Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.2646
Posted: Sun Nov 24 16:02:35 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Nov-85 21:25:33 EST
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 118
[frustration is the mother of invention]
You will note that this is a sketchey "review," at best. This is due mainly
to the fact that I have only made a superficial examination of this
product, but felt that my initial observations might be of use to the net
populance.
NOTE: I have no connectons with MIX Software, save as a satisfied
customer.
NAME: The Mix editor
DESCRIPTION: Full screen, multi-machine text editor.
PRICE: $29.95 (actually $36.?? after shipping, etc.)
COMPANY: MIX Software
2116 E. Arapaho, Suite 363
Richardson, TX 75081
Order line: (800) 523-9520 (Visa, MC)
Inquiries: (214) 783-6001
CLAIMS: Autoindent, automatic line numbering, fill and justify ala
Wordstar but with straight ASCII, split screen with multi-
file editing, alterable command-key mappings (initially
like Wordstar) with macro-key assignments and a DOS shell
escape as well as other features.
OVERALL: I think it's great, for the price. Seems to do just about
everything that the documentation claims, though there are
a few minor bugs. And there's a *lot* to it for $29.95.
OVERVIEW: The MIX editor falls into the category of Emacs/Wordstar
editors; that is, a single keystroke (usually a control key
or alt-key) corresponding to some editor function, such as
moving down a line, deleting a line, etc. It is somewhat
more like Emacs in that there are a large collection of
"functions" that are available for mapping to any key,
though they are available from a "command mode" as well.
Macros are supported, and are constructed out of a kind of
abbreviated command language.
COMMENTS: The editor seems pretty nice, given its cost. I have
not had a chance to examine or test it completely, mainly
due to problems with our TI PCs: currently, the editor
must use the subset of the ANSI screen driver present in
the BIOS, which is so awful that the editor is reduced to
re-drawing the screen whenever you want to scroll the screen
down a line. As soon as I can get my hands on a TI TRM,
I'll patch it to use the video interrupt (it comes with
some crude instructions on how to do this) which will make
it *much* friendlier. With a good ANSI driver, or
something that supported things like "insert a line," it
would be even faster. On a reasonably intelligent ASCII
terminal, it would really fly.
The documentation is rather complete, in a softback, bound
8.5x11 booklet. It is nicely prepared, photoreprodced from
letter-quality printer outut. It is terse, and obviously
designed for the experienced programmer.
This is possibly the most portable editor I have seen,
right up there with the TURBO Pascal editor. It is
completely configurable for nearly any display device:
any ASCII terminal that supports direct-cursor
addressing, and just about any MS-DOS personal computer
that has a BIOS video interrupt to locate the cursor.
It is able to take advantage of more "advanced" features of
a terminal/screen driver, like "erase to end of line,"
"insert line," "delete line," etc. though it can make do
with nothing but direct cursor addressing, or even
vertical/horizontal cursor movement.
Detailed instructions are provided for installing the
editor, and ours was up within about 15 minutes of opening
the box. Instructions are provided for patching
the editor for using the video interrupt to address a PC's
cursor directly (it comes set up for the IBM PC),
though I have not yet done this due to a lack of TI
technical documentation.
This editor can be easily adapted to look almost exactly
like many other editors, excepting editors that have "modes,"
like VI. This is convienent, as one can standardise
key-mappings across machines (say, to look like Emacs)
removing the need to know 50 sets of editor key
assignments. You can also have different start-up files,
thus having a seperate set for Pascal, C, etc. with
appropriate macros.
COMPLAINTS: The manual could be more complete, though it is pretty
complete as it is. It is somewhat terse when it comes
to patching the editor to use a different BIOS interrupt
to control the cursor.
They could have used a more verbose command language.
Commands consist of two-letter abbreviations, which (to me)
is inconvienent as it is virtually unreadable to the
inexperienced eye. The command set is very extensive,
though, which sort of makes up for it, and some commands
have long forms (RS == REPLACE string) which helps.
The .EXE file is rather large, ~50K, so if you plan to use
the DOS escape function (which I have not tried) you should
probably have a lot of memory handy. Considering the size
of some of Microsoft's compilers, I'd think that 512K would
be just about right.
BUGS: The only bug I have detected to date is that some of the
macros provided with the editor do not seem to work as
documented. I cannot tell (yet) whether or not I am using
them incorrectly, or if they are not acting the way they
are supposed to (I suspect the former).
I welcome comments and constructive mail, and am willing to post or mail
more detailed observations and descriptions to those who want them.
Larry