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VEdit Plus, Version 3, CompuView Products, Inc., 1955 Pauline Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI 48103; 313-996-1299. Requirements: 156 Kbytes of RAM, hard disk not required. Supports: IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2, and compatibles running under MS-DOS, CP/M-86, FlexOS, Xenix, and OS/2. Also DESQview, MS Windows, PC-MOS/386, and Concurrent DOS. Price: $185.
VEdit Plus, Version 3, can deal simultaneously with up to 37 files in multiple windows, and can exchange material between all of the files and windows. It provides multiple views of a single file, and a full-fledged text-programming language which includes macros. VEdit Plus can record hundreds of undo levels, provide on-line help for itself and a compiler or a collateral program, run a compiler with hooks for competent error matching or run another child process, check structure for items, such as the proper nesting of brackets, automate graphic character drawings or illustrate the screen character set, and provide a middling integer calculator -- all EXE.PAC in less than 68 Kbytes of disk space.
The program has always set a standard for configurability -- the entire keyboard can be internally reassigned and a number of keyboard macros can be built into VEdit Plus. In Version 3, all the functional keyboard reassignments are dynamically detected by the help system, which reports the current command keys. Multiple copies of the program can be configured with individual sign-on messages; extremely complex key redefinitions and macros can be automatically loaded by a separate initiation file; scores of tab locations can be assigned, control characters can be shown graphically or as control characters; and all of the system defaults for switches, colors, cursor operation (including blink rate and line-ending characters) can be individually set for each VEdit Plus configuration.
For several popular word processors, VEdit Plus provides a partial emulation through preset key sequences that approximate many individual word processor commands or key stroke sequences. These emulations do not alter VEdit Plus's operation or its display screen, nor do they add to or change text manipulations. Accordingly, the emulations are a convenience feature to bring certain word processor operations into a familiar context, but even this much help will be important to some users.
VEdit Plus offers three user modes of operation, starting as a full-screen editor or starting in command mode. The modes are user selectable, with the screen-edit mode accepting abbreviated commands or providing complete menus. Screen mode also offers auto-indenting and other programmer aids, the usual block operations supplemented by helpful column-block operations, horizontal scrolling for spreadsheet and other long line files, and blinding speed for 55-Kbyte or smaller files. Finally, there is the command macro mode in which several self-running macros are supplied for activities such as mailing list sorts and search and replace operations.
VEdit Plus is available for a variety of operating systems; I examined only MS-DOS. The DOS system comes with a preconfigured .EXE file that is ready to run, but VEdit Plus includes an install program that will allow easy set-up and customization as well as a reconfiguration program that provides for very minute control of the system's operations. For my operation, I inhibited the sign-on message, relocated the help files to another drive, turned on insert mode, set block operations to column mode, changed the tabs to every five spaces, and altered the page buffer size to improve performance. All of these adjustments were straightforward and well documented.
Adding keyboard macros is also easy, and it should be noted that each of these changes goes into the VEdit Plus .COM file. (One simple macro I added provides for the command Alt-Q to instantly quit the program.) Far too often a system generates a host of tiny collateral files to set various internal matters, disregarding the fact that each of these files requires a full disk cluster of storage space. Because my system is perpetually full, I am grateful to CompuView for this nice touch. The need for numerous small files was one of my main objections to BRIEF, a major competitor to VEdit Plus.
The HELP system provides two more nice touches. As mentioned, the current keyboard control key assignments are sensed by the HELP system so that any assignment changes a user may make are automatically reflected when the HELP screen displays. This procedure has decided advantages over the templates used by the generality of programs because it is always up-to-date, never bent, dirty, lost, or in the way!
The rest of the optional HELP system employs three ASCII files with some well-documented, intelligent indexing commands. Any of these files can be edited to add notes that users find necessary. With a bit more sophistication, two or more of the standard or modified HELP files can be merged and an entirely new help file can be written for anything that might be run with VEdit Plus and that needs on-line help. A fairly remarkable amount of intelligence can be built into this new HELP file, allowing, for example, the automated look-up of a host of sub-program command switches. As a top programmer's text editor, VEdit Plus naturally has internal support for compilers, but the addition of on-line compiler help is frosting indeed.
Column mode operation has begun to creep into more systems, but for those who don't know this wonderful option, I'll illustrate. Consider the following characters:
qwertyuiop asdfghjkl zxcvbnm
Suppose that the er, df, and cv all needed to be removed. With Column mode, this task is trivial; just Block the rectangle from the e to the v and delete. Column mode is slower to execute than normal Block operations, but the convenience is obvious. I've used Column mode to remove entire segment references from .LST files in seconds -- an activity that would take hundreds or even thousands of manual keystrokes.
Finally, the VEdit Plus menu operation is utterly easy. The command to bring up the menus is not shown on the screen as it really should be, but I'll concede that anyone can remember F1 after only minutes of work with VEdit Plus.
Not much is wrong with VEdit Plus, but the menu system leads me to one set of oddities. On a monochrome monitor, the menus are pleasantly shown in inverse video, but the item selected is then shown in normal video. I found two-item menus disconcerting because I am accustomed to the highlight indicating selection, and decided to reconfigure the program for normal video and pull-down menus, a standard alternative on the configuration list. When I did this, nothing happened.
After a goodly amount of work, and more than a reasonable amount of head scratching, I called CompuView. After some checking, I was told that when the attribute for normal video was set at 2 it inhibited all other changes. Make this value 7, they told me, and all would be well. But all was not well. With this value set at 7 the cursor disappeared! Finally, we learned that the screen erase setting had to be changed as well. At last I could reconfigure the pull-down menus to normal video, and the problem was solved.
Another minor matter concerns file size. VEdit Plus's .EXE file can be EXEPACKed to save 4 Kbytes of disk space. But the packed version can no longer be changed by the configured program. I recommend a well-documented archive copy for a VEdit Plus file that is packed.
Finally, the only authentic problem with VEdit Plus concerns the edit buffers it assigns and its internal virtual memory system. With CP/M antecedents, VEdit Plus never uses more than one memory segment for any single activity. This limits the largest buffer space to about 55 Kbytes, and other buffers may get less if memory is short. On a positive note, the system simply dumps to disk any part of a file it can't fit into the RAM buffer space. VEdit Plus can, accordingly, deal with multi-megabyte files. Unfortunately, even when memory is available, the virtual system still operates under the single segment limitation, and the "Wait for File" message can quickly become bothersome. Even when running on a RAM disk, the delays for virtual activity are long enough to provoke resentment.
Of course, the payoff comes when huges files are being edited. Then the smaller VEdit Plus printers allow vastly superior speed in such routine activities as search-and-replace. On 1 Mbyte or larger files VEdit Plus flies, while other text editors I've seen creep if they can run at all.
Copyright © 1989, Dr. Dobb's Journal