PE - PAL Based Text Editor (Freeware)

New in PalEdit/LX Release 3.0:

• When outline mode is activated, and if PE only displays certain lines of the file and hides the records, and if the user then quits PE or saves the file after a modification, PE asks if the file should be saved in Outline mode ("save as seen in outline mode") or if the entire file should be saved ("switch off outline mode"). If the user wants to exit the dialog with ESC to continue work without any saving, PE saved the file "as seen", instead of doing nothing, so data loss was very probable. This modification lets PE quit the dialog without any action when pressing ESC (as it is the expected behaviour).
• Unicode files are recognized and a warning is displayed (UTF-16 Big Endian, UTF-16 Little Endian and UTF-8)
• Menu items now contain more keyboard shortcut hints.
• Shift-F7 now opens a list of open files to choose from (F7 still jumps between open files cyclically).

New in Release 2.3a: (dated 27 Dec 2001)

• Searching for <substring a><substring b> did not find the combined string if there was <substring a> <something> before <substring a><substring b>.
• -r<number> on the command line sets the right margin
• -#<hex:> on the command line, enters a key with scan code <hex>.
  
  FYI: This version was available to the Beta Group since December 2001. However, It was not released to the public. It seems that we decided to wait a few days before release, in case something pops up. But no issue surfaced with the version, and we simply forgot to release this version. I am not sure exactly what happened, but this is my best guess.

Release 2.3 supports:

• Outlining - please see the documentation in PE.DOC.
• Sorting is now much faster.
• When you clip to a clipboard while OUTSIDE SysMgr, the information is saved in a file, thus you can access it in another Software Carousel session.
• This clipping allows for large amounts of data to be clipped.

New in release 2.1:

• Removed support for email (smaller footprint!)
• Added "Only" view (Ctrl-C) to display only lines with a certain text.
• Added encryption (Ctrl-X Ctrl-E) and decryption (Ctrl-X Ctrl-D) support. Can be broken by a good cryptologist with a lot of computing power, but should be secure enough for everyday use.
• Macros now work even in dialog boxes and in a DOS shell.
• Before running an external command and shelling to DOS, PE now checks if there is enough memory left.
• Macros are now kept in the file PE.MAC (same directory as PE.EXE) and no longer in PE.CFG. This overcomes the size limitation.
• The spelling checker now works with FlexPad files too.
• If the cursor is located on or before a file name, Ctrl-X O opens that file.
• When PE is started as "PE @", it looks for a file named SRCLIST and opens all files listed within that file. This is an old feature already. However, new is that the SRCLIST file may now have lines like "MY.TXT My Personal Text". In that case, the file MY.TXT is loaded, but in the file list (Ctrl-X Ctrl-B), "My Personal Text" is shown. This allows giving more verbose names to a list of often used files, for example.
• In only view, "database records" can be moved around or sorted (see the section DATABASE HANDLING in PE.DOC).
• Ctrl-X D switches to line drawing mode.
• With search/replace, special characters can now be entered using \nnn, where nnn is the decimal ASCII code. Examples: \013=CR, \010=LF

Some highlights of PE:

• handles files of unlimited size
• line length can be up to 32767 characters
• several files can be open at the same time
• uses the SysMgr clipboard if SysMgr is running
• uses its own clipboard if SysMgr is not running
• supports all zoom modes of the HP palmtops
• can edit binary files
• supports incremental searches
• supports search and replace
• supports keyboard macros
• can shell to DOS
• is mostly keyboard-compatible with the EMACS editor
• can directly start a compiler and take you to the locations where errors were found
• is expandable using DOS filters
• runs on the desktop in VGA mode using Harry Konstas' INT5F.
• has built-in spelling checker
• removes the formatting of Memo files and makes them pure ASCII
• let's you undo your last edit
• can display only lines which contains a certain string ("only" view)
• can encode/decode text files
• has functions that support handling of simple databases
• supports drawing using ASCII and IBM graphics