changes:
  • The Windows installer now downloads JRE 8 Update 111 32-bit if no Java runtime was found.
  • The comments in the DocFetcher.bat file were printed in the command prompt.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.18 (Jul 26, 2016)

  • FEATURES:
  • Indexes can now be named.
  • Improved OpenOffice/LibreOffice indexing and text preview.
  • Partial French translation of website.
  • Partial Japanese translation of GUI and manual.
  • BUG FIXES:
  • IndexOutOfBoundsException crash on some MS Office files (bug #1200 and others).
  • Fixed an indexing crash on Linux with GNOME 3 desktop.
  • If an index was added while all existing indexes were unchecked, results from the new index weren't shown until the unchecked indexes were reselected or the program was restarted.
  • The previous Linux launcher didn't work on some Linux distributions. Because of that, the Linux launcher was split into DocFetcher-GTK2.sh and DocFetcher-GTK3.sh. On some Linux distributions only the first one works, on some others only the second one works, so you may have to try both.
  • Customizing the indexes path in the misc/paths.txt file didn't work in the non-portable version of DocFetcher.
  • In the previous version, DocFetcher could fill the desktop with hundreds of crash windows. Now the number of simultaneously shown crash windows is limited to 5.
  • CHANGES:
  • Increased the default width of the search field from 200 to 500 pixels. To set a different width, edit the Advanced Settings file.
  • The tabs on the indexing dialog now have a different look.
  • Reorganized the contents of the Advanced Settings file. (The change won't be visible if you install a new non-portable version over an existing non-portable version.)

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.17 (Feb 12, 2016)

  • Features:
  • DocFetcher is now available as a PortableApps application (still in beta): http://portableapps.com/node/53747
  • Improved CHM support: Better text extraction, pagination during indexing and in the preview pane, and it now also works on 64-bit Java and OS X.
  • Improved MP3 support.
  • Bugfixes:
  • Crash related to using relative paths in combination with network paths.
  • Crash on certain MS Office files when using a Java runtime older than 1.6.0 Update 18.
  • Crash during an index update caused by external changes to the index files.
  • Indexing crash “Warning: Usage of a local non-builtin name” on older Excel files.
  • Crash during indexing when trying to open files in the “Errors” table that were already deleted.
  • Newly created folders sometimes did not show up in the Search Scope pane until the next program launch.
  • When pressing Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C on the result pane, not all entries were copied.
  • On some OS X machines, the DocFetcher process did not terminate after trying to close the program.
  • Changes:
  • Raised the required minimum version for the Java runtime from 1.6 to 1.7 (necessary for the improved CHM and MP3 support).
  • On OS X, DocFetcher can no longer be run with the Java runtime 1.6 provided by Apple. Use the latest Java runtime from Oracle instead: http://java.com
  • Upgraded the parser libraries used for MS Office, RTF and HTML text extraction.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.16 (Sep 8, 2015)

  • Bug fixes:
  • AssertionError crash when trying to rebuild an index.
  • AssertionError crash when text is being loaded in the preview pane.
  • AssertionError crash during indexing when the user deletes a folder that is about to be indexed.
  • NoSuchMethodError crash on MS Office files with Java versions older than 1.6.0 Update 18.
  • AssertionError crash when deleting an index that is about to be automatically updated.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.15 (Aug 29, 2015)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Tentative bugfix for long-standing AssertionError crash during indexing.
  • Fixed HTML encoding issues.
  • Fixed EPUB encoding issues.
  • Outlook PST file was not properly closed after indexing.
  • Crash while indexing certain MS Office files.
  • Reenabled GTK 2 fallback for all Linux distributions.
  • Changes:
  • If a crash occurs during indexing, DocFetcher will now keep indexing and also tell which file caused the crash.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.14 (Feb 18, 2015)

  • Features:
  • Added GUI translations for Greek, Spanish, Hungarian and Dutch. Updated French GUI translation.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed EPUB issues.
  • Bug #737: DocFetcher got stuck during indexing when trying to index a zip file containing entries with absolute paths. (TrueZIP 7.7.5 ? 7.7.7)
  • Crash while indexing PDF files containing unsupported annotations.
  • Installation of the Java runtime through DocFetcher's Windows installer was broken due to recent changes in the Java runtime installer.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.13 (Jan 15, 2015)

  • Features:
  • Added extraction of PDF annotations.
  • Selecting all results by pressing Ctrl+A.
  • Advanced setting: Text encoding override.
  • Bugfixes:
  • Workaround for bug #899 and numerous similar reports: MergePoliy.MergeException crash during indexing.
  • Workaround for bug #874 and numerous similar reports: OutOfMemoryError crash during indexing.
  • Workaround for bug #880 and numerous similar reports: NullPointerException crash during indexing.
  • DocFetcher won't crash anymore when trying to load or save a folder tree that is too deep. Instead, only an error message will be shown.
  • Fixed some JPEG-related crashes (metadata-extractor 2.6.4 → 2.7.0).
  • Fixed some MS-Office-related crashes (POI 3.10-FINAL → 3.11).
  • Bug #832: If index updates and deletions have been disabled in the advanced settings, pressing the F5 and Delete keys crashed the program.
  • The DocFetcher.bat file can now be launched from a directory outside the program folder.
  • Fixed slow loading and writing of indexes on network drives.
  • Fixed certain crashes on encrypted PDF files (Bouncy Castle 1.47 → 1.46).
  • Fixed some PDF-related crashes (PDFBox 1.7.0 → 1.8.7).
  • Changes:
  • Removed the unused 'WebInterfacePageSize' setting from the advanced settings file.
  • Advanced settings: Improved source code mode (Analyzer=1)

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.12 (Sep 25, 2014)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Some MS Office files couldn't be indexed.
  • Bug #741: Crash on OpenOffice files containing no content.xml entry.
  • The Analyzer setting in the advanced settings couldn't be changed.
  • Features:
  • Advanced setting: Follow NTFS junctions and symlinks during indexing.
  • Advanced setting: Disable writing the program settings to disk.
  • Changes:
  • Upgraded POI library from 3.10 beta 1 to 3.10 FINAL, this should fix some MS-Office-related bugs.
  • Upgraded java-libpst library from 0.7 to 0.8.1, this should fix some Outlook-related bugs.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.11 (Sep 25, 2014)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Certain EPUB files caused DocFetcher to crash.
  • Fixed a long-standing “AssertionError” crash that occurred randomly during indexing.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.10 (Feb 19, 2014)

  • Features:
  • Added EPUB support.
  • Advanced settings: New entry 'SkipTarArchives' for disabling tar archive support.
  • Bugfixes:
  • Bug #659: Windows installer downloaded an obsolete Java runtime version.
  • Bug #670: Crash when entering an invalid value into the occurrence field above the preview pane.
  • Bug #573, #612 and others: Crash while indexing zip archives.
  • Changes:
  • For developers:) Removed AspectJ dependency.
  • Updated Russian GUI translation.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.9 (Sep 6, 2013)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Critical bugfix: With some MS Office files, DocFetcher could get stuck in an infinite indexing loop, causing continuously high CPU usage (bug #566).
  • Changes:
  • Updated POI library; this should fix a couple of MS Office related indexing errors.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.8 (Aug 22, 2013)

  • Features:
  • misc/paths.txt file: Customization of the SWT library path, and support for path variable ${user.home}.
  • GUI translations for Simplified Chinese, French and Portuguese.
  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a major network performance issue.
  • Excel 2007 files were not properly closed after indexing.
  • The indexes setting in misc/paths.txt was broken in portable DocFetcher.
  • Changes:
  • The default memory limit has been raised from 256 MB to 512 MB.
  • Outlook indexing is not restricted to PST files anymore.
  • Upgraded TrueZIP library from 7.5.5 to 7.7.3, this should fix a zip-file related crash.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.7 (Apr 9, 2013)

  • Features:
  • Advanced setting 'InitialSorting' for changing the initial sorting of the results (e.g. sort by last-modified date instead of by score).
  • Command-line index updating via '–update-indexes' parameter.
  • Support for FLAC files.
  • Bugfixes:
  • Certain MS Office files were not closed properly after indexing.
  • Bug #462: Crash when changing the OS theme after indexing.
  • File exclusion didn't work with UNC paths.
  • Copying files on the result pane via Ctrl+C did not work.
  • DocFetcher could not read RTF files created by TextMaker.
  • DocFetcher got stuck when indexing corrupted MP3 files.
  • Bug #487: Incorrect reference from the Windows Registry to the daemon executable.
  • Workaround for bug #422 and others: Crash when expanding a node in the Search Scope during indexing.
  • Bug #430: Crash when entering certain invalid queries, e.g. fuzzy query with similarity >= 1: “example~1”.
  • Bug #469: AssertionError in some MS Word documents.
  • Changes:
  • When the indexes are loaded during startup, a loading message is shown in the Search Scope pane.
  • Files on the result pane can now be opened by pressing Enter.
  • Windows installer: Daemon is now installed for all users, not only for the current user.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.6 (Feb 20, 2013)

  • Features:
  • Support for MP3 metadata.
  • Support for JPEG Exif metadata.
  • On the preview pane, you can now copy the selected text via a 'Copy' menu entry (i.e. by using the mouse, rather than the keyboard).
  • Advanced setting for customizing the initial sorting of the search results (e.g. initially sorting by last modified date rather than by score).
  • Advanced setting for turning off the reporting of obsolete index files on startup.
  • Advanced setting for switching between indexing formulas and formula results in Excel files.
  • Bugfixes:
  • Bug #367: DocFetcher was unable to handle UNC paths, such as \\hostame\foldername. It erroneously converted them to something like C:\hostname\foldername and then complained that the folder doesn't exist.
  • The metadata extraction for MS Office files was broken.
  • Changes:
  • Upgraded POI library to v3.9, this should fix a couple of MS Office related indexing errors.
  • When copying files from the result table, DocFetcher now puts actual files on the clipboard, rather than file paths.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.4 (Nov 13, 2012)

  • Features:
  • The paths to the settings and indexes files can be customized through the file misc\paths.txt.
  • Bugfixes:
  • IndexOutOfBoundsException crash on some Outlook PST files.
  • AssertionError crash when closing the indexing dialog after indexing.
  • Crash on Outlook PST files containing e-mails without last-modified field.
  • Crash when trying to index archives containing files whose names contain characters that are not supported on the current platform. For example, filenames may contain the ':' character on Linux, but not on Windows.
  • The “Store relative path” option on the indexing dialog was broken.
  • Crash when searching in an empty folder hierarchy, i.e. a folder hierarchy containing no indexable files.
  • Crash when trying to index an extremely deep folder hierarchy.
  • Expanding a folder in the Search Scope area while an indexing process is running in the background sometimes crashed the program.
  • Portable DocFetcher failed to launch if it was moved between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.3 (Aug 31, 2012)

  • Features:
  • Russian translation of GUI.
  • Bugfixes:
  • Bug #3561223: ClassCastException crash on Outlook PST files.
  • Bug #3559892: Crash in the preview pane when trying to display Outlook emails that have no 'send date' field.
  • Fixed broken link to bug tracker on crash window.
  • On Windows, the uninstaller left a “lang” folder in the DocFetcher folder.
  • DocFetcher does not crash anymore if any image files are missing.
  • Changes:
  • Now a warning message is shown if DocFetcher was installed or unpacked on top of a previous version.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.2 (Aug 31, 2012)

  • On Windows, if the program was installed on top of a previous program version, it crashed during the indexing of archive files.

New in Portable DocFetcher 1.1.1 (Aug 16, 2012)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Problem with reading certain PDF files.
  • NullPointerException crash on OpenOffice files.