Announcing Open/ed.

Greg Field

unread,

Jun 10, 2015, 2:50:56 AM6/10/15

to

I would like to let everyone here know about Open/ed.

Open/ed is a text editor that should be familiar to most here. ;-)

It is only available, for the time being, on the Mac OS X platform,
compiled at 10.10, but I may do a Linux port.

It is free to use software with no licensing. Beta test versions may have
an expiry date just to ensure people update to a stable release.

The limiting factor is my health. I have been seriously ill for the last 10 years
and am only now able to do a little at a time.

My thinking is that if it can gain critical mass, or my health deteriorates, i will make it Open-source.

The software and instructions are here : http://users.tpg.com.au/x86dude/

The support forum is here : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open_ed
Please post there for questions or problems.

Contact me for the pdf's of the manuals, which I ask you not to repost.

Would love some feedback. Spent 30 years of my life on this and it may be the only thing I leave behind.

-Greg.

Bernard Giroud

unread,

Jun 10, 2015, 3:40:03 AM6/10/15

to

Le 10/06/2015 08:50, Greg Field a écrit :
>
> [...]

>
> The limiting factor is my health. I have been seriously ill for the last 10 years
> and am only now able to do a little at a time.
>
> My thinking is that if it can gain critical mass, or my health deteriorates, i will make it Open-source.
>
> The software and instructions are here : http://users.tpg.com.au/x86dude/
>

> [...]
>

Software is not like children: it always need a parent. Alas, your
health, like mine and that of all of us, WILL deteriorate and I guess by
limiting to MacOS you will have problem to reach "critical mass".

Even if you make it open source, it doesn't mean it will develop forever
(TinyCobol and GNUCobol story), but at least you give it a chance to get
new tutors.

Bernard
--
Ne demande ton chemin à personne, tu risquerais de ne plus pouvoir te
perdre. (Rabbin Nahman de Bratslav)
Never ask your way to somebody who knows it, you couldn’t get lost.
(Rabbi Nachman of Breslow)

Greg Field

unread,

Jun 10, 2015, 4:54:01 AM6/10/15

to

if only a few new friends are interested, then thats fine. Better to have a go, then do nothing.

I develop on the Mac, but it is in standard C so it should not be difficult to port to other platforms.

Also if anyone can give me an email address for Denny Watkins, that would be great.

-Greg.

Message has been deleted

Greg Field

unread,

Jun 11, 2015, 10:26:56 AM6/11/15

to

Updated link for the group page.

https://groups.google.com/d/forum/open-ed

Greg Field

unread,

Jun 11, 2015, 10:36:38 AM6/11/15

to

I was going to temporarily put up the manuals but I cannot seem to add attachments.

Are attachments disabled here ?

-G

Greg Field

unread,

Jun 12, 2015, 6:47:34 AM6/12/15

to

For a limited time, the two user manuals are here.

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/open-ed/yJnneMS8b_g/discussion

Greg Field

unread,

Jun 14, 2015, 12:05:45 AM6/14/15

to

Made access to that place public.
Hope that helps.

-G :-)

Dennis Boone

unread,

Jun 14, 2015, 2:58:09 AM6/14/15

to

> It is only available, for the time being, on the Mac OS X platform,
> compiled at 10.10, but I may do a Linux port.

Greg,

When I looked at this a while back, I somehow came to the mistaken
conclusion that it was now a screen editor. That, and the Mac OS
platform (I have a machine which I use for running Jim's emulator,
but it's not where I do most of my work) meant I didn't really do
anything with it.

I've just looked through your beta manuals. They're very nicely
done! They've corrected my misapprehension, as well.

There are days when I would very much like to have an ed clone on
linux, especially one that has gmodify. I would likely use it in
line mode almost exclusively. You can consider this a vote for a
port to Linux.

I hope your health holds; too many people in these newsgroups are
failing.

De

Greg Field

unread,

Jun 14, 2015, 8:08:16 AM6/14/15

to

Thank you very very much for having a look Dennis, and your kind words.

Yes, it is screen mode or line mode,

It does work in "old ed" mode, which makes it highly compatible with ED.
As Denny says, it is 99% compatible. And if not, i can fix it pretty easily.

I think a linux port is feasible, others have mentioned that.
i am working on new features in rev 15 (2015) at the moment.

I am hoping to have the manuals printed and available later in the year.

My thoughts are that if we can get enough interest again, it will make a
community, with the old hands helping the next generation with gmodify.
And something good will live on.

Greg Field

unread,

Oct 16, 2015, 2:56:57 AM10/16/15

to

Ok. We have a Linux version.

It is a .deb package which will install to Debian based Linux, including Ubuntu which is what I
have developed it on.

I found the biggest problem is the dire lack of real terminal features on Linux Terminal apps.
If your linux terminal app does not support blink, do the .curwin.conf blink_bold work around.

If anyone finds that the keypad is returning escape sequences rather then digits, let me know.
I tested about 5 apps and none would support the keypad. Gnome terminal was best for fonts and did support dim, bold and italics (but not blink).

Again this editor is a super set of Primos ED. By default it is a line editor.
If you don't want a screen editor, it won't do that.

The run file is 'ned' but if you want super ed compatibility, start it as 'ed'.
There is a hard link in the bin directory for this.
Instructions included on this.

Download from : http://users.tpg.com.au/x86dude/versions.html

Main page : http://users.tpg.com.au/x86dude/

Support and queries to : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open-ed

Please, please, any queries to the forum link above, not here.

-Greg.

Dennis Boone

unread,

Oct 16, 2015, 1:01:03 PM10/16/15

to

> Ok. We have a Linux version.

Sweeeeet! Thanks for this!

De

Greg Field

unread,

Oct 17, 2015, 9:51:19 AM10/17/15

to

Dennis, there will be a man page in pdf format in the manuals sub-directory.
The full manuals for last year's version are over on the other group page.

Anything I can help with let me know. :-)

-G

Greg Field

unread,

Oct 25, 2015, 6:00:48 AM10/25/15

to

I have found where gcc was not flagging some errors on the Linux version.

The directory read and file-type functions were not working.
So the ls/dir macro was not working.
I have renamed ls.ned as dir.ned also.

Recompiled Linux and Mac version which are now on the web page as 151025.

-G

Greg Field

unread,

Oct 27, 2015, 9:04:49 AM10/27/15

to

Hi everyone,

I would still love to have some more beta testers have a go at Open/ed.

Even if you just install it, and report on that, it would help me.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open-ed

:-)

-Greg.