Martins Editor 1.0 beta 1 and WSedit

[Martin V]

Hello,

again new editors. ME (Martins Editor) is a Windows Notepad substitute with the ability of reading and switching different codepages and UTF8 and optional Wordstar keyset (similar to "ide classic"). WSedit is a Wordstar-DOS-like editor I published in a first version in 2000 and improved continuesly since today. Both programs did exist for Windows and OS/2 (today 'eComStation') and were programmed by using WDsibyl, not Delphi.

Lazarus/Delphi "ide classic" keymapping is based on the Wordstar (DOS) keymapping. ME and WSedit are extremely close to the original.

Because the editors exist since 10 years, they are of course not synedit-based. Converting the base editor object was the hardest work.

The Windows, Linux and Mac versions are created with Lazarus, and the OS/2 version rests on the WDsibyl platform. A Linux installer is missing at the moment.

Normally you will use ME; WSedit is only interesting if you have got old Wordstar DOS files on your harddisk and or are a Wordstar(DOS) fan. ME has got some nice functionality, e.g. opening batch files/shell scripts without entering directories, then it can be used for stdin
dir /s | me in

If you use the editors, please collect the malfunctions and send me a buglist. Thank you. They are my first Mac and Linux programs I publish... it is possible that malfunctions are related to my missing understanding about the new OS, Linux and MacosX experts are welcome!

http://www.hypermake.com/english/betatest.html

The editor object is also part of two bigger programs, the Hypertext compiler "Hypermake" and the german accounting program "Textbuch". I will port these two programs to Lazarus later.

Martin Vieregg

[hinst]

Tested on Windows XP
Wow, my pc speaker beeps...

1. ok / cancel buttons in settings dialog does not work at all. I tried to click them, takes no effect;
2. Crash on attempts to save files in directories containing cyrillic symbols;
3. Select font menu group: font captions are invisible

And I think pascal syntax highlighting will be a kind of useful feature. 

[Martin V]

I've updated the beta versions now to Beta 1a.

http://www.hypermake.com/english/betatest.html

There was a memory problem fixed which crashes the editor after a number of operations (e.g. deleting 10-20 lines line for line). The buttons work again. The problem with non-english characters in filenames has not been solved yet. I still have to check that all variables holding filenames are utf8. German umlauts are not shown in the caption, in Linux, the caption isn't shown at all if a umlaut should appear.

But the basically functionality should work. If you use the editors, please generate a bug list:

xy1: lwm: r: description of the bug; steps to reproduce
xy2: ...

xy = shortcut of my name
lwm = reproducable in Linux Windows Mac
??m = reproducable in Mac, Linux and Windows not tested
a = always reproducable
o = occasionally reproducable

Thank you for your buglists,

Martin

[Martin V]

Now I have updated the editors to beta 1b.

http://www.hypermake.com/english/betatest.html

In the Linux version, there was a general malfunction with fonts. ME and WSedit cannot compile proportional fonts with different width for each character, but the font assignment in Linux sometimes did not work and a proportional font was shown, with ugly effects to wrong cursor positioning. I've programmed a temporary workaround.

There are still malfunctions in the Lazarus font functionality; I will write a sample program which I will upload to the bugtracker.

The foreign character codepage problem in filenames is not programmed yet, but I did understand now the problem: FPC and RTL does not handle UTF8 by default, but LCL does, so there's the need of some conversions e.g. when using system.assign (file, Name) or paramstr(I). This stuff is described in
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/LCL_Unicode_Support
All programmers need to pay attention to this problem, otherwise the program does not work for non-english-spoken users.

Martin

[felipemdc]

I just tested the Mac version and I would like to note the following:

1) The name of the application bundle is completely alien in Mac OS X, "me.app". It should necessarely start with upper case and usually it should be a way longer name, I would suggest "MartinsEditor.app"

2) It should most likely support multiple files open at a time, either in tabs like Lazarus IDE and like Notepad++, or in separate windows. I would highly recommend the tabs

3) In Windows adding a context menu to the shell menu "Open with Martins Editor" would be very handy. That is my favorite feature of Notepad++

4) Doesn't support dragging a file from Finder (OnDropFiles event)

5) The save button has no text written sometimes, is only a grey area which turns yellow when you hoover the mouse

6) Is missing a standard native short cut list. For example: Command+Z,X,C,V,Y for undo, cut, copy, paste and redo respectively in Mac OS X and Ctrl+ the same letters in Windows. This should most likely be the default mode, or at least selectable in installation.

7) Menu Options->Select Font-> shows a list of empty names where the names of the fonts to choose should be

Seams to lack a list of recently opened files

9) DOC reading doesn't handle non-ascii characters correctly

Except for that, it is pretty good =) Congratulations

How did you implement reading MS DOC file? It looks pretty impressive.

Also, if you aren't selling licenses of the editor, I would recommend making it open source.

[Martin V]

Thank you Felipe for the interesting comments and bug reports.

>Also, if you aren't selling licenses of the editor, I would recommend making it open source.

The base editor object which comes from the WDsibyl programming environment (Delphi clone for OS/2 and Windows) is already open source, and I adapted it. I do not use the Lazarus goodies (UTF8 charset and strings longer than 255 chars) at the moment, because simple running of the editor like it did in WDsibyl is my main task. Full drag and drop support is on the to-do list. After all old functionality works, I will implement the real UTF8 charset (at the moment, only loading and saving UTF8 is supported) and will eliminate the 255 char limitation, which is no more acceptable on wide screens with small fonts. Then I will think about open source.

Martin

[Martin V]

I've updated the editors now to beta 2:

http://www.hypermake.com/english/betatest.html

productive working should be possible now...

Martin

[fabienwang]

Sorry to tell Martin but couldn't you really improve the UI?
It would be great to have tabs, highlighting with different languages supported,
maybe a multi-lingual interface ?

[felipemdc]

Today I tryed to give a go for the editor in production usage, but the lack of highlighting was a major issue that makes it less convenient then for example gedit for xml, html, pascal, etc. It is good for plain text files, however.

One thing, however, is that it would be nice to see this project open sourced =)