Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!eta!com50!pwcs!stag!trb
From: trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey )
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: SCREEN (and a new editor)
Message-ID: <703@stag.UUCP>
Date: 26 Jan 89 04:41:40 GMT
Organization: Mindtools ST Access Group, Plymouth, MN
Lines: 49


...attempt # 2
In article <666@root44.co.uk> joy@root44.UUCP (Joy Nunn) writes:
>We are trying to locate a package called SCREEN which is a UNIX
>screen editor for the 68000 family.  Apparently this was originally

A question and a comment. First the question:

What special features does SCREEN have (as compared to vi or emacs)?

About two years ago, I proposed a folding editor on the net, but I got
several responses from people who were already working on such a beast,
so I shelved my protocode (I am lazy and don't like to re-invent the wheel).
Recently, after some major programming efforts, I found myself wishing that
I had written the editor, so I dug up my code (originally written on the ST),
moved it to Unix (ripped out the blitting and color text features :-( ), and
after much stumbling around structures, hung terminals, and late night
incantations I at least have something that folds and can edit...hence it
must be a folding editor :). I never did hear what happened with the other
PD folding editor projects.

I will be releasing the sources for the folding editor in a month or so
(as soon as I give it a name (FOLDED?) and find time to stabilize the
code and finish bullet-proofing it.) I've been writing it on BSD systems,
but it compiles on the Atari ST (and probably the PC for that matter). I
will also check it out on S5R3 before releasing it. The code may be somewhat
nauseating to look at, since I program in Pascal for a living and C is still
a 'hobby', but I will try to get it commented at least. It is a fairly small
editor (about 45K compiled...haven't done much optimizing yet), and is
more oriented towards being used as a program editor (C or Pascal) or
a think-tank like idea processor. Lots of bells and whistles like
exact word substitution (change each occurance of variable i to i_var in
your code without screwing up words that contain an 'i'), dynamic
searching, built-in help and prompting, multi-buffer marking, region
and box copy/move/kill, trashcan and clone buffers, auto-indent, etc.

I currently use vi, emacs, and the Apollo DM editor on a daily basis (each
on a different system). Each of the editors has its nice features and some
equally irratating qualities. In order to preserve my sanity (writing an
editor in your spare time for three months becomes somewhat boring) I
have intentionally left out a lot of the VI/EMACS/APOLLO_DM_EDITOR features
that I rarely use. This is bound to irritate some people, but my goal
wasn't to duplicate what already existed. My primary goal was simply to
see how hard it would be to write an editor that had folding capability.
Writing the folding code was trivial...the complexity it added to writing
the rest of the editor was incredible.

  -Todd Burkey     "A member of STdNET-The ST developers' Network"
   trb@stag.UUCP