DOS ain't dead

There's a new tip on http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Eknassen/aurora.html to register your copy of Aurora. This should be legally OK, because Jeff Wunderlich himself already provided a registration key back in 2006.

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> There's a new tip on http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Eknassen/aurora.html
> to register your copy of Aurora. This should be legally OK, because Jeff
> Wunderlich himself already provided a registration key back in 2006.

Yes, I was aware that it was closed src but freeware now. And I tried it back in the day (mid-90s??) and was quite impressed, but ended up using TDE 4.0 (public domain) instead (5.1v is my favorite nowadays). The major advantages seem to be 8086 compatibility, folding, unlimited undo, and small memory footprint when shelling out. And Trixter (8088 Corruption) dude likes it because of that. Otherwise, I think most of it has been reimplemented in various other FOSS editors (VIM, JED, FTE, TDE, SETEDIT, JASSPA MicroEmacs). See here for a list of DOS editors I think are useful.

> Yes, I was aware that it was closed src but freeware now. And I tried it
> back in the day (mid-90s??) and was quite impressed, but ended up using
> TDE 4.0 (public domain) instead

I'm an Aurora user for nearly 10 years now and I like it for its speed and easy to use GUI. Other editors like VI(M) or Emacs are probably very powerful too, but this power is hard to master, if you don't use it every day. And a complete installation of, e.g., VIM is very huge compared to Aurora.

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> > Yes, I was aware that it was closed src but freeware now. And I tried it
> > back in the day (mid-90s??) and was quite impressed, but ended up using
> > TDE 4.0 (public domain) instead
>
> I'm an Aurora user for nearly 10 years now and I like it for its speed and
> easy to use GUI. Other editors like VI(M) or Emacs are probably very
> powerful too, but this power is hard to master, if you don't use it every
> day. And a complete installation of, e.g., VIM is very huge compared to
> Aurora.

On *nix and Windows(Cygwin), I use joe. Because "joe is your friend". One of the reasons is that the wordstar keybindings are familiar from Turbo Pascal, and also still supported in Delphi.

If I don't have cygwin installed, I sometimes use Delphi (7) for editing too. 10 years ago it would have been totally overweight, but it starts quite fast, faster than some of the modern shareware editors with busy splashscreens

VI(M) is something meant for people that like pain and whips.

> On *nix and Windows(Cygwin), I use joe.

It's nice, and the newer versions have UTF-8 support (I think) as well as syntax highlighting. Too bad DOS only has old versions (old 16-bit 2.x port and a 32-bit 1.x DJGPP v1 version). However, if you want easy to use (a la CUA), JASSPA MicroEmacs or JED or TDE or FTE or FED or SETEDIT all have that (and some of those support Wordstar also).

> VI(M) is something meant for people that like pain and whips.

VILE is much smaller, multi-win, block select, configurable/scriptable, DPMI (i.e. can use tons of memory), and has nice docs (although not nearly as extensive as VIM, but you don't need it). It's actually based (internally, historically) upon MicroEmacs! Of course, the DOS version doesn't have syntax highlighting (last I checked) for whatever reason. There's also an OS/2 port of NVI which has excellent vi reference docs, but I have yet to get it working in pure DOS (assuming that's even possible). And still more vi clones exist (mostly 16-bit: steVIe, Elvis, XVI, Calvin, etc).

They say that Emacs is hard on the hand but vi is hard on the brain. IMO, as long as you have online help (or self-documenting), it's moot. Vi tends to be lighter (usually single buffer, single window) and Emacs tends to be multi-buffer, multi-win, self-documenting, fully customizable. You'll almost always find some (static) vi pre-installed on various *nixes. Still, I tend to stick with TDE for most tasks. But I definitely admire the alternatives.

P.S. I know you (marcov) already knew that vi was a full-screen visual improvement to ex, which was an improved ed (regex line editing, whee!).

> > VI(M) is something meant for people that like pain and whips.

[rest vi clones description skipped]
> And still more vi clones exist (mostly 16-bit: steVIe, Elvis,
> XVI, Calvin, etc).

And Vigor! The most pain inflicting one of them all!!!

> They say that Emacs is hard on the hand but vi is hard on the brain.

They also say: "Emacs: great OS, bad editor"

> IMO,
> as long as you have online help (or self-documenting), it's moot. Vi tends
> to be lighter (usually single buffer, single window) and Emacs tends to be
> multi-buffer, multi-win, self-documenting, fully customizable.

Problem IMHO is that the customizability interferes with basic use cases. I want to spend my time editing text, not customizing my editor.

Note that for programming I usually use an IDE, not an editor. (some remote work with joe excluded). TP, TS, Delphi,FPIDE, Lazarus are the ones I used most. All in several versions. Three of them are TUIs with Dos versions.

> You'll
> almost always find some (static) vi pre-installed on various *nixes.

Only on the free unices. On commercial ones you are sometimes stuck with ed and "echo *" for dir, or worse, doing it with cat

I can operate all of these enough to install joe and minimal OS configuring.

Actually yesterday, I installed NetBSD on PPC, and it took me back to the days of Unix yore.

> P.S. I know you (marcov) already knew that vi was a full-screen visual
> improvement to ex, which was an improved ed (regex line editing, whee!).

And for dos users, ...edlin... The horror!

> > They say that Emacs is hard on the hand but vi is hard on the brain.
>
> They also say: "Emacs: great OS, bad editor"

"Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" (man, how times have changed)

> Only on the free unices. On commercial ones you are sometimes stuck with
> ed and "echo *" for dir, or worse, doing it with cat

Yuck. They should install vi (steVIe and XVI are pretty small ... or even e3vi).

> Actually yesterday, I installed NetBSD on PPC, and it took me back to the
> days of Unix yore.

In what way? Isn't NetBSD supposed to be pretty good? (But yeah, they have some weird stuff there, I guess.)

> > P.S. I know you (marcov) already knew that vi was a full-screen visual
> > improvement to ex, which was an improved ed (regex line editing,
> whee!).
>
> And for dos users, ...edlin... The horror!

Which nobody ever uses (no regex). It wasn't until MS-DOS 5 that a full-screen editor (QBASIC in disguise) was bundled (although DR-DOS had one from 3.x, supposedly). The EDIT from Win95 is finally separate from QB, and it supports LFNs and multiple windows but always expands tabs (IIRC), so I still prefer other tools (TDE, VILE). In fact, Vista even comes with the improved DOS/MZ EDIT.COM (69k, Help -> About says "Copyright 1995", even runs in DOSBox) as well as EDLIN.EXE (12k DOS/MZ .EXE! probably from MS-DOS 5).

EDIT: Corrected error.

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Know your limits.h

> The EDIT from Win95 is finally separate from QB

YES.

> and it supports LFNs and multiple windows but

it disqualifies itself nevertheless because it's just a piece of Windaube

> See here for a list of DOS editors I think are useful.
> http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=6267&start=20

No INFOPAD, no KINESICS

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> > See here for a list of DOS editors I think are useful.
> > http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=6267&start=20
>
> No INFOPAD, no KINESICS

You want a bigger list? Try http://www.texteditors.org/.

> You want a bigger list? Try http://www.texteditors.org/

COOL. Text editors do have a Wiki ... but there is no "editors usable in DOS" category

The only working ones for me are:

- FreeDOS EDIT (some bugs left, 64 KiB limit)
- KINESICS (no bug found yet - but needs HX)
- INFOPAD (very nice, C and ASM highlighting, some bugs left)
- FASMD (ASM highlighting, load and save is "cheap", S&R is buggy)

> USA 04.06.2008, 02:06
> (edited by Rugxulo, 04.06.2008, 16:04 )

Seems rr enhanced the edit post limit

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> > You want a bigger list? Try http://www.texteditors.org/
>
> COOL. Text editors do have a Wiki ... but there is no "editors usable in
> DOS" category

It's a volunteer effort - you can join and sort the database.

> The only working ones for me are:

What do you mean by "working"? Run on your machine? You figured out how to use them?

> It's a volunteer effort - you can join

Not every Wiki in the universe

> What do you mean by "working"? Run on your machine?

See above, in DOS, several machines.

> You figured out how to use them?

YES. Incredible !!!

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> > It's a volunteer effort - you can join
>
> Not every Wiki in the universe

Then don't complain. Anyway, it does not claim to be a guide to what OSes there are editors for.

> > What do you mean by "working"? Run on your machine?
>
> See above, in DOS, several machines.
>
> > You figured out how to use them?
>
> YES

Only those?

> > USA 04.06.2008, 02:06
> > (edited by Rugxulo, 04.06.2008, 16:04 )
>
> Seems rr enhanced the edit post limit

I changed the limit to 24 hours several months ago.

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