DP Tool Club 17/CD_ASCQ_17_101194.iso/dos/prg/petpe501/whybuype.txt

Text File | 1994-09-02 | 11KB | 199 lines

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                 ║   Don't Panic - use Alt(only) for menu    ║
                 ║             - use F1 for Help             ║
                 ║             - use Alt-x to Exit           ║
                 ║             - use F3 to Save              ║
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                       Why Buy pE - The "perfect" Editor

          OK, you've gotten a copy of pE, now, how are you going to
          evaluate it?  There are a skillion editors out there.  Why
          should you try one more?  And why this one?  And why
          should you send Just Excellent Software the registration
          fee?

          Well, pE will read, and translate WordPerfect, Word for
          Windows, Word for DOS, Windows Write, and AmiPro files, as
          well as straight ASCII text.  No special effort required,
          it just does it.  If the lines are longer than you like,
          pE will wrap them on input.

          Not enough, huh?

          Well, pE will scan your directories looking for text
          (where _did_ I put that darned letter to First Fidelity
          Bank anyway?) and when it finds 'that darned letter' it
          will load it into a window which can be sized, moved,
          colored, cascaded, tiled or stacked.  And then it will do
          the same for 63 more, all at the same time.

          pE will search through files in its windows incredibly
          fast, almost instantaneously.  pE is capable of handling
          multi-megabyte files, and can use _all_ the memory in your
          computer, not just the 'lower' 640K, and up to 64 Mega
          Bytes of Disk to edit very large files.

          That's just for starters, read on!

          Have you ever wanted to keep a reference file on the
          screen that maybe had data that was only a few columns
          wide?  With pE, you can not only have it occupy that part
          of the screen you want, but when you want to, you can go
          grab whatever part you want and stick it in the file
          you're working on.

          Have you ever wanted to see the function referenced in an
          include statement?  Alt_I goes and gets the Include file
          and puts it into a new window to edit or view.  Put the
          cursor on the line with the arrow and press Alt I.  F2
          will get you back.  You don't have to be a programmer to
          appreciate this feature.  You can see it being used right
          here!

          --> READ WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT PE IN "QUOTES.TXT"

          Then there's the file chooser.  Don't you just love having
          a program ask you to "Enter Filename:"  and you've
          forgotten how to spell the name or even worse, what
          directory it was in?  With pE, Alt F O (open), Alt F E
          (edit), Alt F M (merge), Alt F V (view), all present the
          file chooser.  With the file chooser you can navigate all
          over your disk with a few key strokes.  Pressing the first
          letter of your filename moves the highlight bar to the
          first file in the current directory starting with that
          letter.  Selecting the file becomes a matter of pressing
          Enter ─┘.  From the file chooser, you can rename or
          delete any file on your disk.  Pressing F2 while in the
          file chooser allows you to select a different path, or
          drive.

          While we're on the subject of graphics, IBM in its
          infinite wisdom, bequeathed upon the PC a character set
          that allows for continuous lines that form several
          different box styles.  Do you really want to write a macro
          to draw a box?  If you do, you can, but don't need to!
          Try this, instead.  Alt B (mark a Block, rectangular),
          followed by cursor right several times, followed by cursor
          down several times, followed by Alt_1.  Surprised?  Now
          put the cursor on the left edge of the box.  Press Alt_1.
          Lookee there!  Try the cursor on the top bar of the box,
          followed by an Alt_2.  If you've followed what's written
          you should have a box with two intersecting lines through
          it.

                          ┌───────────╥────────────┐
                          │           ║            │
                          ├───────────╫────────────┤
                          │           ║            │
                          └───────────╨────────────┘

          But wait a minute.  Suppose the box isn't where you want
          it.  Mark it starting at the upper left corner with Alt_B.
          Press End to mark all the way to the upper right corner,
          then down arrow to the bottom row of the box.  Press F7
          (shift text) and then watch the box float around the
          screen as you cursor left, right, up, or down.  When you
          got it where you want it, press the grey + key on the
          numeric keypad.  Try that with whatever editor you're
          using!  With a mouse, you can mark by clicking the right
          button and dragging.  Letting go of the button ends the
          mark.  Clicking the left button anywhere in the marked
          region and dragging moves the marked area around on the
          screen.  This is an exclusive feature of pE's.  No other
          text editor that we're aware of has this capability - so
          far.

          So now you're saying well that's fine, but I need
          something to write programs with.  That means you want
          regular expressions, find and replace (forward or
          backward), brace (or parend) matching and the ability to
          mark a spot and return to it.  Of course pE does all those
          things, and a hundred more.

          When you shell to DOS, pE's swaps all but about 1K of
          itself out to EMS, XMS, or a disk file.  This frees up
          memory to run compilers, or other programs.  Type exit and
          you're back where you started.  Of course you may want to
          see what you did during that DOS shell.  Press F11 (or
          choose DOS window from the Window menu) and a window is
          opened with your last DOS screen.  The text can be edited,
          saved, or the window can be just sized and used to review
          its contents.

          pE (as of release 4.0) reads all the major word processing
          formats and converts them to straight ASCCI.  This means
          you can read files produced by anyone and give them back a
          file which they can read with any word processor.  pE does
          this by identifying the file format, no special action is
          required on your part.  pE will even wrap long lines to
          whatever you've set the paragraph format to.  This, like
          all options, can be saved so that it becomes the default
          behavior for pE.  A different set of options can be
          associated with different subdirectories so that pE
          behaves differently depending upon where you call it
          from.

          So how about word processing.  When I'm writing I want
          word wrap and formatting capabilities.  And boy would it
          be nice to have my program in one window and the doc file
          in another!  That way, the documentation may even be
          accurate!  And what I don't want is to have to learn 200
          word processing commands.  Well, the file you're reading
          was typed with the line length set to 68.  That's it,
          brother.  Automatic word wrap at the right margin, and
          follow the left margin above.  Intelligent, Huh?  Now if
          you want to get fancy ^F6 will turn automatic formatting
          on so as you delete or insert, paragraphs will be
          formatted according to the style you set up in "Paragraph
          Format" under Options in the pull down menus.  You can
          choose from Left justify, Center or Right justify.  You
          can even choose to have the first line of a paragraph
          indented, 'outdented' or not.  And the best part of all
          this, is with this one paragraph, you probably have
          learned as much as you need to, to format documents.  The
          user's guide goes into much more depth, of course.

          Alt_P (print) invokes the print processor.  You can just
          print whatever is in pE's active window with an ENTER on
          « OK », or you can adjust margins, and turn headers and
          footers on, or off, or even print to a file on disk, or
          another window, so you can preview how it will look on
          paper, before you waste a tree.

          Speaking of Options, and pull down menus, have you tried
          colors yet?  Its lots of fun.  The pull down menus are
          accessed by the Alt key plus the first letter of each
          menu, or Alt then release. The top line of your screen
          will light up with the menu bar.  Clicking the right mouse
          button when the mouse is pointing at the top line of the
          screen will also cause the menu bar to appear.  Pressing
          the highlighted letter followed by Enter moves you to the
          menu of choice.  Note the item labeled Help.  There are
          40 pages of help screens.  If you don't like borders, turn
          them off.  The mouse can still be used to scroll and size
          and mark.

          Well if you're still with me at this point, thank you for
          your patience.  pE is 40,000 (more or less) lines of 'c'
          code and about 2000 lines of assembler.  There are 523
          functions at last count.  Your registration will enable me
          to continue development of pE and other products which are
          in the works.  If pE can be made to do what you want it to
          do that it doesn't already do, why don't you drop me a
          line.  I welcome suggestions, whether or not you buy from
          me.  (I welcome them more if they're accompanied by a
          check, however).  Please note that the trial period is 30
          days...

          John Salidis, Just Excellent Software, Inc.

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