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From: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: clarification, new wack, closing Input()?,
Message-ID: <563@3comvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jun-86 17:21:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: 3comvax.563
Posted: Mon Jun 30 17:21:15 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Jul-86 04:41:05 EDT
References: <8606270615.AA07663@pavepaws>
Reply-To: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA
Lines: 50

In article <8606270615.AA07663@pavepaws> dillon@PAVEPAWS.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
>----
>I would like to be able to create my own 'custom' file handle... something
>that would in every way be compatible with AmigaDOS with the exception of
>Close().  Has anybody done this?  Seems to me that if C-A put in some
>DOS library calls for creating, using, and closing custom file handles,
>it's power would be greatly increased.  Pipes would become trivial, and
>suddenly, you could use the easy-to-use Read(), Write() etc.... calls to
>do non trivial things.
>
>								-Matt

I talked with Rob Peck the other day, and we talked about many things,
among them, how to do this.  He told me that he would personally find out
how to construct FileHandles and would post it to the net!  Ok, so now some
real powerful stuff that is simple to implement (as Matt points out) will
add that much more to the base of Amiga software.  Ok, so here's another
idea/contribution to those EMACS fans out there...

I use a very EMACS-like editor on the PC called Epsilon.  They have a neat
feature that lets you "spawn" tasks in the background, and the editor
"captures" the output of these tasks in buffers.  It actually gives you
Command.com so you can type in your own commands.  Not only that, you
can page up and down to see lines that have scrolled off the top, and
can cut and past from it to other buffers, and can cut and past commands
from one prompt line to the current prompt, which saves retyping of
commands.

Other features of epsilon that I think are great are two other modes it
has and incremental-search and completion.  The two modes are "bufed" and
"dired".  Bufed let's you move the cursor around in a buffer containing
the list of buffers (like obtained with ^X^B) and if you hit "e", you
switch buffers to the one with the cursor on it.  Dired works similarly,
except that it asks for a file matching pattern and gives a disk directory.
"e" in Dired mode is like ^X^V the file with the cursor on it.  Incremental
search is nice in epsilon... You hit ^S and it gives the search prompt,
then ^S again retrieves the last search pattern.  Instead, if you start
typing in a search string, it starts the incremental search.  Backspacing
causes the search to go back to the previous match for the string (minus the
character erased with backspace).  ESC leaves the cursor on the current
line and terminates search, ^G aborts search and leaves cursor on the line
when the search was first started.  Completion is handy... you start typing
in a word (as part of a command) and hit spacebar and epsilon tries to 
finish the word for you.  If it can't finish it all the way, it goes as
far as it can.  If you hit ?, it gives a list of all the possible matches
given what you've typed so far.  Completion works for filenames and meta/
typed in commands.

Anyone out there use any other editors for the Amiga?  How about MetaScribe,
TxED, Lattice Screen Editor?  Any reviews would be helpful.