                       AE -- Another Editor
                           Version 1.4

                              Manual




Why Another Editor?
-------------------

  There are already so many editors for MS-DOS, why take the 
  trouble to invent the wheel once more? Well, I couldn't find 
  an editor that suited my needs. I wanted one that:

  - could do simple ASCII editing, for writing programs and 
  small texts.

  - had user-definable keyboard macros, in case I had some 
  repetitive editing to do.

  - was small, so that it could be run from floppy.

  - was efficient: the most important options, like cursor 
  movement and cutting/pasting must be done with a single 
  keystroke.

  The result is AE. If you are an unexperienced PC user, then 
  read on. I hope that this manual will explain enough to let 
  you use AE effectively. If you are already familiar with other 
  editors like the Norton editor or Borland's Turbo editors, you 
  should have little trouble getting started with AE. You can 
  get a list of AE's commands by pressing the F1 key. However, 
  some of the details may not be immediately clear. Below, you 
  will find a point-by point discussion of these.


1. Entrance and exit
--------------------

  The editor is started by typing "AE" on the DOS command line. 
  (If you hadn't guessed!) Alternatively, you can start editing 
  an existing file by giving the filename as an argument (see
  also the section "Loading and saving files" below).

  At any point during editing, when you are giving a command but 
  have changed your mind, you can press the Escape key to exit. 
  The command will not be executed, and AE will return to its 
  normal state. Escape will not terminate the program. To do 
  this, you must use the exit command Alt-X.


2. Loading and saving files
---------------------------

  You can load a file into AE either by typing it as an argument 
  on the command line when starting (e.g. 'AE MYFILE.TXT'), or 
  by pressing F3 once AE is running. 

  AE can handle filenames with wildcards. If the filename you 
  enter contains a '?' (for any single character) or a '*' (for 
  any series of characters), then you will get on your screen a 
  list with the names of all files that match the wildcard
  pattern. So, if you want to choose from all files in the 
  current directory, try to load '*.*'. In the list, you can 
  move a selection bar with the 'up' and 'down' keys, or PgUp 
  and PgDn. You can also select a file from the file list by 
  pressing the first letter of its name. So if for instance you 
  press the "A" key repeatedly, the selection bar will step 
  through all the file names beginning with an A. When you have 
  selected the file you want, press Return to load it.

  On the bottom of the file list you will find the directories 
  that the current directory is connected to. Directory names 
  are indicated by a preceding "". If you press Enter with the 
  selection bar on a directory, AE will scan that directory and 
  show you a new file list. In this way you can search the whole 
  disk for the file you want.

  It is also possible to read the contents of another file and 
  add them to the current one. This is the 'INSERT FILE' 
  option. You can use it by pressing Shift-F3.

  Saving a file can be done by pressing F2. If the file does not 
  have a name yet, AE will ask you to give it one. The name of 
  the file you are editing can be seen on the statusline. If you 
  want to store your file with a different name, then you should 
  use Shift-F2. You will then be asked to enter the new filename.

  AE will notice if you have changed a file. You can also see 
  this by the asterisk beside the filename on the statusline. If 
  you have made changes and try to load another file without 
  saving the old one first, AE will notify you and ask if the 
  old file should be saved first. The same goes if you try to 
  quit the program without having saved your file.


3. Cursor movement
------------------

  The keys to move the cursor are the same as just about every 
  other editor for MS-DOS:

  up, down, left, right:   move one position in that direction 
  Ctrl-left, Ctrl-right:   go to start of previous/next word 
  Home, End:               go to begin/end of the current line 
  Ctrl-Home, Ctrl-End:     go to first/last line on the screen 
  PgUp,PgDn:               move one screenful up/down 
  Ctrl-PgUp, Ctrl-PgDn:    go to begin/end of file


4. Typing characters and deleting them
--------------------------------------

  This is, again, very much like other editors. When you type in 
  a character, it will either be inserted into the text, or it 
  will replace the character under the cursor. This depends on 
  the mode, which is either 'Insert' or 'Overwrite'. You can 
  switch between these modes by pressing the Ins key. The 
  current mode is shown on the statusline .

  For some commands you will be asked to enter some text (like a 
  filename for loading a file). The text will appear on the 
  bottom line of the screen, temporarily erasing the statusline. 
  Keys that work here usually have the same effect as in normal 
  typing: left, right, Home, End, Delete and Backspace. 
  Overwrite mode does not exist in these cases; characters are 
  always inserted. Another peculiarity is that if the first key 
  you press is a character key, the text that was present will 
  be erased. If you start with any other key, you will modify 
  the existing text. When you have finished your input, you can 
  press Enter to proceed.

  To remove a character you can either use the Backspace or the 
  Delete key. The latter will remove the character under the 
  cursor, the former removes the one directly left to it. There
  also are commands to remove more than one character at a time:
  Delete line (Alt-L) deletes the current line, delete word 
  forward (Alt-W) deletes text from the cursor to the beginning 
  of the next word. (Words can be separated by spaces or any of 
  the characters : ; , or.)


5. Cutting and pasting
----------------------

  The keys mentioned so far may be fine to add and remove a 
  couple of characters, but to handle larger pieces of text you 
  need to cut and paste. The first step for this is to move the 
  cursor to one end of the piece of text, and then place a mark 
  with the F5 key. The mark itself is not shown, but when you 
  move the cursor away from the mark, you will see a highlighted 
  piece between the mark and the cursor. This is called the 
  block. Now you can delete the block (with Shift-F6), copy it 
  to the paste buffer (with F7), or cut it (with F6). The 
  difference between cut and copy is that cutting the block 
  removes it from your text, while copy makes no changes in the 
  text. Unless you have chosen to delete, the contents of the
  block are now stored in the paste buffer. You can insert the 
  contents of the paste buffer into a different part of the 
  text, or into the text in a different window. Move the cursor
  to the position where you want to insert it, then press F8. 
  Pasting does not change the paste buffer, so pressing F8 more 
  than once will insert multiple copies of the block.

  If you don't want to do anything with the block you can remove 
  the mark with Shift-F5.

  The last option I want to mention is comparing the block to 
  the paste buffer. This can be handy if you want to check 
  whether two pieces of text are completely equal or not. After 
  cutting or copying the first piece, select the second piece, 
  then press Shift-F7. The result will be shown on the 
  statusline.


6. Searching and replacing text
-------------------------------

  You can search for a sequence of characters in the text and, 
  optionally, replace it by another. These commands are started 
  with F4 and Shift-F4 respectively. You will first be asked to 
  enter the text to look for, the text to replace it with (if 
  you have pressed Shift-F4), and the search options.

  Possible search options are R, I and N. The R option means 
  reverse search. Normally the search will be from the cursor 
  position forward. The I option tells AE to ignore the case of 
  the characters, so that an uppercase "A" will be equal to a 
  lowercase "a", etc. The N option is only valid for replacing, 
  and stands for "no query". If you leave out the N option, AE 
  will move the cursor to the next occurrence of the search 
  text, show it and ask you if it should be replaced. You can 
  then press Y or N, or Escape to stop. Unqueried replace will 
  automatically scan the whole text from the cursor onwards, and 
  replace every occurrence of the search text.

  Pressing Alt-R will repeat the last search/replace operation.

  There is another way to enter the sequence that must be 
  searched for: select a block so that it contains the text you 
  want to find, then press F4 or Shift-F4. You will see that the 
  search text has already been filled in. In this way you can 
  look for other occurrences of, say, a word.

  One more thing: if you want to search for a "new line" 
  character, press Ctrl-Enter. (Just the Enter key won't do, 
  because this is used to end your input.)


7. Multiple files
-----------------

  In AE you can edit several files at the same time. You can 
  view them in 'windows'. There are three windows, indicated by 
  the letter A, B or C on the left of the statusline. Mind you, 
  you can only view one window at a time; it takes up the whole 
  screen. Switching between windows is done with F9 or Shift-F9 
  (the latter switches in reverse direction).


8. Keyboard macros
------------------

  You can define 10 keyboard macros. To define a macro, press 
  Alt-D. You will be asked for the number of the macro you want 
  to define. After that, AE will record every key you press. 
  Definition is ended by pressing Alt-D once more. (The 
  definition mode is indicated by 'Def' on the statusline.) Now 
  you can replay macro number 1 with Alt-1, number 2 with Alt-2, 
  and so on to number 10 with Alt-0. AE will act just as if you 
  had typed the whole series of keystrokes again. You can replay 
  a macro while defining another one, so you can make it a 
  powerful tool for repetitive tasks.

  As a small example, the following sequence of keys will define
  a macro that deletes all text from the cursor to the end of 
  the current line:
  
  <Alt-D> <1> <Return> <F5> <End> <Shift-F6> <Alt-D>

  Note: The occurrence of errors (like searching for a string 
  that doesn't exist) will terminate macro execution. Macro 
  execution does not work when you are entering DOS commands.


9. Setup
--------

  You can set several preferences for working with AE. These
  preferences can be set by pressing Shift-F1. On the statusline
  you will then see a menu containing the options you can set.
  They are listed below:

    Display     : Controls for the appearance of text on the 
                  screen.
      Colors             : Sets the color of normal text, block and
                           statusline. Selecting this option 
                           will cycle through several predefined 
                           colour combinations. (Note: on 
                           monochrome monitors there are only 
                           two combinations. )
      cursorType         : Sets the shape of the cursor.
      Dots-for-spaces    : If this switch is on, spaces in the 
                           text will be displayed as small dots.

    Environment : Miscellaneous options.
      Keyclick           : If on, produces an audible click when 
                           a key is pressed.
      Bell               : Normally, when AE reports an error, 
                           you will hear a beep. This can be 
                           switched off.
      Wordwrap           : See the section "Formatting text".
      Tabs               : See the section "Tabs".
      Autoindent         : See the section "Formatting text".
      Insert             : Toggles between insert and overwrite
                           mode (see also the section "Typing 
                           characters and deleting them")

    File        : Several options to control the saving of files.
      Exit-auto-save     : If this switch is on, AE will
                           automatically save a changed file on 
                           exiting the program.
      Interval-auto-save : AE can periodically save your file.
                           With this option you can set the 
                           interval. (When 0, the option is off.)
      Backup-files       : When on, AE will rename the old copy
                           of your file before saving the new 
                           version. The backup will have thew 
                           extension "BAK".

    Printer     : Options to control the printing of your text. 
                  See the section "Printing text".

    Save-setup  : Save the setup to a file (explained below).

  To select an option in the setup, press the capital letter in 
  its name. So, to change the display colors, press Shift-F1
  followed by "D" and "C", to set the tab spacing Shift-F1 plus
  "E" and "T", and so on.

  When you set a switch option (one that can be on or off), you
  will see a question on the screen followed by "Yes" or "No".
  You can change the setting in two ways: by pressing the "Y" or
  "N" key directly, or by pressing the spacebar until it is set
  as you want it and then pressing Return.

  Every option that can be set with Shift-F1 is included in the 
  setup. You can save this setup. AE will store it as 'AE.CFG' 
  in the current directory. When AE is started, it searches for 
  AE.CFG in the current directory. If it doesn't find the setup 
  file there, it looks for the setup file in the directory where 
  the program itself is. If this directory doesn't contain one 
  either, it will use a default setup. This gives you the 
  possibility to store several setup files in different 
  directories. For example, you can store a setup for typing in 
  programs in C:\PROGS, and store a different setup for writing 
  letters in C:\TEXT. If you have stored AE.EXE in C:\UTIL then 
  you can put a general purpose setup in that directory.

  The keyboard macros are also included in the setup file.


10. Printing text
-----------------

  AE offers the possibility to print the text you are editing. 
  You can either print the whole text (with Alt-P) or just the 
  selected block (with Shift-F8).

  A couple of options are provided to get your text on the right 
  spot on the paper. They are accessible by Shift-F1 P. If you 
  set the page length to, say, 60, then AE will send a form feed 
  to the printer after every 60 lines of text. Page numbers can 
  be added. The top margin is the number of blank lines that is 
  inserted at the beginning of every new page. The left margin 
  is the number of spaces on the left of each printed line.

  Page breaks can be inserted by typing Ctrl-L (a.k.a. form 
  feed character). This will appear in the text, but when 
  printed it will cause the printer to advance the paper to the 
  top of the next page.

  One last option is the "eject printer page" command. If you 
  press Alt-E, AE will send a form feed to the printer, so that 
  it will feed the paper to the next page.


11. MS-DOS commands
-------------------

  You can interrupt editing to give a couple of DOS commands by 
  pressing F10. AE will then start a DOS shell. To return to AE 
  afterwards, type the command "exit" on the DOS command line.

  During these commands, AE will remain in memory, so there will 
  be only about 200 to 300 kilobytes left, which is not enough 
  to run large programs.

  Note: To start a DOS shell, AE reads the environment variable
  COMSPEC. This variable indicates the directory and name of the
  command interpreter that must be started to process your 
  commands. If COMSPEC is not set, you will get an error message 
  (COMMAND.COM not found). As a remedy, type the DOS command

  "SET COMSPEC=C:\COMMAND.COM"

  (or something similar, depending on where you have stored
  COMMAND.COM), before you start AE.


12. Formatting text
-------------------

  With AE you can create a text with left and right margins like 
  the one you are now reading, by using autoindent and word 
  wrap. If autoindent is on and you press Enter, AE will insert 
  not only a new line, but also the same number of spaces that 
  the previous line starts with. You can switch autoindent on 
  and off in the setup (Shift-F1 E A).

  If word wrap is on, AE will truncate the lines you type when 
  they have reached a certain length, and proceed on a new line. 
  In this way, your text will be formatted as you type. However, 
  if you insert text in the middle of a line, its length may 
  exceed the wrap length. To reformat, press Alt-F. Note that 
  this command reformats the whole paragraph, i.e. it goes on 
  until it encounters the next blank line. You can set the line 
  length for word wrap in the setup (Shift-F1 E W). A line 
  length of 0 means word wrap is off. On the statusline you can 
  see if autoindent and word wrap are switched on.

  There are two more commands to format text: Alt-C will center 
  the current line (e.g. for titles) and Alt-J will justify it 
  to the right margin. These, too, only work if word wrap is on.


13. Saving positions
--------------------

  AE can store the current cursor position, to restore it later. 
  This can be handy especially if you are programming a keyboard 
  macro, or jumping to and fro in a text. The positions are 
  saved last-in-first-out, meaning that the position that is 
  restored is the one that was last saved. Saving a position is 
  done with Alt-S, restoring a saved position with Alt-G.


14. Tabs
--------

  Pressing the Tab key will move the cursor to the next tab 
  stop, and Shift-Tab will move to the previous one. AE knows 
  two ways to position tab stops: fixed-distance and aligned. If 
  the tabs are aligned, AE will look on the line above for the 
  next (or previous) beginning of a word. In that way you can 
  get your text lined up neatly. With fixed-distance tab stops, 
  the cursor will move to a certain column number. If you have 
  set the tab spacing to, e.g. 8, then the tab stops will be on 
  column 1, 9, 17, 25 and so on.

  You can set the tab spacing in the setup. A tab spacing of 0 
  means aligned tabs.


15. Special characters
----------------------

  Special characters are those that are not present as normal 
  keys on the keyboard. There are control characters, characters 
  for foreign languages and graphical characters to make frames 
  and the like. AE offers a couple of ways to insert them into 
  your text.

  The ASCII table command (Alt-I) displays a table with the full 
  IBM character set. You can choose from this table by moving 
  the cursor to the desired character and pressing Enter. If 
  you know the ASCII value of the character you want, you can 
  also enter it by typing its number on the numerical keypad 
  while holding down the Alt key.

  Control characters are the characters with ASCII value between 
  0 and 31. You can enter control characters directly from the 
  keyboard as Ctrl-A, Ctrl-B, etc. All control characters will 
  be visible in your text, except for Ctrl-M, which is the line 
  separator.

  Warning: Be careful with the Ctrl-Z character (ASCII value 
  26). In MS-DOS, it serves as the end-of-file character. If you 
  save a file containing this character, you will lose all text 
  following it.


16. Miscellaneous
-----------------

  Below you will find a list with the commands that have not 
  been mentioned so far.

  * Match brackets (Alt-M). If the cursor is placed at a bracket 
  and Alt-M is pressed, AE will search for the corresponding 
  bracket. The search is forward when started at a left 
  (opening) bracket, and backward when at a right bracket.

  * New (Alt-N). Clears the file buffer, i.e. it deletes the 
  text that is loaded, so you can start working on a new file. 
  If the old text has been changed, you will be asked if you 
  want to save it first.

  * Toggle case (Alt-T). Reverses the case of the characters in 
  the currently selected block.

  * Show version number (Alt-Z). Shows on the statusline the 
  version number and date of the copy of AE that you are using.


17. The SPLIT and MERGE utilities
---------------------------------

  AE can only handle files that are smaller than 64 kilobytes
  (65536 bytes). In most cases this will be enough. However, if 
  you have a large file to edit, there is a way to get around 
  this restriction. You can first split your file in several 
  parts, edit the parts, and then glue them together again. The 
  SPLIT and MERGE utilities are provided for this. They can be 
  called from the DOS command line as follows:

  SPLIT <filename> [<chunksize>]

  Splits the file <filename> into smaller chunks. You can give
  the size of the chunks in bytes or in kilobytes (respectively 
  as a number, or a number followed by "k"). If you don't enter 
  a chunksize, a default of 60 kilobytes will be taken.

  MERGE <part-1> [<part-2> ... <part-n>] <filename>

  Will read the files <part-1>, <part-2> and so on to <part-n> 
  and put their contents in a big file <filename>. The names of 
  the parts can contain wildcards ("?" or "*"). The files whose
  names satisfy the wildcard pattern are read in the same order
  as they appear in a directory listing.

  As an example, suppose you have a large file MYFILE.TXT of 150
  kilobytes. The command 

  SPLIT MYFILE.TXT 50k 

  will generate three smaller files MYFILE.000, MYFILE.001 and 
  MYFILE.002 of 50 kilobytes each, which you can edit with AE. 
  When you have finished editing, you enter the command

  MERGE MYFILE.000 MYFILE.001 NEWFILE.TXT

  or

  MERGE MYFILE.00? NEWFILE.TXT

  and you will get a new file NEWFILE.TXT containing the edited 
  contents of the parts.

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