VEDIT
Encyclopedia
Vedit is a commercial text editor
Text editor
A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....

 for Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS from Greenview Data, Inc.

Vedit was one of the pioneers in visual editing
Visual editor
Visual editors or full screen editors are editing programs which display the text being edited on the screen as it is being edited, as opposed to line-oriented editors ....

. Today, it is a powerful and feature-rich general-purpose text editor.
Vedit can edit any file, including binary files and huge multi-gigabyte files. Still it is compact and extremely fast,
perhaps because it is written mostly in Assembly language.

History

  • Vedit (Visual Editor) was created by Ted Green in 1979.

  • It was commercially published by CompuView in 1980 for CP/M
    CP/M
    CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...

     operating system running on 8080
    Intel 8080
    The Intel 8080 was the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and was released in April 1974. It was an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility...

     / Z80 based computers.

  • When the IBM-PC was introduced, Vedit was one of the first applications available for it in 1982. Versions of Vedit were available for MS-DOS
    MS-DOS
    MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

    , CP/M-86
    CP/M-86
    CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The commands are those of CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format...

     and CSP DOS.

  • During the following years, versions were developed for OS/2
    OS/2
    OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...

    , Xenix
    Xenix
    Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed to Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually superseded it with SCO UNIX ....

    , SCO Unix
    SCO OpenServer
    SCO OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop , is, misleadingly, a closed source version of the Unix computer operating system developed by Santa Cruz Operation and now maintained by the SCO Group....

     and QNX
    QNX
    QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...

    . On QNX, Vedit was supplied as standard editor.

  • Vedit was sold in three versions: Vedit Jr, Vedit and Vedit Plus. Later, the first two were dropped and Vedit Plus was renamed to just Vedit.

  • CompuView was shut down year 1989, but a new company, Greenview Data, continued the development of Vedit starting from 1990.

  • The first Windows version (Vedit Plus 5.0) was published in 1997.

  • 32-bit Windows version (v5.1) was published in 1998.

  • 64-bit Vedit Pro64 was published in 2003. It uses 64-bit addresses and data handling to support files larger than 2GB, but does not require a 64-bit processor or 64-bit OS.

  • Development and marketing of Unix, QNX etc. versions were gradually stopped. DOS-version has still been developed in parallel with Windows version and both have the same functions (as much as possible). DOS version is no longer sold separately or supported, but it is still packaged with the Windows versions.

  • On February 2008, Greenview Data announced that the old CP/M and CP/M-86 versions of Vedit can be freely shared.

  • With version 6.20.1 (May 2011) the old Windows Help system was replaced with HTML Help system in order to support Windows 7 and Vista.

Technology

The DOS version of Vedit was written 100% in Assembly language
Assembly language
An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...

. The exe file size is only 158k.

The Windows version was written mostly in Assembly, but the user interface has been written in C.
The size of exe file is 573k, and no DLLs are used.

Vedit uses its own file buffering which is faster than the virtual memory of Windows.
In addition, it uses very little of Windows' resources.
When editing large files, only part of the file is loaded in the memory at a time and temporary files are created only as needed.
Thus, even multi-gigabyte files are opened in a fraction of a second.

Therefore Vedit loads very fast and executes all operations fast.
And since it does not hog Windows resources, it does not slow down the other applications either.

Features

  • Vedit can edit any file, including database, binary and EBCDIC
    EBCDIC
    Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is an 8-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems....

     files and huge files. The largest file size for standard version of Vedit is 2 GB. Vedit Pro64 can edit files of unlimited size.

  • DOS, Unix and Mac files can be edited and are automatically detected.

  • FTP
    File Transfer Protocol
    File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...

     editing allows editing files on remote computer.

  • Multiple files can be edited using tabbed document interface or Multiple document interface
    Multiple document interface
    Graphical computer applications with a multiple document interface are those whose windows reside under a single parent window , as opposed to all windows being separate from each other . Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex nested...

     or any mixture of them. A special feature in Vedit is that a document window can be 'full size'. The size of such window is adjusted automatically (as with maximized windows), but overlapping windows can be used at the same time.

  • Vedit has project support. Opening a project automatically loads all the files, file list, settings and session details. You can instantly switch from one project to another by double-clicking on the project name in the sidebar.

  • Vedit's search function supports both regular expression
    Regular expression
    In computing, a regular expression provides a concise and flexible means for "matching" strings of text, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of characters. Abbreviations for "regular expression" include "regex" and "regexp"...

    s and its own pattern matching codes (which are faster and easier to use).

  • Wildfile function allows you to perform searches, search/replace operations, filtering, run commands or even run complex macros on large set of files on disk recursively.

  • Other search functions include Incremental search, Search block/word, Search all buffers, Search all show/select.

  • Block operations can be performed using Windows Clipboard or one of Vedit's 100 internal text registers. Or you can copy a block directly to another part of the file or to another file. Columnar blocks are supported. A special feature of Vedit is the persistent blocks that stay selected even if you move cursor.

  • For programmers, Vedit has features such as syntax highlighting
    Syntax highlighting
    Syntax highlighting is a feature of some text editors that display text—especially source code—in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature eases writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and...

    , bracket
    Bracket
    Brackets are tall punctuation marks used in matched pairs within text, to set apart or interject other text. In the United States, "bracket" usually refers specifically to the "square" or "box" type.-List of types:...

     matching, template editing, auto indent
    Indentation
    An indentation may refer to:* A notch, or deep recesses; for instance in a coastline, or a carving in rock* The placement of text farther to the right to separate it from surrounding text....

    , compiler support, function select and Ctags
    Ctags
    Ctags is a program that generates an index file of names found in source and header files of various programming languages.Depending on the language,functions,variables,class members,macros and so onmay be indexed....

     support. More than 50 programming languages and compilers are supported, and it is quite easy to add more.

  • Vedit has C-like macro language. It is interpreted, so there is no need for compiling. This makes it easy to automate your tasks or to add new features to Vedit. In fact, many of the built-in functions of Vedit have been done using the macro language. The macros can be called from a file on disk, or you can add them to User or Tools menu or to any keyboard macro.

  • Event macros can be executed automatically, for example on file open and close, mouse double-click etc. These can be used for example for automatic check-out / check-in from revision control
    Revision control
    Revision control, also known as version control and source control , is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may change the same files...

     systems.

  • Special command mode window allows entering any macro command sequence directly, and doubles as on-line calculator.

  • Keyboard macros can be recorded or typed in, or you can edit the whole keyboard configuration.

  • Vedit is highly configurable with more than 200 settings, most of which can be selected from the Config menu. The keyboard is fully configurable, too.

  • Vedit can be installed on and run directly from USB flash drive
    USB flash drive
    A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...

     or CD-ROM.

Documentation

Vedit comes with comprehensive Online help
Online help
Online help is topic-oriented, procedural or reference information delivered through computer software. It is a form of user assistance. Most online help is designed to give assistance in the use of a software application or operating system, but can also be used to present information on a broad...

 and interactive Tutorial
Tutorial
A tutorial is one method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a book or a lecture; a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete a certain task....

.

In addition, there are two PDF manuals: User's Manual (449 pages) and Macro Language Manual (305 pages).
The manuals are available as printed books, too.

Greenview Data offers full email and phone support for customers.
More support can be found from the User Forum.

Limitations

  • Current version of Vedit does not support Unicode editing. However, Vedit can convert Unicode files to Windows or OEM (DOS) character set and vice versa.

See also

  • List of text editors
  • Comparison of text editors
    Comparison of text editors
    This article provides basic comparisons for common text editors. More feature details for text editors are available from the Category of text editor features and from the individual products' articles...

  • Wikipedia:Text editor support

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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