Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/247.lha/QED_v1.0_beta_0.15/Qed_New.doc

Text File | 1989-06-08 | 9KB | 201 lines

                                     QED

                              AMIGA TEXT EDITOR
                                   REV 1.0

                     Copyright 1989 by Darren M. Greenwald

                              All rights reserved


                            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.