home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Frozen Fish 2: PC
/
frozenfish_august_1995.bin
/
bbs
/
d07xx
/
d0770.lha
/
Uedit
/
Jenkins.LZH
/
EWDemoFile
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1992-01-06
|
5KB
|
89 lines
Robert A. Jenkins, Ph.D.
22901 Shagbark Lane
Miller Woods, Illinois 60411
(708) 758-7063
Monday Aug 5, 1991
Dear Rick:
You dirty rat! Just as I was begining to think that my configuration was
about done and I could stop fixing things and enjoy using it you had to go and
add all those goodies. And you want me to test it too.... I will do my best
to help.
I hope that you did as I suggested and just plugged the disk in and booted.
If you do it that way you see my idea of how Uedit should be distributed. We
are talking about absolute minimum difficulty in getting access to the tool.
All that is needed is permission from Commodore to distribute a disk with half
a dozen of the DOS commands.
I have just prepared this disk with what I have, in whatever state it is in,
in the hope that some of it such as the CL stack and my hyper commands will
save you some work. And I hope that some of the rest of my work will give you
some ideas. I don't suppose that it is likely that I will persuade you to
change your standard configuration to my EasyWriter configuration since mine
may well seem quite awkward to you after all these years of using yours. I
started to write it primarily because I was disgusted with WordPerfect, but as
I worked on the ideas I found myself coming up with a configuration that I
find is a lot easier to work with than your standard.
I have incorporated virtually all of the standard commands into my
configuration so that it is a complete editor and as powerful as your std one.
But I built it around a different core of editing commands. Take a look at my
config!F which handles files, config!E which handles editing, and config!H
which handles help. Most of the rest is just about the same as your stuff,
though some of the key assignments have been changed. And my approach to the
menu organization is significantly different.
Once I got the configuration working fairly well I focused my attention on the
problem of making Uedit accessible to the beginner. I had my wife in mind.
She loves working with her Tandy 1100FD laptop, but absolutely will not look
at a manual. And the help stuff that comes with DeskMate is pure crap. She
tried it once and that was it. I have not yet tried this configuration on her
but I know it is a vastly more accessible editor than anything I have seen.
So I started to think about the possibility of creating this demo disk. I
intended it to be a shareware disk that could be given away with every Amiga.
It would be a vastly superior editor to what comes with the Amiga, and it
would have an AmigaDOS stack which would help people to write scripts and use
the CLI. I have not written that stack.
I have a draft of a paper on wordprocessor design which I will try to get
published in BYTE. The basic idea is just a description of EasyWriter and the
suggestion that you can try it out, just download the Uedit-EasyWriter package.
My intention was to send you a copy to review with the possible impact on your
ability to earn a living from Uedit in mind. And then we could talk about how
you might like to try to distribute it. I know it is a touchy proposition
because dealers basically cannot be trusted. They have a powerful incentive
to give away your work in order to enhance their income.
This disk is not shareware, it just looks like a stripped down version. I had
to take out a lot of stuff in order to fit in the CommandLanguage stack for
you. That of course would not go out on a shareware disk. And it has the
the 2.7beta in place of UES so it will run my configuration. I just set this
one up for you this way so that you could see how it would look. And I wanted
to get it to you quickly before you duplicate the effort I put into creating a
CL stack. I am not entirely pleased with the CL stack but just doing the
basics took many hours.
I have integrated the s27errata file into my CommandLanguage stack. I am not
entirely pleased with the organization, but basically it works.
I have not integrated your changes into my configuration, which is included on
a separate disk.
I will now look into using your new commands, especially the gosub and define
stuff and let you know if I run into any trouble. There are several commands
that would profit a lot.
Now that your config is so much more powerful it is likely that we will be
writing larger commands that will be used less often. I think it would be a
good idea to extend the language with saveCmnd(keyName,pathName) and
loadCmnd(keyName,pathName). Parallel to saveLearn, loadLearn, but we cannot
edit learns so that is not very powerful. For example, I have a modula
structure analysis command that is quite large. If it were convenient to load
it into, say ctl-q, I would be happy to not have it on the menu, and just load
it as needed.
Bob