ASP Advantage 1994 2nd Q2/The Association of Shareware Professionals - The Official ASP Advantage (2nd Quarter)(1994).bin/files/writions/petpe305/whybuype.txt

Text File | 1993-07-07 | 10.0 KB | 185 lines

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                   Why Buy pE - The "perfect" Editor

    OK,  you've  gotten  a  copy  of  pE, now, how are you going to
    evaluate it?  There are a skillion  editors  out  there.    Why
    should you try  one  more?    And why this one?  And why should
    you send Just Excellent Software the registration fee?

    Well, for starters, as far as I know, this is the  only  editor
    that  allows  you  to  edit  files  in true windows that can be
    sized, moved, zoomed,  colored,  and  cut  and  pasted  between
    effortlessly, logically   and  bug  freely.    Alt-Home  sizes,
    Alt-End moves.  With a mouse, grab the lower  right  corner  to
    size, or the window title (filename) to move.

    So What?  - you ask.

    Have  you  ever  wanted  to keep a reference file on the screen
    that maybe had data that was only a few  columns  wide?    With
    pE,  you  can  not  only have it occupy that part of the screen
    you want, but when you want to, you can go grab  whatever  part
    you want and stick it in the file you're working on.

    Have  you  ever  wanted  to  see  the function referenced in an
    include statement?  Alt_I goes and gets the  Include  file  and
    puts it  into  a new window to edit or view.  Put the cursor on
    the line below this one and press Alt  I.    F2  will  get  you
    back.

    --> READ WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT PE IN "QUOTES.TXT"

    Then there's  the  file  chooser.  Don't you just love having a
    program ask you to "Enter Filename:"  and you've forgotten how
    to spell the name or even worse,  what  directory  it  was  in?
    With  pE,  Alt_O  (open),  Alt_E  (edit),  Alt_M (merge), Alt_V
    (view), all present the file chooser.  With  the  file  chooser
    you  can  navigate  all  over your disk with a few key strokes.
    Pressing the first letter of your filename moves the highlight
    bar to the first file in the current  directory  starting  with
    that letter.    Selecting the file becomes a matter of pressing
    Enter ─┘.  By the way, see the symbol for Enter?  That's done
    by  literally  entering  a  ^Q  followed  by  putting  pE  into
    graphics  mode,  and selecting a horizontal bar followed by the
    lower right corner (single) graphic.  Much easier  to  do  than
    say.

    While  we're  on  the  subject of graphics, IBM in its infinite
    wisdom, bequeathed upon the PC a character set that allows for
    continuous lines that form several different box  styles.    Do
    you really  want  to  write  a macro to draw a box?  If you do,
    you can, but don't need to!  Try this, instead.  Alt_B (mark a
    Block, rectangular), followed by cursor  right  several  times,
    followed  by  cursor  down  several  times,  followed by Alt_1.
    Surprised?  Now put the cursor on the left  edge  of  the  box.
    Press Alt_1.   Lookee  there!  Try the cursor on the top bar of
    the box, followed by an  Alt_2.    If  you've  followed  what's
    written  you  should  have  a  box  with two intersecting lines
    through it.

                         ┌──────╥───────┐
                         │      ║       │
                         ├──────╫───────┤
                         │      ║       │
                         │      ║       │
                         └──────╨───────┘

    But wait a minute.  Suppose the box isn't where  you  want  it.
    Mark it  starting  at  the upper left corner with Alt_B.  Press
    End to mark all the way to the upper right  corner,  then  down
    arrow to the bottom row of the box.  Press F7 (shift text) and
    then watch the box float around the screen as you cursor left,
    right, up,  or  down.  When you got it where you want it, press
    the grey + key on the numeric keypad.  Try that  with  whatever
    editor you're  using!    With a mouse, you can mark by clicking
    the right button and dragging.  Letting go of the  button  ends
    the mark.    Clicking  the  left  button anywhere in the marked
    region and  dragging  moves  the  marked  area  around  on  the
    screen.  This  is  an exclusive feature of pE's.  No other text
    editor has this capability - so far.

    So now you're saying well that's fine but I need  something  to
    write programs with.  That means you want regular expressions,
    find  and  replace  (forward  or  backward),  brace (or parend)
    matching and the ability to mark a spot and return to it.    Of
    course pE does all those things, and a hundred more.

    When  you  shell to DOS, pE's swaps all but 2K of itself out to
    EMS, XMS, or a  disk  file.    This  frees  up  memory  to  run
    compilers, other  programs,  or  even another copy of pE.  Type
    exit and you're back where you started.    Of  course  you  may
    want to see what you did during that DOS shell.  Press F11 (or
    choose DOS window from the Window menu) and a window is opened
    with your  last  DOS screen.  The text can be edited, saved, or
    the window can be just sized and used to review its contents.

    The calculator, one  program  of  several  additional  programs
    which come  with  registration,  is  gotten  to by ^c.  It does
    multi-base arithmetic, if you're into that.  It also does date
    arithmetic.  Ever wonder how old you were in days?  The result
    is available by pressing Alt = in pE.

    So how about documenting my program.  When I'm writing docs, I
    want word wrap and formatting capabilities.  And boy  would  it
    be  nice  to  have my program in one window and the doc file in
    another!  That way, the documentation  may  even  be  accurate!
    And  what  I don't want is to have to learn 400 word processing
    commands.  Well, the file you're reading  was  typed  with  the
    line length set  to  68.    That's it, brother.  Automatic word
    wrap at the right margin, and follow  the  left  margin  above.
    Intelligent, Huh?    Now if you want to get fancy ^F6 will turn
    automatic formatting on so as you delete or insert, paragraphs
    will be  formatted  according  to  the  style  you  set  up  in
    "Paragraph Format"  under Options in the pull down menus.  You
    can choose  from  Left  justify,  Center or Right justify.  You
    can  even  choose  to  have  the  first  line  of  a  paragraph
    indented, or not.  And the best part of all this, is with this
    one  paragraph,  you  probably have learned as much as you need
    to, to format paragraphs.  The  user's  guide  goes  into  much
    more depth, of course.

    Alt_P (print) invokes the print processor.  You can just print
    whatever  is  in  pE's  active  window  with an ENTER on "Begin
    Printing", or you can adjust  margins,  and  turn  headers  and
    footers  on,  or  off,  or even print to a file on disk, so you
    can preview how it will look  on  paper,  before  you  waste  a
    tree.   The  registered  version  of  pE  comes  with the print
    processor as an independent  program,  so  you  can  print  and
    format files without having to read them into pE.

    The registered version also comes with a little program called
    pk.exe  which  reads  the  key.txt  file  and  creates key.ped.
    Meaning you can make any key (almost) do any function.   So  if
    you  insist  on  using  the world famous Wordstar keystrokes to
    move the cursor around, have at it.

    Speaking of Options,  and  pull  down  menus,  have  you  tried
    colors yet?   Its  lots  of  fun.    The  pull  down  menus are
    accessed by holding the Alt key down  and  pressing  the  space
    bar.   The  top line of your screen will light up with the menu
    bar.  Clicking  the  right  mouse  button  when  the  mouse  is
    pointing  at  the  top  line  of the screen will also cause the
    menu bar to appear.  Pressing the highlighted  letter  followed
    by Enter  moves  you  to  the  menu  of  choice.  Note the item
    labeled Help.  There are about 60 or 70 (lost  count)  of  help
    screens.  You  can  get to the help menu with F1.  If you don't
    like borders, turn them off.  The mouse can still  be  used  to
    scroll and size and mark.

    When you save options (^F2) pE's environment at that moment is
    written to a file named ENV.PED in the current directory.  For
    options  you  want to use most everywhere, you should be in the
    \pe directory when you save options.  This is because pE first
    looks in the current directory for  ENV.PED  and,  not  finding
    it, then looks  in  its  "home"    directory.    That is, where
    pe.exe was loaded from.  This makes it  nice  if  you  want  to
    have   different   environments  (for  different  purposes)  in
    different directories.

    Well if you're still with me at this point, thank you for your
    patience.  pE is 32,000 (more or less) lines of  'c'  code  and
    about 4000  lines  of  assembler.    There are 523 functions at
    last count.  Your  registration  will  enable  me  to  continue
    development  of  pE  and other products which are in the works.
    If pE can be made to do what you want it to do that it doesn't
    already do,  why  don't  you  drop  me  a  line.    I   welcome
    suggestions, whether  or  not you buy from me.  (I welcome them
    more if they're accompanied by a check, however).  Please note
    that the trial period is 30 days...

    John Salidis Just Excellent Software, Inc.

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