DOS programmer's text editor?

Harry Potter

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Oct 3, 2015, 6:15:50 PM10/3/15

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Hi! I have a DOS laptop at my mother's house. It's not all that useful, but I like playing around with it. I am looking for a DOS-based text editor geared for programmers. I want to be able to customize the colors, run external programs and create macros. And I want it to be pretty small, for I'm using a compressed Zip100 disk as a hard drive. Any ideas?

DMcCunney

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Oct 3, 2015, 9:54:42 PM10/3/15

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There are lots of DOS text editors. See
http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MsDosEditors for an incomplete list.

What I used back when was Daniel Lawrence's MicroEmacs, an Emacs style
editor based on code by Dan Conroy. ME uses Emacs style command
mappings by default, but you can customize it. (I had an ME macro back
when that made it use WordStar keymappings.) It could edit more than
one file at a time (subject to available memory) run external programs
in a sub-shell (again, subject to memory requirements), and had a macro
language.

I don't know offhand what defines as "small" for you, and whether ME
fits. IIRC, the DOS EXE for v3.6 that I ran was about 90K.
See http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MicroEmacs for links.

For something smaller, Russell Nelson's FreeMACS weighs in at 20K, and
has a macro language called MINT. You can edit files up to 64K in size.
See http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Freemacs for links.

For something really tiny, Brian Kelly's TM implements an emacs style
editor in 4K. You can customize the colors by passing command line
parms, run external programs from it, and define and run keyboard
macros, but there is no macro language. You can edit files up to 64K in
size.
See http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?TM for links.

The FreeDOS project offers an assortment of editors as part of it's
distribution. See http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=edit
______
Dennis

Harry Potter

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Oct 4, 2015, 6:41:39 AM10/4/15

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Thank you! I'll look now. :)

Harry Potter

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Oct 4, 2015, 6:53:18 AM10/4/15

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On Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 9:54:42 PM UTC-4, DMcCunney wrote:
> There are lots of DOS text editors. See
> http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MsDosEditors for an incomplete list.
>
> What I used back when was Daniel Lawrence's MicroEmacs, an Emacs style
> editor based on code by Dan Conroy. ME uses Emacs style command
>

I downloaded it. May try it later. :)

> I don't know offhand what defines as "small" for you, and whether ME
> fits. IIRC, the DOS EXE for v3.6 that I ran was about 90K.
> See http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MicroEmacs for links.
>

Basically, 512k is good, but I'll go up to 1MB.

> For something smaller, Russell Nelson's FreeMACS weighs in at 20K, and
> has a macro language called MINT. You can edit files up to 64K in size.
> See http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Freemacs for links.
>

Not sufficient. :(

Steve

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Oct 4, 2015, 10:47:23 AM10/4/15

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Hi,

Harry Potter <rose.j...@yahoo.com> writes:
>Hi! I have a DOS laptop at my mother's house. It's not all that useful, b=
>ut I like playing around with it. I am looking for a DOS-based text editor=
> geared for programmers. I want to be able to customize the colors, run ex=
>ternal programs and create macros. And I want it to be pretty small, for I=

>'m using a compressed Zip100 disk as a hard drive. Any ideas?

The WordPerfect Programmer's Editor, "ED.EXE" seems to fit
your request. The executable is about 140k, total package about
200k with help, printer definitions, and some macros. I am
addicted to it for programming. Macros, shell to DOS, an option
to return to the same line in the file when restarting an edit
session. Aand so on and so forth.

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/shell.html

Try that as a starting point?

Regards,

Steve N.

Harry Potter

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Oct 4, 2015, 4:57:36 PM10/4/15

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Cool! I'll download it now. :)

DMcCunney

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Oct 4, 2015, 8:59:21 PM10/4/15

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On 10/4/2015 6:53 AM, Harry Potter wrote:
> On Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 9:54:42 PM UTC-4, DMcCunney wrote:
>> There are lots of DOS text editors. See
>> http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MsDosEditors for an incomplete list.
>>
>> What I used back when was Daniel Lawrence's MicroEmacs, an Emacs style
>> editor based on code by Dan Conroy. ME uses Emacs style command
>>
> I downloaded it. May try it later. :)

What I liked (and still like) about MicroEmacs was that it was highly
portable. It built "out of the box" from the supplied C source on my
old AT&T 3B1 running Unix Systen V R2 on a Motorola 68010 CPU. I wrote
an ME macro package to recognize and do useful things when I pressed the
various dedicated keys on that device's keyboard.

It was nice to have the same editor on my MSDOS PC and my Unix box.

(Linus Torvalds uses another MicroEmacs variant based on Conroy's code
when he develops for the Linux kernel.)

>> I don't know offhand what defines as "small" for you, and whether ME
>> fits. IIRC, the DOS EXE for v3.6 that I ran was about 90K.
>> See http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MicroEmacs for links.
>>
> Basically, 512k is good, but I'll go up to 1MB.

IIRC, the ME executable and supporting files fit in 512K.

>> For something smaller, Russell Nelson's FreeMACS weighs in at 20K, and
>> has a macro language called MINT. You can edit files up to 64K in size.
>> See http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Freemacs for links.
>>
> Not sufficient. :(

Why?

The 64K limit on edited file size should not be a problem. If you are
writing source code and the code you are working on is larger than 64K,
you are arguably doing something wrong, and need to refactor. Code is
modular for a reason...

If you need to look at larger files, like log files, the editor isn't
what you use. A DOS port of the Unix less utility, or Vern Buerg's old
LIST program are far better suited for that job.

A couple of others you might look at are VDE and TPE.

VDE is Eric Meyer's Video Display Editor. It began as a WordStar clone
under CP/M, and Eric later moved it so DOS. It's coded in Assembler,
and the EXE is 90K. It can edit multiple files, and uses internal
compression do an individual file can be larger than 64K. The command
set is WordStar, and there's a macro facility you can use to extend it,
with an assortment of macro packages available. It's intended to be a
small, fast word processor, but can edit program code too. (It does not
do line numbers.) Eric is still around, and VDE is still supported,
with a sporadically active mailing list. See
https://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/ for information and downloads
of VDE and things that can go with it. It's freeware.

TPE is the TurboPower Editor. TPE was written by TurboPower Software, a
shop focusing on tools and utilities for Turbo Pascal. They wrote TPE
internally for their own use, and finally broke down and released it to
the public when customers asked for it. See
http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?TPE for information and downloads.

Another poster recommended the Word Perfect Editor. I have that one
here. If you are an old WordPerfect user, it might be just the ticket,
since it uses WP/DOS keystroke assignments.

Tell me what editor you use elsewhere and I can make other suggestions.
______
Dennis
Who collects text editors, and has a hundred or do for various platforms