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Text editor

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wmmullaney

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Joined
Sep 21, 2008
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Location
Columbia, SC USA area
Hi! I had a quick question: Do you know of any good text editor programs for win 3.1 on a 386 laptop with 4mb of ram? It has to make a .txt file readable by Vista (yes Vista, aside from most people I acually like it.). When using Write the file comes out with jiberish at the beggining and the end of the text. Sometimes it'l even cut off part of the text. So, basicly I want to use this laptop for school, but the finished product needs to be perfectly readable by wordpad or something on Vista. Any ideas?

EDIT: It also gotta be free
 
wmmullaney said:
Hi! I had a quick question: Do you know of any good text editor programs for win 3.1 on a 386 laptop with 4mb of ram? It has to make a .txt file readable by Vista (yes Vista, aside from most people I acually like it.). When using Write the file comes out with jiberish at the beggining and the end of the text. Sometimes it'l even cut off part of the text. So, basicly I want to use this laptop for school, but the finished product needs to be perfectly readable by wordpad or something on Vista. Any ideas?

EDIT: It also gotta be free
Click to expand...


As far as Vista goes, MAC OSX runs better, runs faster, looks better on the exact same level of hardware, so Vista is a poor operating system.

Time for Microsoft to hire better programmers ..
 
I love mac os x, I use 10.4 on my other computer. Apple is just so expensive. At the moment this is all I can afford. Plust I like building computers. This comuter cost about $500, including monitor, mouse, webcam, modem, and all the rest of the guts. Thats versus around 3k for a mac with a cinima display.

Back to the question please.
 
Umm.. it was years since I used Windows 3.1 but I suppose there is no Wordpad in that one, only the more limited Notepad?

3rd party text editors should possibly be a lot, depending on your previous experiences. Something along the line of Pico, Joe, perhaps even Wordstar or (M)Emacs if you can handle those programs.

Check some of these editors:
ftp://ftp.uni-koeln.de/pc/win3/editors/00index.htm
http://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/editor.html
 
When you're saving your text from Write, make sure you chose to save as text. I believe that this should be possible from Write.
 
I did save as .txt. As mentioned above it cuts off the end of long docs. I am using a floppy to transfer. I have found a meathod for the time being, save as .doc and import with differnt settings in open office. Thanks for all the links.
 
Are those text documents longer than 64 kB? I seem to remember at least Notepad had (has?) a such limit, so possibly Write will cut a .txt file to fit in Notepad.
 
I don't think so, the file is perfectly readable in write, but word pad has random chartars and all that mess. .doc is working ok. I'd still like to have spell check. I'll look at those links tonight.
 
carlsson said:
Are those text documents longer than 64 kB? I seem to remember at least Notepad had (has?) a such limit, so possibly Write will cut a .txt file to fit in Notepad.
Click to expand...

The limitation was there on Notepad (free, with Windows 3.x, but doesn't have a spell checker) up until about Windows 98/ME I think. On later systems (W2K and above) I have opened multi-megabyte text files with no troubles (of course a wait time to read them from the disk). EDIT (character-based full screen) should also be there with MS-DOS 5 and above.

For spell checking (which Windows WRITE doesn't have) I would think it is going to come to a full word processor (Word for DOS, something like version 5, Word for Windows, version 2, or WordPerfect 5 or 6, with "Grammtek"), and saving the file as text...
 
How about Wordstar 7 for Windows? There are copies floating around the web. ISTR that it comes with a coverter to convert WS files to RTF.

Isn't there a version of SemEdit that outputs .TXT files and has a spelling checker for Windoze?

You could just as easily run a straight DOS editor from a DOS box under Windows.
 
Yeah, .rtf may fix some of those problems instead of saving as .doc in older formats. Wordperfect is loved by many and does have advanced features including macros and form field/mail-merge type features, but yeah Microsoft Works (oxymoron), Microsoft Word, were a few early versions. I'm not sure if there was a free version of StarOffice or OpenOffice that would run under 3.x (maybe under 3.11 with win32s though).
 
Any editor that outputs actual text it will work. Quite a few newer programs use the word "text" losely. The only thing that is needed for some OSes is to use a .TXT extension and thats up to you to do. I suspect Vista is as dumb as XP and Linux when it comes to that so just go with it and add the .TXT when you're naming the file. :)

Here is a selection which I use or recommend and they will all work
like a charm in Win3.1.

Code: 
Dir

TED      COM          3072 01-01-80
TER      COM         4,096 08-22-08
Q        EXE         48832 09-16-94
T        EXE       101,406 09-03-91
NE       EXE        86,787 06-11-95
NE       ZIP       369,890 09-18-06
VI       COM        24,846 02-18-89

TED (TinyEDitor) is the old PC Mag editor. Very small but
no word wrap. Leaves EOF marker though. I use it for a lot
of my writing. It is small and goes on all my boot disks
and systems. To me it is the DOS equivalent of VI.

TER (Terse) is an updated version of TED and is much
better in many ways. Lots of features. That extra maturing
time and 1K means a lot. :) I am used to using TED so I
haven't changed yet, but I think it is worth a
consideration, especially since it competes nicely with
much larger editors.

Q (Q-edit) is the old programmers standby from Semware.
Opens many files. This has about as many features as you
could possibly use. There is a huge following so there is
an unlimited source of pre made macros for it too. With a
drop down menu it is easy to use, but the key strokes are
traditional and intuitive. Arguably the most sophisticated
and polished editor for DOS.

T (Technical Editor) is able to handle files of any size
which is why I keep it around. Many features and similar
to Q.

NE (No Edlin Ever) has a GUI interface but will run on any
DOS system AFAIK. It also has a terrific spell check. It
is worth noting that it has always been completely free. I
recommend this one for people who don't like the "terse"
editors and want a more windows like interface. The spell
check is fast, expandable, and available separately.
T (Technical Editor) is able to handle files of any size
which is why I keep it around. Many features and similar
to Q.

VI is not as functional as *NIX versions but if you're
used to it then it could be a good choice.

Notes:
IBM was apparently unaware of the classic PC Magazine
Utilities when some years later they also came up with a
TED or Tiny Editor. It is quite good but takes up more
space than the (less featured) original TED or the newer
(but comparable) Terse.

If anyone wants these, I'll find some links or post zips.
Cheers
 
text

text

Ole Juul said...suspect Vista is as dumb as XP
Click to expand...
They also can generate .txt files, but with unicode formatting, which ends up as gibberish on pre-unicode machines. That's even more annoying than the lf-cr nonsense.
.txt files should be 8-bit ANSI, not UTF-16.

patscc
 
Ole Juul said:
NE (No Edlin Ever) has a GUI interface but will run on any
DOS system AFAIK. It also has a terrific spell check. It
is worth noting that it has always been completely free. I
recommend this one for people who don't like the "terse"
editors and want a more windows like interface. The spell
check is fast, expandable, and available separately.
T (Technical Editor) is able to handle files of any size
which is why I keep it around. Many features and similar
to Q.


Cheers
Click to expand...

I'd be interested in NE, thanks!
 
Last edited:
patscc said:
They also can generate .txt files, but with unicode formatting, which ends up as gibberish on pre-unicode machines. That's even more annoying than the lf-cr nonsense.
.txt files should be 8-bit ANSI, not UTF-16.
patscc
Click to expand...
Yes when you move away from ANSI then its a slippery slope. At some point you might as well call PDF a text file then. There seems to be a lot of confusion between text as an information format, and type setting. I've seen people using a word processor as an editor! To me, page layout, fonts, and other publishing issues are image related and have nothing to do with text as such.

Personally I require CR/LF because I don't want to use specialized programs for text processing. In my (perhaps little) world, all files are read the same way and the name or extension has no bearing on anything other than my own preference. I expect a "cat" or a "type" to give me something readable. I guess I'll always be a doshead. :)
 
wmmullaney said:
I'd be interested in NE, thanks!
Click to expand...
The file is 359K so I can't post it here, but look for NE300b.ZIP on this simtelnet page: http://www.eunet.bg/simtel.net/msdos/editor.html
There's a couple of other ones there too. ;)

FILE_ID.DIZ
Code: 
NE v3.00B FREEWARE text editor with ALL
the features. From GDSOFT. (stands for
NO EDLIN EVER !!) Very good and
small Editor with WORDWRAP and SPELL
CHECKING !! A TOTAL replacement for
EDLIN and DOS EDIT (UGH !!). Can edit
MULTIPLE files, has block commands,
justify, search, replace and ALL of
the features that you expect in a
decent editor. It is VERY FAST and
small and FREE !! Works GREAT on
laptops too !!  (c)  1993,1995 GDSOFT
 
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