NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/os/msdos/apps/5632

Text File | 1992-11-20 | 3.3 KB | 64 lines

Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps
Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!qdpii!ianst
From: [e-mail] (Ian Staples)
Subject: Re: Freeware editor recommendation wanted
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Keywords: VDE, Visual Display Editor
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 05:40:42 GMT
Lines: 52

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (David J Birnbaum) writes:
>Can anyone recommend a good, simple freeware msdos text editor? It
>doesn't need a lot of fancy word processing features, but it does have
>to be able to produce standard ascii files with no special formatting

I am also interested in this.  I have been using VDE (version 1.51) which
is *excellent* and is free for private use (but see further below).
It is *very* quick because it does everything in memory.  But that is the
problem - it only handles files up to about 80k (it uses some internal
algorithm to reduce that to a standard 64k segment).  The default command
set follows traditional WordStar, which is also good for many people.

However, I need something that can handle files of any size within reason
(say up to about 400k) to process large data files.  While this can be
done with VDE 1.51, you have to "split" the large file into chunks first
(VDE provides a command to do this) and then recombine them later using
the DOS COPY command:  COPY a1+a2+a3...  bigfile            Gawd!
Apart from being painful, it is _very_ difficult to convince yourself
that it has all come together properly again - especially when you see
how arbitrarily VDE cut the thing into chunks to start with.

VDE is shareware available from PC-SIG and is commonly advertised by
shareware distributors.  The author requests a voluntary rego fee but
"there is no required registration fee" for individual use.  This may
have changed since a new version came out and I notice that an article
in the Canberra (Australia) PC Users Group magazine "Sixteen Bits"
(March 1992, pp.12-13) refers to a rego fee of $US50 for a site licence
of up to 20 copies.  The author's address [was?]:

    Eric Meyer
    410 12th Avenue SE, #139
    Norman,  OK  73071  USA        Compuserve [74415,1305]

(If Eric Meyer sees this and confirms his address, I will be happy
to send him a voluntary contribution.  I really like VDE for small
jobs such as writing letters.  It supports underline, italics, and
bold if your printer does; and has a few other "word processing"
features such as "centre line" ["center" for you yanks out there]
and variable tabs, L & R margins, page length, and line wrap, but it
is basically an ASCII editor so you can't use font sizes and that stuff.)

Cheers,  Ian S.

Addendum:  I just looked for VDE in _Encyclodedia_of_Shareware_ (3rd Ed.)
The PC-SIG disk number is #1273.  As for speed, it quotes an example of
finding a string near the end of a 60k nondocument (i.e. plain ASCII) file:
WordStar 4 took 20 seconds, VDE took half a second (using an 8 MHz 8088).
--
Ian Staples                       | Internet : [e-mail]
c/- P.O. Box 1054,                | Fax      : [phone]
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