kbb@linus.UUCP (Kenneth B. Bass) (04/16/84)
First, I would like to thank those of you who replied to my request. Although I have not had time to examine any of the editors in detail, I will give a summary of the replies that I received. For those who missed my original request, I will restate it. I am looking for a simple, but versatile text editor - as opposed to a word processor - to run under MSDOS. Our main need is for editing source files, where we don't need any of the 'nice' functions that most word processors have. Many different editors were suggested to me. Of those, two were by far most popular. The first was the IBM Personal Editor. Those who recommended it seemed most impressed with its price - about $100. The other popular editor was Edix, by Emerging Technology in Boulder, Co. Although much more expensive (about $400), Edix seems to provide many of those features that you always thought would be nice to have. Some of these include (up to 4) windows, easy redefinition of keys - including function keys, and also user defined macros. Many others were recommended, but most of these were associated with a particular language (such as DeSmet C,and Turbo Pascal). Also, I was informed that 'PC Tech Journal' had a review of 16 text editors a few issues ago (no date was given). As I said, I haven't tried any of these yet. This was mainly just a summary of the info. I received. Thanks to those who replied, linus!kbb
dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (04/18/84)
An excellent word processor and text editor is PC-WRITE, a program distributed on a "commission shareware" basis. PC-WRITE can be had for $10 from the author, Quicksoft (219 First N. #224, Seattle, WA 98109, phone (206) 282-0452). It supports two windows on the screen, moving text from file to file, suspending editing to go play in DOS underneath PC-WRITE (and returning to PC-WRITE just where you were), on-screen help, etc. etc. etc. Version 1.4 is good, but version 1.5 is outstanding (and has the extra features like extensive on-screen help I raved about in the last sentence). I'd use it no matter what it cost. (Within reason!) By the way, if you really like it, the author would like you to send $75, in return for which you get the source (!!), phone support, and a $25 commission for each suckerother person you get to "register" (pay $75 for) a copy got from you. I have no connection with Quicksoft other than being an appreciative customer.
todd@islenet.UUCP (04/20/84)
Not to belabor the point, but the editor that comes with Turbo
Pascal is not just for editing Turbo Pascal source code. The
editor simply manipulates standard sequential text files. I
use it to create and edit source code for Turbo Pascal, MRI
Modula-2, and Microsoft/Lattice C. And it would work just as
well with any other language that requires its source to be
stored as sequential text files.
Its only real limitations are:
-no windows
-60+K bytes max file size
Its strengths are:
-follows Wordstar style commands
if you know how to use Wordstar, you know how to use
the Turbo Pascal editor right away
-supports autoindenting for block structured languages
-program is small and takes up very little disk space (33K)
-relatively fast
-keys can be redefined
-relatively cheap (still $49.95 with T-Pascal compiler)
Todd Ogasawara -- University of Hawaii -- Dept. of Psychology
{ dual, vortex, uhpgvax }!islenet!todd