Talk:XEDIT

Merge

IMO we can merge The Hessling Editor with XEDIT. I'm a user of XEDIT since about 1982, later KEDIT on DOS and OS/2 until today. On Linux I'd install THE immediately after Regina as soon as possible. -- Omniplex 21:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

If they're two separate editors--even if one is a clone of the other--they should probably remain as separate articles because even if it hasn't happened already they'll likely to start to have diverging features. -- Heptite (T) (C) (@) 04:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

THE and KEDIT are both meant to be as near to XEDIT as possible, adding a few minor differences. The original XEDIT 1981 had of course no mouse support, just an example ;-) KEDIT is more or less frozen, no further development. For THE I'd guess it's similar (you could ask Mark Hessling, from time to time he posts in comp.lang.rexx). They are "finished" products in a certain sense, you can add anything you need with REXX macros. And there won't be any radical new "curses" (THE uses Mark's port of curses). -- Omniplex 04:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support merging, but I think that we should move the merged page to "XEDIT and similar editors" or maybe "Eastern Orthodox Editors". There are one or two others that could also be included in the article. This is such a niche area though that surely it only deserves one article in WP. As for the drift apart, I think that fear is misplaced. XEDIT was functionally stabilized long ago. Thruston 10:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Against.There is a critical difference between XEDIT and all the clones (that I know of). XEDIT was intended for 3270 family terminals and IBM System/370 family computers, and successors. These terminals did not communicate with the computer after every keystroke; only when Enter, a function key, or a few other keys were pushed did a message get sent to the computer. This drove many design choices in XEDIT and another 3270 oriented editor, ISPF. I wonder if it is wise to merge articles about editors that operate on fundamentally different hardware. In any case, I think a better description of the editor and an explaination of the relationship between the editor human factors and the hardware would improve the article. Also, an explaination of the tendency of the IBM mainframe operating systems to explicitly keep track of lines, rather than character streams, and the emphasis of the editor on lines and line numbers, would also improve the article. --Gerry Ashton 01:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Agree (against). I used XEDIT for several years, developing hundreds of macros. While THE is inspired by XEDIT, it is definitely not the same thing - not compatible except at a superficial level. I pointed that out to Mark Hessling long ago Tedickey 19:55, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

XEDIT/Xedit

Are the pages for XEDIT and Xedit referring to same proram? If so, the later can be made a link to the former -- Anupam Srivastava 13:40, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they're the same. The program is correctly known as "XEDIT", not "Xedit". RossPatterson 01:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Fixed, links copied, page redirected. -- Omniplex 01:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

XEDIT/KEDIT

The opening of this article, after barraging the user with a bundle of platform names and jargon, suddenly throws in references to KEDIT without warning or explanation. I can't claim to have played with either editor, but I'd really like to suggest that someone good with words and familiar with the editors clean things up so that a newcomer can understand how a KEDIT relates to an XEDIT. Do the two really belong in the same article in the first place? I know I was lost when I saw "XEDIT" listed under "K" in the category Windows text editors. Weichbrodt 18:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I have disentangle the part of the article that is actually about XEDIT from the part about XEDIT adaptations for PC or UNIX. --Gerry Ashton 19:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Note on "External links"

There are two reasonable ways to present the external links - currently they are introduced roughly in chronological order. Alternatively, they could be presented in alphabetic order Tedickey 14:20, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I've just moved the two that weren't in alphabetical order. RossPatterson 14:40, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Xedit Comment A: ...much more line-oriented than modern PC and Unix editors.

This comment has me puzzled. XEDIT is not restricted to line orientation. You are able to target either by line(s) and/or by column(s). The lines could be explicitly numbered, but so could the columns with the scale line. The line had the prefix facility which enabled an alternative method to targeting and executing commands on lines. This was lacking on the column targets. Also, you could effect a cut and paste via the put and get. That was definitely a line only command until it moved to the PC. Is that enough to say it was line orientated? By comparison to many current editors its quite advanced.

I think why this comment bothers me, is due to the use of the word "modern." Since the writer does not specify what is meant by a modern PC or UNIX editor, I am going to speculate that he is referring to lack of the cut and paste facility. Wasn't that already implemented on the Smalltalk systems that predated XEDIT? I don't think the author is thinking of Emacs or VI, because those are clearly of the same vintage. So what is meant by a modern editor? Why is XEDIT being assigned a role as an historical editor?

COMMENT B: ...continuous spell-checking as the user types is impossible. This comment does not sit well with me at all. I get that the old terminals used to transmit in blocks. That is fine. That doesn't mean that you couldn't have a local hardware component on the terminal acting as a input buffer editor. My memory may not be good on this point, but I am pretty sure the IBM Selectric type writers had rudimentary spell checkers in their most advanced form. Why would it have been impossible to have a local spell checker as part of a 3270 terminal? Does the editing feature have to take cycles from the mainframe to qualify it as part of the same system.

The word "impossible" disturbs me in this context. It seems that a conception of the technology is being postulated that pretends to create theoretical boundaries on the system. I would agree to the word, "impractical." I think that would be more in keeping with how the system evolved. The objective to minimize interruptions of the mainframe processor would make it impractical for the editing system to monitor words being typed into the remote input buffer.

Since XEDIT has been ported to both the PC and UNIX, its clear there was no inherent limitations to the editor itself. The limitations were those of the mainframe environment and not the editor.

SUMMARY:

I think there is a confusion in this wiki of discussing the features and trade offs of the a class of mainframe computers and some of the software that originated on those computers. I think some of the concepts have merit, but they need to be expanded upon and clarified.

There is a larger point that I am trying to get across. There isn't a progression of better and greater features being invented for editors. All the features of editors that we see today were largely available at the creation of Xedit. This has implications. One is that XEDIT could be a greatly under used resource that is largely ignored. I would hate to see it assigned to the dust bin of history without its John Henry contest. I would match my plastic driving fingers against any of you young mouse clicking whipper snappers:--) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bfisk (talk • contribs) 23:16, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

IBM's XEDIT is the only XEDIT. Everything else is an imitation. (That isn't meant as a criticism of PC or Unix editors inspired by XEDIT, it's just a definition of terms.) For much of its lifetime, XEDIT only worked on 3270 family terminals, and the associated controllers. These controllers never offered spell checking. Once PC emulation cards supplanted the 3270 terminals and/or controllers, I suppose spell checking could have been done, but, so far as I know, it wasn't. Now I believe most mainframe access is done through web interfaces. Do they still sell the 3270 emulator cards? If not XEDIT spell checking is impossible outside computer museums.

As for it being line oriented, I believe I put that into the article. In the XEDIT era, card punches were not dead yet. Both the operating systems and the mindsets of the users were line-oriented. Many programs depended on fixed-length lines (usually 80 characters). So it was an advantage to have a text editor that made it easy to work on groups of lines, and XEDIT was good for working on files with fixed-length lines. The only editors I'm familiar with that were either contemporary with, or later than, XEDIT, for working with files where lines, and line numbers, are important, was the ISPF editor. Perhaps "modern editor" isn't the best way to express this idea. (As a specific example of why a line-oriented editor was nice, compilers and other programs that processed input files often reported problems with the input in terms of the line number where the problem occured. This error message, as often as not, was printed on a piece of fan-fold green-bar paper, and the programmer had to read the line number off the paper and then find the corresponding line with the editor.)

When I wrote that XEDIT was line-oriented, I meant that it was good at working with lines and groups of lines. I did not mean commands from the user had to be given one line at a time, and usually applied to the current line (as with vi). If you can think of a better way of expressing this, please do.--Gerry Ashton 01:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Contrast to "modern editor" did not bother me - but then "modern" isn't equated with PC/Unix/etc" (in fact in both PC and Unix, it's trivial to point out antiques shipped in current releases). It's dealing with how the program has evolved to use more resources, providing more flexible solutions. True, vi (actually "ex") provides line-oriented commands. But being required to type in line-numbers for anything more than positioning has been just a legacy feature for more than 15 years (since Elvis introduced visual selection). When I used XEDIT in the early 80's, I spent a chunk of time making programs to eliminate XEDIT's limitations regarding the terminal interface, for example macros to format text, shifting chunks left/right. That's doable with XEDIT - but not part of the editor. The descriptions I've seen of the XEDIT clones don't provide enough information to see if they evolved to provide more support for the places where XEDIT required do-it-yourself programs. If they don't, then they didn't improve on the concept. Tedickey 15:01, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

FYI, in Kedit (by far my favorite text editor), some formatting, moving text right/left, working with rectangular text selections, and other "modern" features, are built in - and can bo or is assigned to toolbar buttons. More advanced features like "pretty print" are available in macro libraries. So the concept has been improved considerably. I've also tried out THE, and if I'd sepnt as much time configuring it for my personal tastes as I have with Kedit, it might be fine too - but my first impression is that there has been less improvement in the concept there. Now, this is not an advertising site, and I'd better stop here.--Niels Ø (noe) 09:36, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Holy war

While I like this edit, the Holy wars link leads to no relevant information. De-linking does not seem appropriate (as "holy war" is jargon here) - what to do?--Noe (talk) 18:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Macros

I added a sentence on XEDIT/REXX macros. I don't have wide enough knowledge to proclaim them "unique", but many macro languages just replay keystrokes. XEDIT exposes most of its internal operation to REXX and the direct access to internal variables seems to me to be unique. If I'm off base, please correct. Peter Flass (talk) 12:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

XEDIT and GNU Emacs are similarly open with their scripting languages, Rexx and Emacs Lisp, and always have been. I wouldn't say XEDIT's openness with Rexx is unique, but it was absolutely unusual for the early 1980s. RossPatterson (talk) 22:04, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Around the same time XEDIT was in use, ISPF was also in use, initially on systems that ran MVS and TSO. It had substantial abilities to be customized per user, but I don't recall if it had the same capabilities Peter Flass is referring to. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

That's possible, but while working with SPF/ISPF from late 1981 to late 1983, that wasn't something known to me or my coworkers, as noted here TEDickey (talk) 09:51, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Categories

Removing the Text Editors category from this topic with the statement that Free Text Editors is a subcategory of Text Editors does not match reality: XEDIT is not a Free Text Editor TEDickey (talk) 18:39, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

(Removing "Free Text Editors" would be more accurate, since only "THE" applies to that category) TEDickey (talk) 18:41, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@Tedickey, OK, sorry, I haven't noticed that nowhere in the article it is stated that it is free. Then "Free text editors" category definitely should be removed. Deltaspace⁴² (talk • contribs) 18:43, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Oooh, only now I realized that there is a section with the open source software called "THE", that's definitely confusing. Deltaspace⁴² (talk • contribs) 18:46, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

yes: see above - it was merged into this topic a while back. TEDickey (talk) 19:42, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

re-reading some of the above which uses the past tense for XEDIT, it's worth pointing out that it's apparently still in use (see manual TEDickey (talk) 19:45, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and so is Kedit, which is still for sale (though Mansfield says "We discourage purchases of KEDIT by new users or organizations not already familiar with the program"). Nø (talk) 20:31, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

John McPhee is a prominent KEDIT user

John McPhee writes in his book Draft No. 4 how he started with KEDIT when he got his first computer, how he uses it and nothing else still, and profiles KEDIT's author. I'd expect that to appear in this article and his one. Ralph Corderoy (talk) 12:07, 14 April 2024 (UTC)