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Text File | 1993-07-04 | 27KB | 594 lines

pE - The "perfect" Editor(tm) Copyright (c) 1990-1993 by Just Excellent Software, Inc. These notes are addendum to the printed pE manual. Release 3.05 - July 4, 1993 ------------ A number of relatively minor anomalies have been corrected. - Page Down now works correctly after a file is minimized, then maximized. - Any number of files (but less than 40) may be opened from the command line, separated by commas, up to the dos command line length limit. - pE now correctly opens files without extensions from the command line. - default path is provided along with default name of "NO_NAME" when a new window is opened. - If the first character typed in response to a prompt on the status line is a 'del' key, the status line is cleared - Shift + numeric pad arrow keys no longer mark text unless the Num Lock key is activated. With the number of 101 key keyboards, it is felt that the 'grey' arrow keys shifted is sufficient. This allows the numeric key pad to be used to enter numbers by holding the shift key down (which was the intended use). Note that shift and any of the 'grey' arrow keys will mark text. Also ^K_K will begin and end a stream block. ┌───────────────┐ │Wordstar Switch│ └───────────────┘ Added /w as a command line switch. When invoked, /w strips the high bit (sets to 0) so that graphic characters used by WordStar are reset to normal characters. There is no corresponding toggle within pE. ┌────────────┐ │Options Menu│ └────────────┘ Added an options menu. You can get to it from the Options pull down menu or by pressing the assigned key. Key.txt (and .ped) have been modified to assign Alt-tab to this function. Once the menu is presented, position to the desired option and press ENTER. A check mark appears (or disappears) to the left of the option indicating ON/OFF status. When you have finished setting options, press ESC. ┌──────────────┐ │Visible Spaces│ └──────────────┘ ^Ins will toggle visible spaces on/off. When on, space characters are replaced with the current 'visible' space character (default value is decimal 250 [·]. The default can be changed with the command line switch 'e'. /e:n n = decimal value of character to be used when displaying blanks [default is 250 '·']. If you would like to just make spaces visible but not change the default value then use /e: Please note the colon is necessary in order to read subsequent command line options (like the filename or filespec ┌────────────┐ │Leave Blanks│ └────────────┘ Alt-Ins (the grey Ins, not the 0 on numpad) will toggle leave blanks on. Normal behavior for pE is to trim blanks from the end of lines. This means you cannot create a file having blanks after non-blank characters. Which of course, also means you cannot create a file having blank lines (lines consisting of only blanks. Now comes the 'Anders' option, named after the first requester. Command line switch 'a' (for anders) will leave trailing blanks alone. As usual, any command line option may be set 'permanently' by including the PED environment variable: In AUTOEXEC.BAT SET PED=C:\PE /a /.... This would mean 'do not trim spaces' each time pE is invoked. Of course, one can also create batch files with different combinations of switches for different purposes. Release 3.04 - May 18, 1993 ------------ ┌─────────────┐ │Opening Files│ └─────────────┘ pE will edit a file (put an existing file into a new window) through the simple means of you typing the file name (full filespec if needed) on a line by itself and pressing Alt-I (include). ┌──────────────────┐ │Multiple file open│ └──────────────────┘ pE will accept a list of files to open on the command line formatted as follows: pe file1.ext,file2,ext,file3.ext If this form of command line is used, then any line number entered after the filename is ignored. Any files in the list that cannot be opened are bypassed and ignored without message. Files are opened with windows minimized, except for the last file, which is opened in a full window. If you want to open a group of files consistently, it is much easier (at least less to type) to enter the filenames into a file named list.ped and to open using the @; see below @ command. ┌──────────────┐ │QuickExit&Save│ └──────────────┘ QuickExit&Save (Alt-Q) will write each modified file back to the same name and exit. It no longer prompts for files other than the current. IF YOU DO NOT INTEND TO SAVE ALL CHANGED FILES use Alt-X (Exit). Exit will prompt for each file changed before exiting. ┌──────────┐ │AllWindows│ └──────────┘ AllWindows is a toggle which determines the boundary of find and search/replace. When on, any find will continue to look for the "find" string in other windows. Windows are searched in number sequence. If the search direction is forward, then the next higher window number is jumped to and searched starting with the first line and proceeding to the end of the file. If the search direction is backwards, then the next lower window number is jumped to and searched beginning with the last line moving towards the top of the file. When all windows have been searched, the search stops. Replace will replace across all windows at once. BE CAREFUL. This is real power!!! Make sure of what you're changing before you change everywhere. One way to do that is to use pE's FoundList command; see below. You may now open 40 files at one time, memory allowing. ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │With pEp this is almost never a problem. (see "order.frm")│ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Hint. Keeping a file minimized saves 8K of memory per window. ┌─────────┐ │FoundList│ └─────────┘ pE will now create a "found list" and put it into a new window named "FIND.PED". The format of the found list is the filename in which pE found the string, the line number and the string. By positioning your cursor on any of the found items, pE will jump to the window and line number of the find string. It is very fast and will work in a single window or against all window depending on the setting of AllWindows; see above. There must be at least one available (unopened) window for foundlist to work. Foundlist differs from find in that it always searches beginning with the first line and proceeding to the last in each file, regardless of the cursor location. In addition it references only the first occurrence of a string on the line, rather that repeating the same line over for successive occurrences. ┌───────┐ │Key.txt│ └───────┘ Key.txt has received a work over. Many comments have been added along with a few key changes. As usual, the latest key definitions are found dynamically assigned in the command window (F1) and in the help text of each pull down menu. ┌──────────────┐ │The @ command.│(on the command line) └──────────────┘ pE will now open all files in a file list. 1. Create a file with the files you wish to open you can simply type the names into pE and save the file as list.ped. (what you call it is optional) you may use the DOS dir command with the > symbol to create the file list, i.e. dir *.c /b >list.ped would cause a list of all the files having an extension of 'c' to be listed into list.ped. Please note the /b, it is necessary to cause DOS to not leave spaces between the file name and extension. If you use 4DOS, you don't need the /b. 2. execute pe by typing pe @[name] by default, when pe sees the @ alone, it will open list.ped and proceed to open each file therein in a different window, until it runs low on memory (when there is 12K left) or it runs out of windows (40). If you wish to use a different file list, simply type the name after the @, i.e., pe @proj All files, except the last, will be opened as minimized windows. ┌────────┐ │JumpPrev│ └────────┘ You can now cycle forward or backward through the window chain. Pressing JumpPrev (F2) will jump to the window numbered one less than the current window. When a window is closed, the window numbered one less is made the active window. ┌────────┐ │JumpZoom│ └────────┘ Pressing F12 (shift F12) will tell you JumpZoom is ON. Pressing again will tell you its OFF. When JumpZoom is ON and you push the JumpNext (or Prev) key, the current window is minimized, the jump occurs and the new window is maximized. In other words if all of your windows are minimized and you want to go from one to another, this is a way in which you can minimize the use of memory and still have up to 40 files open at once. When JumpZoom is OFF, JUMP will simply take you to the next window, and not affect its size. ┌─────────────────┐ │Minimize/Maximize│ └─────────────────┘ The right mouse button double clicked on the top border of a window will either minimize or maximize the window depending on in current state. Just double click anywhere left of the right edge - 1. You may also click once with the left button and follow that with a click of the right button. Just don't move the mouse in between clicks. The control menu is gone. It was superfluous, unneeded and a pain. Pressing Alt Space bar produces a space. If you click on the 'control' gadget, the window will close. All of the functions available under the control menu are available through key strokes, mouse clicks or the command window. If anyone out there really cares, let me know. When running under WINDOWS, you can now reach WINDOWS control menu with Alt Space bar. ┌──────────────┐ │UnDo Paragraph│ └──────────────┘ If you align paragraph (Alt-a) and don't like the result, press ^F10. The lines involved will be restored as they were before you aligned the paragraph. We're still working on a general UnDo. Release 3.03 - April 7, 1993 ------------ Prices for software have been dropping. I can no longer justify the registration price, so I've reduced it. You can now register pE for only $29 and pEp for $49. By popular demand, I removed the timer on the alt key. It was confusing/annoying and unpopular. Its gone. Go to the menu with Alt+Shift or Shift F1. /m is gone also. ┌───────────────────────────┐ │Align Paragraph and Drawbox│ └───────────────────────────┘ When Alt + Shift was implemented to activate the menu, pE was no longer able to confirm paragraph alignment with Alt + Shift A. Similarly, drawbox could no longer redefine box styles 6 - 9 with Alt + Shift + (6,..9). This has been remedied in this release through the use of the Ctrl key. To temporarily change paragraph formats, use Alt + Ctrl + A. To change the definition of box styles 6 through 9, use Alt + Ctrl + 6 thru 9. ┌────────┐ │Calendar│ └────────┘ Alt-F2 brings up a calendar. (Calendar is also in the edit menu). Page Down advances a year at a time, Page Up goes back a year. The arrow keys advance/retract a month at a time. Left, Up go back, Right, Down go forward. The calendar window cannot be sized, maxed or minimized, but can be moved wherever its convenient. The calendar is accurate for dates between 100 ad and 14000 ad. Control Page Up will restore the date to the current date (system date). Pressing Alt-L(linemark) while in the calendar, followed by Control-End(pagebottom) will mark the lines in the calendar. Pressing the grey* will then copy the current month to the scrap. Now you can paste that month into any window. Note that when you start marking again in the calendar the first line marked will now be the bottom line so that you will have to press Control-Home (pagetop) to mark from the bottom to the top of the calendar. Using this method you can construct a calendar for any year, from any month to any month. Release 3.02 - February 9, 1993 ------------ ┌────────┐ │Menu Key│ └────────┘ Alt + Shift will access the menu immediately. Shift + F1 will also access the menu immediately. The menu can also be gotten to by pressing ALT and holding for approximately 1 second. Once the menu comes up you can press the first key of the options F, E, S, W, O or H. You can adjust the amount of time you must hold the alt key down with the command line option /m:d where d is the delaytime in seconds. (whole numbers only). A delay time of 0 causes the menu to come up instantly, but prevents you from using the Alt key commands. Please note that the environment variable PED can be set so that pE will always use whatever command line variables are set therein. For example SET PED=C:\PE /m:2 placed in autoexec.bat tells pe that its home directory is c:\pe and that it is to use a menu delay time of 2 seconds (default is 1). See the docs for other command line choices. Setting a large delay time (like 10 seconds) effectively turns off this capability. ┌────────────┐ │Control Menu│ *** killed later *** └────────────┘ pE now has a control menu like WINDOWS. Pressing Alt + Spacebar (or clicking what used to be the close gadget), will pull the control menu down. Control menus belong to windows, so each window has one. The menu choices in the control menu are: ■ Move - will move the current window (but only if there's somewhere to move it. ■ Size - sizes the current window. ■ Minimize - reduces window to minimum size ■ Maximize - makes window as large as possible ■ Close - closes the window. ■ Switch to - the same as the Jump List command. (switches to another window). ┌───────────────────┐ │Minimize & Maximize│ └───────────────────┘ Two new commands, minimize and maximize were added to make it very easy to control window size. The advantage to minimizing a window is that the a significant amount of memory is made available. Zoom will toggle the state of a window size when it is small or large. Sizing a window to its maximum size set's 'both' sizes of a window to max. ┌──────────────┐ │Stack(Windows)│- new option under Window menu. └──────────────┘ StackWindows will stack all windows to their minimum (or maximum) sizes. It is a toggle. It is assigned to the F12 key. Those of you who have the old style keyboards will have to assign it to some other key. ┌───────────┐ │ASCII chart│ └───────────┘ The ASCII chart was completely redone to be more useful and easier to read. Calling up the chart will pop up a window with a line devoted to each of 255 (out of 256) ASCII characters. (0 - nul, is not present). The highlight is placed on the last character it was on when you first called the ASCII chart up. (The first time its starts at 1, the control character A (). By using the arrow and page keys, you can position to any character you wish. Of course, you can also position with the mouse. Once you have selected the character you wish to use, pressing ENTER causes that character to be entered into the last window at the row and col the cursor was on. Pressing ENTER again will enter the character again. ESCaping from the ASCII window will close it. So will the normal window close (alt-k) command. When the ASCII window is closed (by any means), the character under the highlight is assigned to LASTASCII, which I have defined to be the (`) backward apostrophe (tilde?). Anyway, subsequent to the ASCII chart making this assignment, each press of the ` key will get you whatever ASCII character was assigned. If you regularly have use for that key, then I suggest you assign the command LastAscii to some other key. The ASCII window will insert a character into the window defined just before it, only when it is "active". It is active when the border is double and the title ASCII is the same color as the background of the window. If a column block is defined (and visible) in the window before the ASCII chart is selected, the character selected from the ASCII chart is used to fill the block. You are prompted for permission to fill the block first. If you select FillBlock (^K-F), the ASCII chart pops up to provide you with the entire range of ASCII characters to choose from. The window the ASCII chart is in does not participate in stacking (up or down) or cascading, but can be individually minimized, maximized or sized. There isn't much point in making it wider, although making it higher will allow you to see more characters at once. Note that the F2 key will leave the ASCII chart open and advance to the 'next' window. If only two windows are open, the F2 key will shift the focus from one to the other. ┌────────────┐ │Zoom Gadgets│ └────────────┘ The zoom gadget has been reworked to only appear if there are two defined sizes of a window. The zoom character is an arrow pointing either up or down. If it points up, when clicked the window will get bigger. If it points down, when clicked, the window will get smaller. Release 3.01 - January 11, 1993 ------------ ╔══════════════╗ ║Announcing pEp║ ╚══════════════╝ I am pleased to announce the availability of pE - Professional. pEp is the protected mode version of pE. This means that it can use all the memory in your computer. It also means that under Windows 3.1 (in enhanced mode) it will virtualize memory to 16MB (presuming you have sufficient disk). Registering pE allows you to purchase pEp at a discounted price. pEp will not be available through normal shareware channels, but only to registered pE users! You must have a 80286 (or better) with > 1 meg of memory to run pEp. You may evaluate a copy of pEp by filling in the registration form and mailing it in with a check or money order for $5 (+shipping). Registering pE will allow you to request a demo copy of pEp for no additional charge. Previous pE registrants may upgrade their versions of pE to the current version and purchase pEp for an upgrade price of $29 (+shipping). ┌───────────────────┐ │Tab Key in Hex mode│ └───────────────────┘ The Tab key now toggles back between the ASCII portion and HEX portion of a HEX display. Back Tab will go from ASCII to HEX as well. The cursor is a block in HEX mode. ┌────────────┐ │ToggleDecHex│ └────────────┘ New command, ToggleDecHex, allows the offsets along the first column of the hex display to go from hexadecimal to decimal. While in decimal mode, you can jump to any decimal offset within the file. Who likes doing hexadecimal arithmetic, anyway? I've assigned Shift F9 as the key. ┌──────────┐ │Scroll Bar│ └──────────┘ The scroll bar has been changed to work like everyone else's. (almost). I couldn't resist putting some gadgets in the status line which work like my old scroll bar did. The double arrow means that if you click with the left button the window scrolls one way, with the right button it scrolls the other way. The beauty of these gadgets are that if you get rid of the borders, you still have a way to scroll and zoom with the mouse. While the top scroll gadget (and now bottom) work with the left mouse button the way you would expect, the opposite action will occur if you click with the opposite mouse button. If you press the left button on the top gadget, the file scroll up (the arrow point up), if you press the left button on the bottom gadget the file scrolls down. The right button depressed on either of these gadgets reverses the action of the left button. Clicking left anywhere above the "thumb" will cause a page up, below the thumb a page down. If you hold the mouse button down, you will continue to page the file in the direction started until you release the button. It's much easier to use than to explain. ┌────────────┐ │Time Display│ └────────────┘ The time now displays in the right hand corner of the menu bar. It is visible any time the menubar is visible. If you pay attention to it, you will notice that the colon flashes once a second. ┌──────────────┐ │Count of Files│ └──────────────┘ The number of files and directories in the current chooser window is displayed in the lower right portion of the chooser border. Version 2.87 ------------ Added a "Start Up" command. StartUp is a macro always executed when pE starts up. It will only be executed if no file specification is provided on the command line. It will only be executed if it is assigned to a macro, and that macro is saved in env.ped. It may only be assigned to a single key stroke (no multiple key assignments). example: - on start up you would like pe to start having two windows, with the active one being the first created. start pe .... pe enter ^F1 (record macro) enter Alt-W {OpenWindow} enter F2 {NextWindow} enter ^F1 (end recording) press Alt-F10 - (that's the key I have assigned to StartUp) press Enter Now you can try the macro by pressing Alt-F10. If it works the way you want (it should if you're in window one) then you need to save your environment (^F2). When you save env.ped with ^F2, you are prompted with "local or master" environment. Pressing l(ocal) means that this (these) macro will be present only in the env.ped file in the current directory, while pressing m(aster) means that anywhere you start pe that does NOT have a env.ped file will activate the start up macro. I welcome any feedback regarding the usefulness of this feature. By the way, to disable a start up macro, Unassign it with ^- (unassign macro). Don't forget to resave env.ped. Added SAVE as a menu option. Menu now displays the current key assignment in status line, as opposed to always displaying the original assignment alongside the menu item. Added support for different date and time formats according to where COUNTRY is pointing to in config.sys. Changed format of ^d_d (date) to display "August 15, 1992" when country is US. See your DOS manual under COUNTRY for more explanation. Added line numbers as an option in the print menu. By turning to "on" you can print line numbers on your listings without affecting your file. Of course you can position to any line number with F9 (GOTO). Fixed a bug that prevented two copies of pE from being opened in Windows 3.1 (without a <very> ugly message. History prior to this point may be requested from Author.