Hi,
I am announcing the release of version 0.80 JED editor. JED runs on Unix,
VMS, and an IBMPC under MSDOS. Building JED requires a C compiler which
understands function prototypes. I have successfully compiled JED under
Ultrix with cc, IRIX on an SGI with cc, and SunOS using gcc as well as BCC
under MSDOS. I do not guarantee that JED will compile on all unix systems
right out of the box.
Information about obtaining JED follows near the end of this document.
Version 0.80 fixes a few bugs in version 0.70 and adds several new features
including better support for 8 bit characters (8 bit clean?).
First the new features:
1. File on disk now watched. The user is now warned if the disk file
is newer than the one in the buffer.
2. New Status line indicators:
`s' : indicates a buffer position is remembered
`d' : indicates file on disk is newer than one in buffer
`m' : mark set indicator--- a region is being defined
[Macro] : a macro is being defined
3. macro_query function now prompts the user for input diuring the
execution of a keyboard macro (bound to ^XQ) by default. This
enables macros to be much more flexible.
4. Ispell interface for unix.
5. `switch' statement added to slang making it more powerful.
6. JED supports unix tags
7. Online help for slang functions: ^Hf
8. Variable BLINK turns on/off parenthesis blinking.
9. Parenthesis matching works correctly even in presence of comments.
10. Slang names can now be up to 32 characters long.
11. New intrinsic functions include forward/backward paragraph
12. New hooks:
is_paragraph_separator ;used to determine if current line is a
;paraagraph separator
13. Handles chars with hi bit set on both input and output. This is
controlled with the two variables:
DISPLAY_EIGHT_BIT
: if non zero, pass chars with hi bit set to terminal as is,
otherwise prefix with a `~' and pass char with hi bit off
META_CHAR
: When a character with the hi bit set is input, it gets mapped to
a two character sequence, The META_CHAR, followed by the
character with its hi bit off. By default, META_CHAR is 27, the
escape character.
14. User defined definition of word entity now possible. In addition,
intrinsics skip_chars and bskip_chars are now much more powerful
supporting ranges as in "\t0-9a-z" skip_chars
15. (IBMPC) Screen colors are now user selectable, the default being
white on a blue background.
16. New environment variable, JED_HOME, if defined overrides HOME.
17. write_region and append_region intrinsics now available.
The bug fixes are listed at the end.
What is JED: JED is an EMACS inspired editor which was originally written
for use on a PC but was developed under Ultrix. In addition to providing
some of the functionality/look/feel of EMACS, it also has an EDT emulation
mode for the small keypad as well as the application keypad. I have had
several people describe the EDT mode as ``excellent''. One person has even
remarked that it is better than the emulation Emacs provide. Please note---
although the EDT mode will work on a pc, you have to map the keys yourself
since I cannot find the `Application keypad' on my PC. However, if you use
MSKermit as a terminal emulator, and you are used to the way it maps the EDT
keypad, let me know and I will duplicate that for you.
Jed also has a builtin C mode for edting C files. I have written Fortran
and DCL modes for programming support in these languages as well. Of
course, JED also supports most of the features of other editors. These
include:
1. Autosaving and backup files
2. word wrap
4. Line centering
5. uppercase, lowercase, capitalization of words
6. paragraph formatting
7. Centering text
8. parenthesis blinking and matching
9. extensible-- define your own keys/functions
10. multiple windows and buffers
12. Search/replace
13. Cut paste
14. Keyboard macros
15. filename/buffer completion
and alot more....
JED is not perfect. It supports VT102 compatable terminals. These
include: most terminal emulators; VT2xx, Vt3xx, ... terminals; XTERM as well
as DECterm. In fact I would guess that 90% of all terminals support the
VT102 functionality. I could add termcap support for the other 10% fo the
terminals (adm3a, etc...) but again, I developed JED as a PC editor.
However, I liked it so much that I have ported it to other systems as well.
Jed may be obtained via anonymous ftp from amy.tch.harvard.edu in the
pub/jed directory. Jed is distributed in three forms:
1. jed080.tar.Z unix distribution
2. jed080.zip MSDOS distribution with jed.exe
3. jed080.*_of_21 21 part VMS share
I also have the binaries for VMS (compiled under 5.4), Sun4, and ultrix.
The are named: vms-jed.exe, sun4-jed.Z, ultrix-jed.Z. The compressed ones
need uncompress and a possible `chmod +x'.
Any questions/ comments/ bug reports should be sent to me at the address:
davis@amy.tch.harvard.edu.
Finally the bug fixes:
Previous versions of JED crashed when a character with the high but set
was input from the keyboard. This has since been fixed.
If a write failed when exiting JED, there was no warning given. Now
the write error is caught and exit is aborted.
A bug associated with subprocesses was discovered and removed.
lang_restart had a bug in it associated with local variables which has
been taken care of.
enhancements to functions: looking_at and skip_chars not respect the
setting of the CASE_SEARCH variable.
EDT mode more closely resembles EDT thanks to many of you.
Enjoy,
--
_____________
#___/John E. Davis\_________________________________________________________
#
# internet: davis@amy.tch.harvard.edu
# bitnet: davis@ohstpy
# office: 617-735-6746
#