With build 642 we’ve added an awesome new feature called Background Parse. It is designed to let you get right to work on your project as soon as Understand opens, instead of needing to wait for the parse. Right away you’ll have access to the Project Browser and Editor windows, and as soon as the parse is finished, everything else will be available.

Other features added since the release of Understand 3.0:

Added build system monitoring with buildspy
Added support for Windows 8
Improved project building capability
Improved Visio Export
Added ability to annotate code

For those that like to live on the bleeding edge, we have tested Understand 3.0 with Windows 8 and they are fully compatible. You can grab the latest build of Understand here.

We are happy to announce support for directly exporting graphs to a Visio compatible file.

In the past we have used the Visio API to export Understand’s graphs to Microsoft Visio. Understand would attempt to launch Visio and use the API to interactively draw the graph in Visio. There were several problems with this approach, the nodes and arrows of the graphs were not adequately connected, and in some cases the API would refuse to launch Visio. Of course this approach also required that Visio itself be installed on the same system as Understand. 

Some graphs also have an option to export to the graphviz .dot format. This option is only available to newer graphs that are generated using the graphviz engine in Understand. Some older graphs use a different layout engine so that option is not available for them.

We have added a new feature to Understand called Annotations. Annotations give the user the option to add comments or notes to code without changing the source code directly.

These comments can be displayed inline, or can be turned off to only be seen in hover text so they don’t disrupt the normal flow of the code when you don’t want to see them.  Each annotation can be “tagged” with key value pairs which can be useful for organizing data using certain keywords, differentiating between authors, and any other identifiers you may want to use.  You can search using our Annotations Search GUI for quick access to exactly what you are looking for.

Annotations are saved in a SQLite database file which can also be modified and searched directly if desired.

Annotations are “linked” to entities in Understand and can be added quickly by right clicking on the entity, selecting ‘Add/Edit Annotations’, or they can be added from the top level menu. 

So, what happens to the annotation if the entity that it was linked to is deleted?  It is still there, it just doesn’t “belong” anywhere so it won’t show up in the in-line annotations.  These orphan annotations can be seen, and linked again to another entity in the ‘Manage Annotations’ top level menu.

This new feature is available to use in Understand build 618. We didn’t want to wait for the documentation to be completed before we made Annotations available so if you have any questions, please email us at support@scitools.com.  We expect the documentation to be available in the next month or so.  Any feedback on this new feature is appreciated.

We are excited to announce the release of Understand 3.0 (build 611 and later). 

We don’t like to make you wait for new features, so many of these features were already added in beta form and you may be familiar with some of them. There is an updated manual covering all of these new features, and several new floating licensing options are also available.  The upgrade to 3.0 is free as long as your maintenance is up to date and Understand 2.5 and 2.6 Licenses will also work with Understand 3.0.  Grab Understand 3.0 here

Features Added Since Understand 2.6 Release

• Objective C/C++ Language Support
• C++ Support for Templates and Overloads
• COBOL Language Support
• Python Language  Support
• Python API
• Re-written Command Line Tool ‘Und’
• Improved Parsing Tools
• Unused Entity Highlighting
• Keybinding Enhancements
• Clustered Call Graphs

New Floating Licensing Options

Node-Locked Floating License

A node-locked floating license is designed for a single machine that many users will be accessing, such as in a lab or a secure environment.  It is similar in concept to a Standard Floating License but no license server is needed, and it will only work on the one machine.

USB-Dongle Floating License

This license is ideal when the license needs to be shared between different people on different networks, or if there is a lot of traveling involved. The license is mailed to you on a USB drive. As long as that drive is attached to the computer, Understand will work. The license dongle can be shared between users as needed.

Dongle licenses expire after two years and will need to be replaced. There is an additional fee for new and replacement dongle licenses to offset the setup and shipping costs.

We’ve added a new option to highlight entities that are defined but not used.

To enable this option go into Tools->Options->Editor->Advanced->Unused Entities

Right now this only works for functions and variables. Let us know if you find it useful, and if there are other entities you want it added for.

Structure101 has several great tools for analyzing and refactoring your code base, and they have just finished adding the ability to import Understand projects into their tools. You should definitely check it out.

As an extra incentive, they are offering a free license to the first 3 Understand users who demo one of their tools and send an exported image such as the one below of any part of their code or an Open Source project. Just send it to hwsupport@headwaysoftware.com and tell them Kevin sent you

To be fair to another great partner, Lattix can also import your Understand projects and is a great tool for organizing and refactoring your code, so give them a look.

We moved our main office this week. 

We are still in scenic St George, near Zion National Park and less than two hours from Vegas. If you are in the area feel free to stop by and visit us!

Our new address is:

Scientific Toolworks, Inc.
249 East Tabernacle, Suite 200
St George, UT 84770

Many users have asked us in the past if Understand could have better support for Templates and Overloaded functions. We are excited to announce that this is now a reality. Our engineers have worked hard to add a completely new C++ parser to Understand, which is available for Beta testing in build 586.

Our current C++ parser was written with the goal of being able to use fuzzy logic to handle incomplete, non-compiling code gracefully and as accurately as possible. It does a great job at that and will continue to be an important part of our toolset. Unfortunately that same feature caused severe difficulties in parsing templates and recognizing overloaded functions.  The new parser is more strict than the old parser and requires a more accurate project definition. If you plan on using it, please follow the instructions from this post to ensure your project is as correct as possible:  Improving Project Accuracy (C/C++)

To access the new parser, just check the new checkbox on the Languages screen when creating a new project or in the Project Configuration dialog.

We welcome and appreciate your feedback and comments on this new parser – please send it to us at support@scitools.com

We’ve made a few changes to how keyboard shortcuts are managed with build 586.

Key Bindings can still be accessed via Tools->Options->Key Bindings  but this page now lets you search for key binding, either by name or by the actual keystrokes. This page also has all of the key bindings in one place for easy browsing. The other change was to add a separate page for each Component(Category) of key bindings in the navigation pane.

While these are relatively small changes, we hope they will make life easier for those who rely heavily on keyboard navigation.