DataCom Shareware Review

A Brace of Editors - QEdit v2.15 and EDWORD v1.0

The two text editors I'm reviewing in this column have just about as little in
common as two text editors can possibly have.  About the only things they have
in common is the fact that they're both text editors, they're both small
(under 100 K for the main executables), and they're both fast.  Aside from
those things they're probably about as different as two text editors can be,
and their differences give them the capability to function in a complementary
mode rather than a competitive one.

QEdit is probably the best known and most popular of all shareware text
editors.  Although QEdit has been around since 1985, it is now only in version
2.15.  The longevity of the current release and the availability of many add-
ons attest to the basic soundness and practicality of the original design.
QEdit happens to be my favorite text editor, largely because it is small,
fast, and very configurable.  The user interface (pull-down menus, etc.) is
the most intuitive I've ever seen in a text editor, and with a wide choice of
screen colors it can be made to look downright glitzy.  QEdit also has a
multi-windowing capability that permits working with a lot of files in
succession without exiting and reloading.  Over the past year or so I've
looked at many editors trying to find the one perfect do-all program (which
exists only in my imagination) and found QEdit to be the best of the lot.
Accessories available include a host of macros (in case you don't care to roll
your own), a disk swapper (QESWP), expanded help (QQHLP11), an up-to-date help
screen for QEdit v2.15 (QQHLP215), a slick mouse driver (QM), a macro compiler
(QMAC), and a compiler/assembler shell (QCP).  The combination of the macro
compiler and compiler/assembler shell will be particularly interesting to
programmers, in that they permit creating source code within QEdit, then using
a macro assigned to Ctrl-F9 to invoke a compiler and pass the name of the
source file to it, then open a second window in QEdit to report any error
messages generated by the compiler.  Although many of the better text editors
for programmers also sport compiler shelling and error parsing, QEdit is one
of the few that I've been able to get working well enough to want to keep it.
Yet in my arrangement all this talent fits neatly into a directory of less
than 250 K.

With all it has going for it, QEdit has one major shortcoming and one minor
one.  The biggie is that the files it will edit are limited in size to
available conventional RAM.  Granted, as small as QEdit is, this can work
out to somewhere around 500 K, which is not a small file.  Most likely QEdit
can handle about 90% of most people's editing needs.  The other 10% is a bear!
That 10% includes those long CD-ROM catalogs that you download from your
friendly neighborhood BBS.  My need to edit these files usually centers
around a desire to add a directory of file areas, or a note that "This CD-ROM
is available on DataCom USA."  If the file you want to insert this note into
is 1.2 MB, then you need a text editor capable of editing 1.2 MB files,
unless you want to split the file. There just aren't a whole lot of text
editors that will do that while keeping the speed up and the size down. The
minor weakness is that QEdit is not capable of splitting the screen into
vertical windows (horizontal only).

Enter EDWORD.  As good as EDWORD is it seems a shame that it isn't better
known.  Searching through probably eight to ten MB of CD-ROM listings, I found
it only on two of them, namely Nightowl v6 and v7 (which are almost
identical).  The editor, which presents itself in generic, non-configurable
grey on a blue background, is anything but fancy looking.  Although there is a
file pick list, the directory tree cannot be traversed downward (or upward)
without exiting the editor and re-entering.  This is a minor problem which
can be avoided by using Directory Freedom or some similar shell for a
frontend.  The really neat thing about EDWORD is that it will edit files
larger than available RAM.  The program docs claim "unlimited" file size.
While I don't see how that claim could be literally true, my experimentation
showed that a CD-ROM file listing of about 1.2 MB could be loaded as quickly
as a tiny batch file.  In fact, EDWORD loads these massive files more quickly
than any other text editor I've seen.  This is quite an accomplishment
considering EDWORD's main executable, EW.EXE is only about 80 K in size
"as-is" and can be compressed to about 44 K using LZEXE!  EDWORD has the
capability to create keyboard macros, and will also work in a multi-windowed
mode. I suspect a creative macro programmer could figure out a way to get
EDWORD to shell to a compiler, but I have not been able to see how to make
that process work.  Like QEdit, EDWORD is only capable of horizontal
windowing.

By way of comparison, QEdit and EDWORD can be registered for a few dollars
more than QEdit's big (read virtual memory) sister "Tessie" (The SemWare
Editor), and probably the combination requires about the same amount of disk
space.  Unfortunately TSE is not a shareware product, so the "try before you
buy" option is not there.  Either QEdit OR EDWORD costs about the same as a
one-time registration of Bingo, an excellent large capacity editor by Chris
Schanck.  However, Bingo's compiler shelling and error parsing are not as
easy to set up as QEdit's, and Bingo will not load a big file as quickly as
EDWORD.  Also, Bingo's menu is not as intuitive as QEdit's, and its disk
storage requirement is considerably larger than the QEdit-EDWORD combination,
even with a small DOS shell used as a frontend for EDWORD.  Bingo is capable
of both horizontal and vertical windowing, and its LIFETIME registration fee
is a little less than TSE or the QEdit-EDWORD combination.  And while you're
shopping for an editor, BOXER/TKO, a non-shareware, high capacity version of
the shareware editor Boxer might be worth a look for aboout the same price as
TSE or QEdit plus EDWORD.

So the bottom line is that I heartily recommend the pair consisting of QEdit
and EDWORD to anyone who needs both compiler shelling and the ability to
handle huge text files, and doesn't mind having two editors and no vertical
windowing.  And by all means look into some of the neat accessories that
are available to make QEdit more adaptable.  They are really among life's
finer things!

QEdit v2.15
Filename:   QEDIT215.ZIP
Registration Fee:  $$
QEdit Accessories
Filenames:  QESWP121.ZIP QQHLP11.ZIP QQHLP215.ZIP QM.ZIP QMAC21.ZIP QCP208.ZIP
Registration Fee:  Free to registered QEdit users
SemWare
4343 Shallowford Road, Suite C-3
Marietta, GA  30062-5003
(404) 641-9002

EDWORD v1.0
Filename:  EDWORD10.ZIP
Registration Fee:  $$
Fagerlund Consulting
Lonsdale West P. O.
Box 54053
North Vancouver, B. C.
CANADA  V7M 3L5
(604) 984-7330
