Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!steveha
From: steveha@microsoft.UUCP (Steve HASTINGS)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: PC Editors
Message-ID: <70729@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 16 Feb 91 20:47:18 GMT
References: <1991Feb15.032234.4724@sjuphil.uucp>
Reply-To: steveha@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Hastings)
Organization: Microsoft International Products Group
Lines: 60

In article <1991Feb15.032234.4724@sjuphil.uucp> tmoody@sjuphil.UUCP () writes:
>Although I am not a programmer, I use ascii text editors a lot.  For
>example, I am finishing a book manuscript and the publisher wants pure
>ascii.  There are plenty of word processors around, but most of them
>lately are heavy on formatting features and fairly light on
>sophisticated editing features, and most are quite slow to use, for
>those of us who are stuck with trailing edge technology.

Brief, Sage Professional Editor, and the Microsoft Programmer's
WorkBench editor that comes with Microsoft C version 6 satisfy all your
listed criteria.  They all share one drawback: slow startup time.

If you will bend some of your criteria, there are some good choices
with some tradeoffs:

Microsoft Word 5.5 is great for editing, spell-checking, thesaurus, etc.;
has multiple windows; in fact meets all your criteria except for the
ability to map commands to *any* key (you may only map to Ctrl and
Ctrl+Shift keys) and the macro language, which does have some programming
constructs like IF/ELSE but is not a full-blown language.  If you do use
Word, I suggest you use its macro ability to make sure it always saves in
text-only format; it is easy to save in Word format by mistake.  (Also easy
to correct that problem, though.  Word format has junk at the beginning and
a lot of junk at the end, but in the middle is clean ASCII.  If you ever
were to send a Word document by mistake anyone with a text editor could
recover the clean ASCII.)

PC-Write is a fantastic ASCII-only editor that meets most of your criteria;
its maximum file size is limited to what will fit in your 640k, its
macros are strings of keystrokes, and its windowing features are
limited.  But it is a real word processor, designed for writers, and it
starts up *instantly* and runs fast on even an XT.  It has a number of
thoughtful features designed to make it easy to use even on big
projects, though it can't handle huge files in one chunk.  (For example, if
you put one chapter per file and end the filenames with chapter numbers,
you can switch to the next or previous chapter with one keystroke, and
print or spell-check the whole series of chapter files with one command.)
Important: PC-Write has features that allow you to automatically apply
styles, like style sheets in Word, to your files without embedding any
control codes in the files themselves!  (You make a different setup file
for each *extension*: so you could have file.ltt for letters, file.mnu for
manuscripts, etc., and have each one formatted differently.)

Personal Editor III, available from Personally Developed Software (phone:
1-800-IBM-PCSW), satisfies most if not all of your criteria.  I have used
PE2, and it had all the features you want but the full-blown macro
language.  PE3 might have added that, but I have no data.


For writing a book, I suggest you use an actual word processor -- either
PC-Write or Microsoft Word 5.5.  Word 5.5 is better in many ways, but
costs more; PC-Write is shareware, and you can pay as little as $15 to use
it legally forever.

In case you are wondering, I use vi for almost everything, Microsoft Word
5.5 for clean ASCII documents, and Microsoft Word for Windows for formatted
documents.  I used to use PE2 and PC-Write heavily.
-- 
Steve "I don't speak for Microsoft" Hastings    ===^=== :::::
uunet!microsoft!steveha  steveha@microsoft.uucp    ` \\==|


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