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- 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.
-