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Uedit-ReadMe
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Uedit-ReadMe
Copyright (C) 1986-87, Rick Stiles
P O Box 666
Washington, IN 47501
(812) 254-4986
Dear folks,
Uedit is a Shareware word processor. It is extremely versatile and powerful,
and yet it is friendly and easy for beginners and non-technical users.
Most commercial word processors and editors are not as friendly and
"intuitive" as Uedit is, as I hope you will take the time to discover for
yourself.
If one is friendlier, it surely doesn't offer the power, capacity, and
versatility, the freedom to change things the way you want them to be, that
Uedit does.
"Shareware" means you get to try it before you buy it. If "trying" becomes
"using", you are obliged to purchase the Shareware program, so that the
author gets paid for his work. That's how Shareware works. It depends on
the integrity the user.
See Uedit-Policy for purchasing and related information. When you register,
there's a 30-day satisfaction or full-refund guarantee. You can't go wrong.
When you become a registered user, you receive the fully customizable version
of Uedit (UE) and full documentation, along with many Extras, on two
diskettes, and other benefits.
You are encouraged to distribute Uedit to friends, associates, club members,
and bulletin boards.
About Uedit
Uedit is extremely versatile and powerful. And friendly.
You can try it immediately without reading beyond this paragraph. The menus,
Help, and Teach Mode are all you need. When you use Teach Mode, be sure to
try the shift/alt/ctrl shift keys, to find out what the various combinations
do with the keys and mouse-clicks and gadgets in the message line.
The goals in writing Uedit were openness, flexibility, power, friendliness -
above all to give Freedom of Choice to the user.
Being able to edit 100 files is only the beginning of the depth Uedit has got.
Learn Mode adds a new dimension, providing instant automation for people who
hate reading instructions and only want to know enough to get the job done.
The command language adds another dimension, letting you rewrite Every
command, even the gadget and mouse button commands - on the fly.
Then there is the overall configurability and customizability, being able to
swap and kill keys, change colors, customize the menus, etc.
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Then there is the ability to switch configurations, changing the entire
personality of Uedit, without interrupting editing.
Then there is the fact that it sleeps so that other tasks run efficiently and
can start other tasks and load in their results so that you can use them.
BlitzFonts in Shareware (for $10) will give you faster text displaying with
your programs on the Amiga, including Uedit. BlitzFonts is on Uedit's
diskette. (Please send Hayes Haugen $10, if you use his program.)
(Uedit-Policy lists most of the Extras that come with Uedit.)
Features
Uedit has too many features to go into here. To name just a few, it has
on-line Help facility as well as Teach Mode that teaches the meanings of
keys, gadgets, clicks, and menu selections. It has split windows, colored
(hilite and invert) regions, interlace screen and RGB color tuning, mouse-
scrolling and mouse cursor-placement, a full set of cut/copy/paste/clear
capabilities, for both regular and columnar text. It lets you edit up to 100
files at once, has paragraph reformatting, page-making commands, printer
selection and controls, undo-deletes, search-replace, edit-while-you-print up
to 12 documents or sections, ctrl-click-loading of any filename anywhere, and
much more. The reason that Uedit's features can't be listed fully is that
the program's versatility allows the user to create custom "features".
To gain access to Uedit's full customizability, you must become a registered
user by purchasing the program.
For instance, in this Shareware release, the Key-Help file must be in your
current directory in order for Teach Keys to work. When you get the UE
program, the Key-Help file can be rebuilt, renamed, and relocated, along with
countless other changes you can make in how Uedit works.
A Word of Advice
If you are not a programmer, or even if you are, ignore Uedit's command
language and anything technical-sounding in this ReadMe. Uedit was written
for Ordinary People, not for hackers. You don't need to know anything
technical in order to do powerful and automatic things with Uedit.
Just try the program. Check it out. See how you like it.
Press the Help key. Look at the menus. Select "Teach Keys" or "Teach one" to
discover key assignments. Print out the Cheat-Sheet file, if you want a
hardcopy for handy reference.
And remember: Almost anything you don't like can be changed by the user.
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Getting Started
Workbench and CLI: You can run Uedit in Workbench by clicking its icon. You
can run it in CLI by typing "Run UES file1 file2 file3 etc".
The menus tell you which key you can press to accomplish what they do. Menu
selections are always attached to a key or gadget or mouse command.
Here is what the key-prefixes mean in the menu selections: S=shift, A=Alt,
C=Ctrl, L=leftAmiga, R=rightAmiga. Keypad keys are abbreviated with "kp".
If a menu selection says "L-0", it means that holding down the left Amiga
key and pressing "0" will do the same thing as the menu entry. "SA-z" means
hold down the Shift and Alt keys and press "z". "C-kp0" means hold down Ctrl
key and press keypad-0.
You can learn the keys more readily by selecting "Teach Keys". For Teach
Keys to work, the Key-Help file must be in your current directory. When
finished with Teach Keys, press Amiga-ESC.
Amiga-ESC is Uedit's general purpose Abort key. Use it to Abort any
operation.
(When you select "Teach Keys", Key-Help is copied into RAM:. This makes
Teach Keys respond instantly. When finished using it, you can save some
memory by deleting the Key-Help file from RAM:.)
The function keys, F1 thru F10, do the following (with no shift keys):
F1 = next file
F2 = save file
F3 = close file
F4 = quit
F5 = swap next 2 commands
F6 = compile command following cursor (You need to be a registered user).
F7 = input search text and search fwd
F8 = input replace text
F9 = search fwd
F10 = replace & search fwd
Files and buffers: Uedit has 100 buffers, which can be used for holding
files (documents) and bits and pieces of text. The first 20 buffers are used
for holding up to 20 documents. How many files (or documents) Uedit will let
you load in is determined by the "Max files" menu selection.
The easiest way to load a file is to Ctrl-click its name in Uedit. Thus,
it's a good idea to keep one small filename file handy that has all your
document names in it, and always load this file when you run Uedit. (Mine is
called "dir.list" is everpresent when Uedit is in use.) Then you can ctrl-
click-load any file that you want. If you delete a file, erase its name from
your filename file. If you create a new file, type its name (and
subdirectory, if any) into your filename file and save the filename file so
it'll be uptodate.
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The "Files" menu lets you load/insert/rename/restore/save/close files. It
also lets you switch to the next or previous file in Uedit. But switching
files (or buffers or documents - they mean the same thing, in this context)
is easier using the gadgets.
To make the 4 invisible "gadgets" in the message line visible or invisible,
press Ctrl-g. The first and second gadgets let you switch to next or
previous file buffer. The 3rd and 4th gadgets are for scrolling.
The first N buffers in Uedit are used for holding files that you load or
create, where N is the "Max files" setting. The remaining 100-minus-N
buffers are used by commands or are not in use. You can load as many files
as the max-files value in "Show vals" says that you can.
You can change max-files to any value from 1 to 100 by selecting "Max files"
in the menu. Buffers 37-49 are used for such things as search & replace
text, Undo buffer, copied hilite & invert regions, and so on, so you should
not increase "Max files" beyond about 30 or so without first customizing the
Config! file so that the lower buffers, which are used for files, do not
conflict with those used by various commands. (You must have the UE program
in order to change how the buffers are used.)
Scrolling: The easiest way to scroll vertically is by holding down the mouse
button and moving the mouse. Vertical and horizontal scrolling is also done
with the arrow keys. For faster or larger scrolls, either hold down the up/
down arrow key or use Shift, Alt, or Ctrl with the arrow key.
Scrolling does not move the cursor. Thus, you can rapidly scroll somewhere,
take a peek (or do a quick hilite and copy without disturbing the cursor's
location). Then touching any key (or pressing keypad-5) will immediately
"find" the cursor, returning you to your original spot. (Some prefer to have
scrolling move the cursor. With Uedit's customizability, this is simple to
arrange. However, it is much more useful to be able to scroll, take a peek,
and return, without losing the cursor's current position.)
Moving the Cursor: Much of the time you may prefer placing the cursor by
clicking the mousebutton in the text. The keypad keys 2, 4, 6, & 8 move the
cursor up/down/left/right by word/character/line/page depending on what shift
key is used. (Teach Keys will show you the logic of the keypad keys.)
(NOTE: The configuration provided with Uedit tries to accommodate fast
typists, although the user can customize it for slow typists. Thus, the
unshifted keypad keys work by "word" rather than by "character", in cursor
movements and deletes. "Swap keys" in the menu lets you rearrange the keys
to suit yourself, however.)
Scratch deleting is what you'd normally use in meat & potatoes text work.
The following keys do scratch deletes at the cursor location:
Ctrl-d deletes the entire cursor line.
Keypad-7 (unshifted) deletes word-left.
Keypad-9 (unshifted) deletes word-right.
Shift-kp7 (press Shift and then keypad-7) deletes character left.
Shift-kp9 deletes the character under the cursor. (Slow typists may
prefer swapping these so that unshifted keypad keys do character,
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rather than word, deletes. Word deletes are friendlier for fast
typists because they can usually type the corrected word faster than
they can reposition the cursor, fix the typo, and reposition the
cursor once again. Also "word" operation facilitates rapid swapping/
deleting/inserting sections of text.)
Alt-kp7 (press Alt and then keypad-7) deletes to start of line.
Alt-kp9 deletes to end of line.
Ctrl-kp7 deletes to top of window.
Ctrl-kp9 deletes to bottom of window.
These are the "scratch" deletes. When you do them, the deleted material is
stored in the scratch-delete (Undo) buffer, buffer 45. (These, like all of
Uedit's commands, can be customized, swapped, eliminated, or whatever.)
Undo scratch deletes: Long as you don't move the cursor and make a delete
somewhere else, you can store any number of scratch deletes. Pressing
keypad-0 inserts the Undo buffer at the cursor.
Thus, after doing a series of scratch deletes using the above keys, you can
place the cursor somewhere, press keypad-0, and insert the deleted material.
If you move the cursor and do another scratch delete, the Undo buffer is
erased and the new delete replaces any earlier deleted text that was in it.
(If you select "Undo buffer" in the "Split window" submenu, you can monitor
the contents of the Undo buffer at all times or even type into it. There can
be up to 8 split windows in use.)
The DEL key deletes the character under the cursor, but does not store it in
the Undo buffer. Similarly, the BackSpace key deletes the character before
the cursor.
These keys, you'd use in normal typing and would not want them to destroy and
replace the contents of the Undo buffer. Thus, you can do normal typing and
simple corrections without erasing the contents of the Undo buffer, and you
can then use the Undo buffer for quick & dirty cut & paste operations. (If
you want even those keys to store their deletes in the Undo buffer, you can
swap Shift-keypad7 to BackSpace and swap Shift-keypad9 to DEL, but this is
not recommended.)
There are many ways to do cut/copy/paste operations with Uedit and to do them
in parallel. For instance, you can be doing cut & paste using scratch
deletes, hilite regions, and invert regions, all at the same time. You can
have up to 100 buffers with bits and pieces of text in them to use as needed.
Creating a hilite region: There are 3 ways to mark a hilite region. Press
HELP and it will show them to you.
But rather than do that, try this: Place the mouse high up and to the left
in the text. Hold down the Shift key and click the mouse. Move the mouse to
the lower right in the text. Hold down the Alt key and click the mouse.
There should now be a hilited region. This is one method of hiliting.
Try this: Select "Hilite buf" in the "Split window" submenu. This shows you
the contents of the copied hilite buffer. Now press keypad-Dot, the "period"
key on the keypad. This makes a copy of the hilited region. Note that it
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appears instantly in the "Copied hilite" buffer.
Put the cursor somewhere else and press keypad-Enter. This inserts the
copied hilite into your text. Note that the inserted text is hilited. Press
keypad-Minus (the "-" on the keypad), and the inserted hilite region is cut
out and a copy of it is kept.
To get rid of a split window, click the mousebutton in it, making it the
active window-split. Then select "Elim curr" in the "Split window" submenu.
Columnar text operations: Columnar regions are rectangular. This means that
when you create a hilite region to use for columnar text movement, the Start
of the hilite region must be in the Lefthand column and the End of the hilite
region must be in the Righthand column.
Place the mouse high up in the text and to the left. Press Shift and click
the mousebutton. Place the mouse low down and to the right. Press Alt and
click the button. Select "Col display" in the "Edits" menu. Now the region
should be displayed as rectangular.
Select "Col copy" in the "Columnar" submenu (in the "Edits" menu). This
makes a copy of the columnar region. Put the cursor anywhere with the mouse.
Select "Col insert" in the same menu and see what happens. To remove the
inserted, hilited columnar region, select "Col cut" in the menu.
You should experiment with the columnar text manipulations in order to
understand them. (If you altered this Uedit-ReadMe file in trying the above,
select "Restore" in the "Files" menu to restore it to the original.)
When using columnar display mode, TABS are shown as "box" characters. This
is so that columns line up correctly when spaces and TABS are intermixed.
(A TAB character can encompass many columns, even though it is only one
character. There is no way to split a TAB into two pieces, unless you add a
new TAB column using the TAB ruler.)
Tab Ruler: There are 5 tab tables, numbered 0 to 4. You can change the
number of the tab table that your document is using, by selecting "Tab table"
in the menu. Individual documents can use different tab rulers.
Select "See ruler" to see what the tab columns are or select "Set ruler" to
set the tab columns. If you have selected "Set ruler" and wish to set tabs
at high columns beyond the right edge of the window, hold the mousebutton
down and drag the mouse to the left, then release the button. To slide the
ruler (and text) rightward, drag the mouse rightward. Tab columns can be set
by clicking the mouse within 2 lines of the ruler, or by using the keys that
the help message says to.
Interlace mode: You can see twice as many lines of text by selecting
"Interlace" in the "Global modes" menu. To return to normal Workbench
window, select it again. (Tuning the colors is discussed below.)
Printing: In the "Printing" menu, select "Print select" and put in a number
0 to 3, telling Uedit where you want your printing to go. The message line
tells you what the numbers 0-3 mean:
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0 = raw text out the parallel port
1 = raw text out the serial port
2 = processed text using the Amiga's printer device
3 = raw text using the Amiga's printer device
If you embed printer control codes in your text (such as for boldface,
italics, etc) using the "Bracket word" or "Embed code" menu selections, you
must set "Print select" to 2 or 3 in order for Uedit to intercept its printer
codes and instruct the Amiga's printer device.
(Uedit's codes are of the form ESC#ESC, and setting "Print select" to 2 or 3
causes Uedit to look for them and instruct the Amiga printer device, which in
turn converts them to match the printer type that you have selected with
Preferences.)
If you embed your own custom printer codes in the text, then you can use
"Print select" values 0, 1, or 3, and they will be sent to your printer in
raw form. (To embed CTRL characters, such as ESC, press ctl-c and then the
desired character. To identify any control character in the text, put the
cursor on it and press ctl-/.)
Print queue: In the printing menu, note that you can print either a hilited
region or an entire document. Long as the print-job will fit into memory,
you can queue up as many as 12 print-jobs and still go on editing while they
print. You can even queue them up to different printers, by changing "Print
select" before selecting "Print hilite" or "Print file". If the print-job is
too big for memory, you will have to wait until printing is finished before
you can continue editing.
Save on idle: The last command in Config! is the "idle" command. (Like
everything, it is completely customizable and need not even exist, much less
be the last thing in the Config! file.)
If you select "Save on idle" in the "Local modes" submenu, then the document
will be saved if you pause long enough and if it has been changed since it
was last saved. The length of the pause can be set by selecting "Idle timer"
in the "Numbers" menu.
Margins, line-length, and lines-per-page: In the "Line/Page" submenu are
selections for lines/page, line-length, top/bottom margins, and end-of-line.
Notice that there are no left and right margin settings. There's a good
reason for this: You can control the "outer" left margin simply by setting
your printer up so that printing starts where you want it to. If you want an
"inner" left margin temporarily, simply indent the text and select
"Autoindent", so that succeeding lines stay at the same indentation. By
doing it this way, you will keep your files smaller than if margins were
stored in the text in all cases. And there's one less "setting" to have to
learn to use.
Similarly, to control the right margin, simply set line-length to the desired
value. (Why have to set both line-length and a right margin, when setting
only one is all that's needed?) You may also want to use "Right justify",
but that's a matter of personal taste.
7
Cursor page/row/column: To see the cursor's page/row/column, select "Row/
column" in the "Global modes" submenu.
Paragraph reformatting: To reformat a paragraph, put the cursor anywhere in
the line where you want reformatting to begin. Then select "Paragraph" in
the "Reformats" menu. Paragraph reformatting stops when it reaches a blank
line or a different indentation. Different indentation says that you want a
different left margin, hence it is not considered part of the paragraph being
reformatted.
Page formatting: See the "Page formatting" submenu in the "Edits" menu.
Pages are determined by formfeeds (ASCII character 12) in the text or by the
line-count, using the current lines-per-page value. (You can insert a
formfeed by pressing leftAmiga-f, or do it manually by pressing Ctrl-c and
then "l". To verify that it's a formfeed, put the cursor on the character
and press ctrl-/. It should report a value of 12.)
But you don't need to insert formfeeds manually. The "Page formatting"
submenu has selections for going to page#, going to top of page, going to
bottom of page, inserting a page-division, deleting the next page-division,
and auto-inserting page-divisions in your entire document.
When a page-division is inserted, the page number is automatically put in.
You can erase the page number by selecting "Del page #". Page numbers are
put 1/2 the bottom margin distance from the bottom of the page, where the
bottom of the page is simply the lines/page setting (normally 66).
When a page-division is inserted, the top margin for the next page is also
put in, after deleting any blank lines.
A formfeed character (ASCII 12) terminates the line it is in, just as the
end-of-line character does. (End-of-line is normally ASCII 10, the linefeed
character, but you can change it using "End of line" in the "Line/page"
submenu.)
A formfeed character (ASCII 12) causes the display to draw a line across the
window, making page divisions easy to locate visually. But you can find page
divisions quickly by using the "Bottom page" and "Top page" menu selections.
To insert a page-division and page number at the cursor, press lAmiga-v or
select "Divide page". To remove a page division, put the cursor somewhere
above it and press lAmiga-d or select "Del page div".
Odds and Ends
To abort any operation, press Amiga-ESC.
Primitive Mode is used for special text and number inputs. The Title Bar and
the message line tell you what to do in Primitive Mode.
If you press F7 to input a search string, you'll be in Primitive Mode. Type
in the search text, then press ESC or click the mousebutton to terminate the
input. (Carriage return isn't used for terminating Primitive Mode, because
often you will want to include one in your search/replace text.)
8
You can search for two things at once by putting a "$" dollar sign between
two search strings. The "?" question mark is used by search as a wildcard.
You can change these by selecting "Set wildcard" or "Set eitherOr". "Search
caps" lets you toggle on and off the upper/lower case-sensitivity of
searching.
The message-line gadgets are just like keys and mouse clicks. They can be
swapped, killed, reprogrammed, learned, used in menu selections, and so on.
Gadgets can be used with shift-keys, so there are actually 32 gadgets in all.
Menu selections are always attached to a key, gadget or mouse button command.
If no command exists - or if you kill it and select "Save data" or go to/from
the tiny window (see below) - the menu selection won't appear next time.
If you swap a menu selection, the key you swapped it with will be executed
whenever you select that menu item.
Uedit sleeps when it can, so that other tasks will run faster.
Clicking the Title Bar will switch to the tiny window. The tiny window comes
up inactive, so you can type into CLI immediately.
This also lets the Amiga reopen the big window in a better memory location.
Uedit works with Transactor Magazine's Tiny Window Manager, written by Nick
Sullivan. If "TWM" is running on your Amiga, Uedit will not create its own
tiny window but will instead alert TWM which will create a gadget for Uedit.
("TWM" is provided on Uedit's diskette.)
If Uedit runs out of memory and the "Memory..." message appears, that means
it is compacting its stuff in memory, creating a larger area for the Amiga to
use for graphics.
If "Memory..." appears, you ought to save and close some documents. Also
it's a good idea to click the Title Bar and reopen Uedit's window.
Uedit sleeps between your inputs. If you don't type anything for 4 seconds,
it will do housekeeping. If you select "Busies", you'll see which buffer is
being worked on. When the housekeeping is done, it sleeps.
In the window's Title Bar, brackets [buf#,flags] contain the buffer number and
various flags. If Learn Mode is currently learning, "L" will appear. If you
run a learned sequence, "R" will appear. If you are in Teach Mode, "T" will
appear. If documents are queued up for printing, "P#" will appear, where #
is the number of print jobs yet to be done, up to 12 maximum.
Uedit picks up font changes made with Preferences or SetFont. It works with
all known hardware add-ons. (Except C Ltd's TimeSaver (tm), which blocks the
Ctrl-mousebutton command, which means you can't Ctrl-click-load filenames
unless you remove the TimeSaver entirely. Merely turning it off won't fix
the problem. C Ltd says they are going to fix the problem in a new version
of TimeSaver.)
Some people start Uedit in their Workbench df0:s/Startup-Sequence and do
9
everything from inside it. They let it run other tasks and continue editing
or let it sleep.
To see the current settings for line-length, lines/page, tab-table, margins,
Uedit Serial Number, etc, press shift-HELP or select "Show vals". This also
shows you the size of the current document. There may be a slight delay for
housekeeping, if the current document has been changed since the last time
housekeeping was done on it.
Some settings are global and others are local to the current document.
Changing a local setting like word-wrap changes the global setting for future
files loaded in.
To rotate the 4 Workbench colors, press alt-HELP until you see a combination
that you like. To tune the RGB colors in Uedit's interlace screen, select
"Lace color", use the mouse to adjust colors, and press ESC to terminate the
color tuning.
Menus keep their old colors until they're rebuilt. To force them to be
rebuilt, click the Title Bar and then the tiny window or select "Interlace".
To recover the original configuration after fooling commands, colors, etc,
select "Load data".
After making any of the changes discussed here, selecting "Save data" will
save all current settings to disk.
Editing Tricks
If you are like me and hate reading instructions, and expect programs to be
Easy Without Reading, then Learn Mode is for you.
No reading is necessary. It uses only the normal editing stuff.
It offers immense power and capacity to automate tedious jobs.
If you need to search and replace misspelled names in 300 documents, you can
teach Learn Mode how to do one and let it do them all while you take a break.
To set up for such automation takes only as many seconds as it takes you to
do one operation yourself, showing Learn Mode what to do. Simply press ctl-s
to start Learn Mode, do the sequence of operations, and press ctl-r to end
Learn Mode. Then press ctl-r to see how it works. If you did it right and
it works right, press ctl-m to set the command multiplier and then press ctl-
r to run it as many times as desired.
The Manual has lots of Examples and Editing Tricks which show how to take
advantage of Uedit's versatility and power. It describes how to use Learn
Mode to click-add numbers or click-bracket words, do mail-merges, and so on.
A useful trick is to swap "Run learn" (ctl-r) with the mouse's buttonUp
operation. (A menu selection "Swap mouseUp" lets you do this swap easily.)
10
Then when you click the button, buttonDown will deposit the cursor like it
normally does, and buttonUp will execute a learned sequence!
The learned sequence can be anything. It can, for instance, click-bracket
text with printer control codes. The Manual's Editing Tricks presents many
such examples.
Or you can swap the mouse's buttonUp operation with another key, such as
the add-numbers key (ctl-=). Then you can click-add numbers that are
scattered in various documents. Pressing ctl-\ will put the running total
into the text at the cursor.
To swap the mouse's buttonUp operation with any key, menu selection, or
gadget, select "Swap mouseUp" and then select/press/click whatever you're
swapping it with. (To see the invisible "gadgets" or make them invisible,
select "Mark gadgets" or press ctrl-g.)
Normally the mouse's buttonUp has no command attached to it, so after you do
the swap the other key/menu/gadget won't have a command attached to it. To
reverse the swap, simply do it again.
Learned sequences can be stored on disk as numbered files. They are stored
in the S: area. The "Learn" menu lets you start, terminate, run, load, and
save learned sequences.
A learn sequence saved as learn-sequence number 3 might, for example, go to
top of document and type in a header, or go to bottom of document and type
your name and address.
Config! and Data!
Config! is a configuration file which is the Source of every command Uedit
currently uses.
(Config! is included with this Shareware distribution for informational
purposes, even though you can't compile it with UES, the non-compiling
Shareware Uedit program. When you register, you'll get the fully
customizable UE program and will be able to customize and compile both
Config! and the other custom configurations included in the Extras.)
Users often modify Uedit's configuration to suit their personal needs.
Simple changes are easy, even for non-technical users, because the command
language reads like plain English. Even some relatively major changes are
easy for non-programmers to make. Avid users sometimes create their own
fully customized configurations.
Data! is a compiled copy of Config! which Uedit loads at startup.
Data! should be in your S: area or in your current directory, along with
Help!, the help file. If Data! is in S:, then you can run Uedit from any
directory or disk drive. (Normally S: is assigned to the DF0:S subdirectory.
To assign it to myDirectory, in CLI type "Assign S: myDirectory".)
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You can keep as many config and data files on hand as you want.
The "Save data" and "Load data" selections in the menu let you switch
configurations and save changes to Uedit that you have made while editing.
Thus you can customize it while using it. You can load and save data files
from/to any directory and under any name.
You can customize Uedit virtually to the point of reinventing it.
If you run Uedit by typing "Run UE -dDataFile .." or "Run UE -cConfigFile .."
in CLI, it will load DataFile or compile ConfigFile. (You will need the full
Uedit in order to compile a command or a config file.)
You can have hundreds of commands on-line at the same time. Keys can load,
compile, run, swap, and kill other keys, so there really is no limit to how
many commands can be available at the press of a key.
There can be up to 7 menus with up to 20 selections each with up to 12 submenu
selections, making a total of 1680 submenu selections possible. (Menus too
are customizable, as you can see by looking at Config!.)
The configurability of Uedit is extreme. For instance, a Directory Utility
configuration is provided with the Extras. Using it, you can copy/delete/
rename files among dozens of subdirectories while at the same time pulling in
documents and reading/editing/saving them. All of this without even closing
the documents you were working on before you switched over to the dir util
config in the first place.
Kurt Wessels, a user in Seattle, wrote a config called UStar which emulates
WordStar (tm) and Scribble! (tm). Kurt's UStar is included in the Extras
that you receive on Uedit's diskettes when you register.
Others have written specialized configs for programming and to emulate
popular word processors or to meet their personal needs. Uedit's 2 diskettes
are too full to include anymore configs or Extras, so a second Extras
diskette will be available sometime in the future.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the many users who have given helpful feedback on Uedit since
it came out. Most of the improvements since V1.0 have been because of their
input.
I especially want to thank John Youells, Mike Davenport, Tim Jones, and Tom
Althoff for their encouragement and willingness to spend money on long
distance bills in order to help Uedit in Shareware.
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Your feedback will be appreciated.
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