A much needed performance update has been made to Phitext; v1.1 is now available to download. If you have previously purchased the framework login and click the button below to download the free update. If you haven't decided to make the purchase this first update remains at the introductory price of $399.

The fully functional Developer Preview (only works in the simulator) has also been updated, but note that the default current version is for Xcode 3.2.2 (see the Quick Start Guide for steps to change the current version).

In order to improve performance UIView based drawing has been moved to CALayers, Phitext also overrides default actions to provide unobtrusive animations. Many changes have been made to PhiTextSelectionView ,whose job it is to draw the blue rectangle around the selected text range. This blue box is now optimised for large text ranges, Select All action now occurs instantly and the display now updates while scrolling for large selection ranges. The menu controller now disappears while scrolling to avoid visual artifacts from cluttering the screen. Selected text ranges near the end of the document are now well behaved.

The magnifier has been revamped; magnification is now pixel perfect. The magnifier goes beyond a straight clone of Apple's magnifying loupe. When it approaches the top of the screen it automatically shifts to the left or right to avoid your finger. By default the magnifier assumes a right handed operator and scoots to the left but this behaviour can be customised using NSUserDefaults settings. Many aspects of the magnifier can be customised in this way including the how close to the top of the screen it will go, glass tint color, size and of course the factor of magnification, any value can be used (less than one is undesirable for obvious reasons).

Over 50 user default settings have been added, to see the complete list check the com.phitext.plist file that is created in the Preferences folder in your application's sandbox. A couple have been used in the sample application that changes the magnification factor and displays a lined background. Other settings include: color of selection box, handles and cursor; the documents padding; text line wrapping; and fine grain controls for scrolling and cursor behaviour. For instance when dragging the selection handles the selection will snap the closest word boundary if moved fast enough, this velocity (pixels per second) can be set by changing the wordSnapVelocityThreshold key in the shared NSUserDefaults object.

Numerous bugs have been squashed that were hanging around the end of document. There were problems with the autoscroll, cursor position and display, cursor control using arrow keys on the hardware keyboard and more. If you still notice problems just let me know