viTHE

Page started by CB

viTHE is my attempt to combine the aspects I like best about the vi editor and THE (the Hessling editor).

Ultimately I am hoping it will include modes for vi key bindings as well as THE key bindings. I would also like to have a mixed compatibility mode that will allow vi movement with THE style prefix commands and THE style command line evaluation.

It it should be extensible via Tcl in an easy fashion. (It will use Tcl as its macro language vs the REXX that THE uses)

I am expecting this project to take me a while before it is useful to anyone besides me (if ever). I am mostly doing it because I want it and it has turned out to be fun beyond my imagining.

I intend ultimately to have both a Tk version and a character mode version (using Ck). If anyone can give me advice on what it takes to get Ck compiled on Win32 and what changes are required to PDcurses [L1 ] to get it to work with Ck I would appreciate it.

I will provide source code on request and a starkit once some reasonable level of usefulness is achieved.

• Tess is my current working name for the editor (from Tcl and Hessling)

Current Status:

• Tess is now capable of being used for general text editing at a basic level (new)
• key-bindings are not implemented yet.
• command-line is working -- commands are protected by their own namespace (new)
• some basic THE style commands are implemented (also a number of (temporary?) ad hoc non-standard commands)
• arbitrary Tcl code can be evaluated from the command-line
• a file ring has been implemented allowing multiple file editing
• basic interactive directory navigation has been implemented see A minimally extended minimal editor for example (new)
• tab character highlighting is now possible (new)
• integration with tclvfs allows browsing/viewing virtual file-systems (barely tested) (new)

MHo 2012-01-20: Glad to read this! I used to use THE and it's commercial cousine KEdit, and their grandmother, IBM's Mainframe XEdit for years. Up until now I miss many features of them in every other editor, especially the selective line editing facility (all /.../). Unfortunately, KEdit is winding down (no more new releases, Unicode an 64bit missing), but THE is slowly evolving.