Date   : Wed, 04 Sep 1991 15:07:28 -0400
From   : Jay Sage <sage@ll.mit.edu>
Subject: Text Editors

Ralph Betza (ssiny!gnohmon@uunet.uu.net) wrote:

>> I ported MicroEmacs to CP/M. When I finished, there were no living CP/M
>> BBSes to post it to....

I won't quibble with the first part, but the second part of your statement is
certainly not true.  Perhaps you did not know about all the CP/M boards, but
there is quite a long list published every month.  I suppose this is a
further illustration of the big problem we in the 8-bit world are facing:
people who don't already know about the sources of support have no way to
find out about them.

>> Good points: a REAL EDITOR that works under CP/M!!!!!

That may be, but I think there are a number of other good, probably even
better possibilities.  For normal users ZDE is a very good performer.  For
'power' users -- the kind of people who would like Emacs or TECO -- there is
ZMATE (formerly PMATE).  It has fully bindable keys and an advanced macro
language capability.  It is quite fast, handles large files (via disk
swapping), and supports two windows.  ZMATE works with the Z-System TCAP to
configure automatically to the current terminal characteristics, including
the height and width of the screen.  The Computer Journal has a regular
column on PMATE macros.

VEDIT is a similar editor (I believe it started as a clone), but I have
always found it lacking in some critical areas where PMATE did things right. 
I also just heard that the author of VEDIT has dropped support of the CP/M
version of the editor.  I am currently supporting ZMATE.

-- Jay Sage