Daytime Express/DaytimeExpress.cdr/040a/petpe277.arj/DOC.EXE/WHYBUYPE.DOC

Text File | 1991-08-19 | 9KB | 188 lines

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              Why Buy pE - The "perfect" Editor

    This file came up in pE because its name is NO_NAME.  If
    you want, save it to a different name (Alt_S) and delete
    NO_NAME.  But read it first!

    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.  ^F9 sizes,
    ^F10 moves.  With a mouse, grab the lower right corner to
    size, or the top border 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.

    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, this isn't the editor for you!  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 on
    the upper left corner and dragging moves the marked area
    around on the screen.

    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 ^5 (on the
    numeric keypad).  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 (or F12) 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.

    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 22,000 (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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