Amiga Collections: Topik/Topik - Disk 18 - Serious (19xx)(Topik Public Domain)(PD)[WB].zip/Topik - Disk 18 - Serious (19xx)(Topik Public Domain)(PD)[WB].adf/Qed/Qed_New.doc

Text File | 1989-10-01 | 15KB | 334 lines

                                     QED

                              AMIGA TEXT EDITOR
                                   REV 1.0

                     Copyright 1989 by Darren M. Greenwald

                              All rights reserved


                            Whats new as of 6/22/89
                            -----------------------
                                  Revision 0.17

1.) There have been some minor changes to the menus to support the new
features in this version.  In addition, there have been some changes to the
default settings under the "Options" menu.  The new default settings are:

OVERSTRIKE      OFF
WORD-WRAP       ON
CASE SENSITIVE  OFF
APPEND SAVES    OFF
BACKUP FILES    OFF
MARK LINE MODE  OFF (this is a change)
FREE FORM EDIT  ON
INSERT TABS     ON  (this is a change)
TAB = SPACES    OFF (this is an addition)

Many users still apparently do not read the user docs, because I am
still receiving the question "How come I can only mark whole lines of
text?"  So, the new default settings is for "MARK LINE MODE" to be OFF.

The other change to the default menus is to insert a tab when the cursor
key is pressed; previously the default setting was to move the cursor
to the next tab stop.

Registered users will receive the command language documentation allowing
them to write an ARexx startup macro to set up these options any way that
they wish; registered users may contact me if they have any questions on
how to do this.

2.) QED 0.17 now supports resizeable HARD TABS.  You may still use
soft-tabs of course.

3.) Under the "Options" menu you may still toggle "INSERT TABS" on, and
off.  In order to clarify what this does: When turned ON, tabs will be
inserted at the cursor position (hard, or soft tabs).  When turned off, the
TAB key just moves the cursor to the next tab stop without inserting a tab.

4.) A new item has been added to the "Options" menu entitled "TAB = SPACES"
which is by default turned off.  This option affects how the tab key
behaves, and how tabs are treated when files are opened, or inserted.

    When this option is turned ON, files opened, or inserted will be
de-tabbed at load time converting any hard tabs (binary 9) to soft tabs
(spaces).  In addition, the TAB key can be used to insert soft tabs
(assuming that the INSERT TABS option is turned ON as well).

    When this option is turned OFF, hard tabs are left in files when
opened, or inserted, and the TAB key can be used to insert hard tabs
(assuming that the INSERT TABS option is turned ON as well).

5.) Tab sizes can now be set from 1-8 rather then the previous settings of
1-20 (hopefully this wont cause problems for anybody).

6.) In order to properly support hard tabs, some of the features have been
slightly modified:

    First, pressing the ENTER key will still auto-indent the cursor, however
now any spaces, and/or hard tabs on the previous line are replicated on the
new line which is inserted.  Before the cursor was just moved over, and
spaces were inserted when you started entering text.  This new method
guarantees that whatever characters you were using for indenting are
properly replicated.

    The line indent left, and right routines have been modified to use hard
tabs, or soft tabs depending upon your menu setting under the "Options"
menu.  If "TAB = SPACES" is ON, then spaces will be used, else hard tabs
will be used to indent lines.  The indent left routine is a bit more
complex in that it will attempt to delete spaces if present, and/or a hard
tab if there are no spaces present.

    A number of other changes have been made to many of the routines
including the formatter, word-wrap, cursor positioning with the mouse,
mark block routines, etc., to properly (hopefully) handle hard tabs in
files.

    If you come across any bugs, please let me know ASAP.

7.) There are some new features under the "Project" menu which allow you to
quickly bring the next, or previous window to front, and active.  This
feature only works if you have opened NEW windows; not if you have run QED
as separate tasks.  In addition the ABOUT menu option has now been moved in
the "Project" menu, and assigned an equivalent key press.

8.) There is a new item under the "Tools" menu which allows you to toggle
visible hard tabs on, and off (similar to the SHOW EOL feature which
toggles visible end of lines on/off).

9.) There are some new commands available from the command mode to support
these new features, and in addition, there are two new commands which allow
you to set what characters will be used for visible end-of-lines, and
visible tabs.

10.) I have changed the text colors of the OK, and CANCEL gadgets used in
all QED requesters; this was done so that the text would be visible on a 1
bit plane screen such as is possible with the 1008x800 monitor.



                            Whats new as of 5/30/89
                            -----------------------
                                  beta 0.16

1.) This is a relatively minor upgrade.

2.) There is now an ABOUT item under the Project menu which displays a
simple copyright notice, the version number of QED, and... the size in
bytes, and number of lines in the windows editing buffer.

3.) A bug has been fixed when starting QED from the CLI such as:

1> QED mydir/hello.c

Previously QED would not properly find the file if started in this manner;
this is (I believe) now fixed.

4.) The "qedsize" environment variable is now re-read whenever QED is
started, and no windows are currently open.  This is possible 1.) When QED
is first started, or 2.) If QED is started in the resident mode, and all
windows have been closed.

5.) There is a modification to the ARexx handling routines.  Previously if
you included a line such as "address QED1 OPEN" in your macros, QED & ARexx
would go into a dead-end lock-out situation.  QED will now handle messages
sent to QED's public message port in the main macro loop, however any
commands sent to the public message port while QED is busy executing a
macro will return an error code of 200.  Note that it is not really proper,
or necessary to use the ARexx 'address' command in your macro files to send
QED commands back to the same QED task.  This is already automatically
implied, and understood.


                            Whats new as of 5/22/89
                            -----------------------
                                  beta 0.15

1.) The PRINT command now works!  Printing is performed as a background
task, is fast, and can be aborted.  All printing is done via the
printer.device, meaning you can use printer device control codes in your
files if desired.  You can print a marked block, or the entire editing
buffer as explained in the user documentation.  See Qed_User.doc for
details.

2.) There is a new QED "resident" mode which can be specified when starting
QED from the CLI.  This capability allows you to start QED with/without
opening any windows, and QED will hang around in a wait state when you
quit.  A small utility program called "QGO" is also provided which will
send the necessary commands to QED asking it to open new windows, and files
much like you could do before when starting QED from the CLI.  See
Qed_User.doc for details.

3.) A bug has been fixed in the FORMAT routine which could result in a
lockup, and/or an odd requester.

4.) The "-" key on the numeric keypad is now handled properly.

5.) The CTRL cursor up/down keys have now been mapped to move the cursor to
the top/bottom of window respectively.

6.) There is a new command available from the command mode which allows you
to specify whether or not you want SAVE AS to turn mark block mode off
after saving a block of text.  This was primarily added for those writing
macros who need to perform some other operation on the marked block after
saving it (such as erasing it).

7.) The file requester now does a non-case sensitive sort of file, and
sub-dir names.



                            Whats new as of 5/5/89
                            -----------------------
                                  beta 0.14

1.) QED now allows you to open, display, edit, and save most binary
characters other then binary 0, and binary 9 (TABS are still converted to
spaces, though I am considering the option of supporting HARD tabs in the
future).  This should be sufficient for those who wish to include ANSI, or
printer device control sequences in their text.  See the user documentation
for more details.

2.) The command line language has now been enhanced to support additional
control sequences in string arguments allowing you to enter binary
character values in hexidecimal, or decimal values.

3.) The ALT key is now mapped to imitate the RIGHT AMIGA key press options
in the pull down menus.  This was done to free the CTRL key which can be
used to enter binary values 1-31 using the standard operating system
keyboard decoding routines.

4.) There is now a very important command added to the command line
language which allows you to send status information to ARexx (e.g., the
current line of text, file name, path name, option settings, line number
position, column position, etc.).

5.) Also a general clean-up of the ARexx interfacing code to send back the
exact error codes used by QED.  Previously these were sent as general
levels of severity, and made debugging macros a bit more difficult to track
down.  Now the actual error codes are sent to ARexx which correspond
directly to the various error messages that QED may display in a requester,
or in the command line window.

6.) The use of the SETENV variable added in the last revision worked so
long as you did not specify a file name to be edited as a CLI argument.
This has now been fixed to work properly with 1 file name argument.
Multiple file name arguments will still cause QED to automatically attempt
to size the windows into evenly spaced out editing windows.

7.) The "double-click" feature to turn mark block mode on/off has now been
modified to hopefully give a "better feel".  It was pointed out by a couple
of users that the previous method felt more like a triple click.  Note that
this is still not like WordPerfect (on purpose) which always goes into mark
block mode when dragging the cursor (something which I personally feel I
have to fight to convince it I dont want mark block mode turned on).  Try it
out!



                            Whats new as of 4/29/89
                            -----------------------
                                  beta 0.13

1.) You can now define any key when pressed alone to execute any QED
command, any DOS command, or any ARexx macro.  This is in addition to the
ability to define what any key does when pressed in conjunction with the
SHIFT, ALT, or CTRL keys.

2.) The behavior of the INSERT PROJECT, and INSERT BLOCK commands is now
slightly different.  Before you could only insert a file as a group of
lines above the line on which the cursor resided.  Now both INSERT PROJECT,
and INSERT BLOCK are affected by how the MARK LINE MODE option is set in
the "Options" menu.

     When MARK LINE MODE is ON, it is assumed you want to work
with line oriented blocks of text, and subsequently, insert project, and
insert block are inserted as a group of lines above the cursor position.

     When MARK LINE MODE is OFF, it is assumed you want to work
with document oriented blocks of text, and subsequently, insert project,
and insert block are inserted AT the cursor position.  Therefore you can
now use this capability to define sentences, paragraphs, etc., as disk files
to be inserted at the cursor position.

3.) QED now opens a public ARexx message port.  A unique address is created
for each QED task (e.g., "QED1", "QED2", "QED3", etc...), and is displayed
in the title bar, and command line window.  Note that it is not possible to
assign to private ports to each QED window opened with the NEW command due
to the limitation on signal bits assigned to each task by the Amiga
operating system.  Specific details on how to select which windows are
addressable via the public message ports is described in the documentation
provided to registered users only.

4.) You can now define the default window size that QED will use to open a
window, as well as any NEW windows opened via the pull-down menus.  This
capability requires the use of the SETENV function provided as part of the
1.3 operating system.  In addition, there is a new command available from
the command mode which allows you to define the default window size for NEW
windows.

     In order to use this function, assign ENV: to the RAM: disk, and
use the SETENV command such as -

1>setenv qedsize "0 20 300 100"

     Where the four parameters are left edge, top edge, width, and height in
pixels.  If you enter any erroneous arguments, the window is opened to the
full size of the WB screen a few pixels below the title bar.

5.) There has been a report of a bug from a Gentleman from New York who
indicated he downloaded QED_BETA.12.ZOO from P-LINK, and that it would
consistently crash on his system when opening a file.  I have been unable
to reproduce this bug, though he indicates everything is fine when running
QED_BETA.11.ZOO????  In fact he often could not even get it started.  If
anyone else can confirm this bug, please contact me ASAP at [phone].
 Thanks, Darren Greenwald.


                            Whats new as of 4/22/89
                            -----------------------
                                  beta 0.12


1.) There is now a move cursor to end of window command available from the
command mode.

2.) There is now a move cursor to top of window command available from the
command mode.

3.) There is now a text insert command available from the command mode
which inserts a string of text at the cursor position.  For example, you
could assign ALT/(any key of your choice) to insert a string such as
"printf(".  This command also allows you to include new line
characters, and tabs in your strings as well as delete, and
backspace.

4.) A bug has been fixed which could occured under beta 0.11 when
activating another text editing window; the bug was evident by the
check marks in the "Options" menu possibly not being set properly.  Under
beta 0.11, the bug would only occur if you activated another window when
QED was busy (e.g., saving a file)

5.) You can now assign commands to the function keys (when pressed alone),
or any key when pressed in conjunction with the CTRL, ALT, or SHIFT keys.
This means that there are about 300 keyboard combinations possible which
can be used for assiging QED commands, DOS commands, or ARexx macros.

6.) The user documentation, and introduction have been slightly modified.
I will probably continue to release the documentation with QED for a while
until the number of changes are few at which point the documentation will
be released as a separate ZOO'ed file.

7.) There is a now a window size/position command available from the
command mode which allows you to adjust the position, and size of windows
easily.  Typically this command would be assigned to key press combinations
of your choice, allowing you to quickly rearrange your text editing windows.