PROLIX Version 1.02 Program Documentation December 1, 1995 Software and documentation copyright (c) 1995 by Eric Schreiber. All rights reserved. License ------- Prolix is released as Freeware for private, non-commercial use. Individuals may use Prolix free of charge, and are encouraged to give copies to friends and associates. Bulletin board systems and online service operators are welcome to make Prolix available to their users, so long as the archive contents are kept intact and there are no specific charges to download the archive. Commercial organizations wishing to use Prolix or include it in any package or collection should contact Eric Schreiber for pricing and terms. By "Commercial" I mean any business, government, religious, educational or not-for-profit organization. See the "Contacting the Author" section at the end of this file for contact information. Disclaimer ---------- Although care has been taken to ensure that Prolix does what this document states, Prolix is provided "as is", without warranty or guarantee of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the fitness for a particular purpose or quality or performance of this program. In no event shall Eric Schreiber be liable to you or anyone else for any cost or damages, including, but not limited to, any lost profits, lost savings or lost income which may result from the use or inability to use Prolix. I just hate it that such disclaimers are necessary. Introduction ------------ Prolix is a Windows text editor, useful for writing source code, modifying autoexec and config files, editing nodelists, notes to Mom, and so on. I started out writing Prolix for my own use. I needed a Windows text editor that could handle really big files comfortably, and I'd tried about a half dozen that were already out there. I didn't like any of them very much; Some had graceless interfaces that didn't appeal to me, some had features that weren't even remotely related to text editing (like sound effects), several required external files (dll's and vbx's) to run and took up huge amounts of disk space (though at over 500,000 bytes, Prolix is hardly slim!), and all wanted more money than I thought a simple text editor was worth. So I set out to write my own, and here it is. I like it, and I hope you do as well. Features -------- o Can handle files up to 16 megabytes in size. o Multiple Document Interface - can open numerous files at the same time. o 16 kilobytes of undo and redo buffer, which works in discrete steps. o Speedbar to simplify the most common tasks. o Can use any fixed font for display and printing of text. o Up to ten visible bookmarks can be set during editing. o "Right-click" menu for common tasks and accessing bookmark functions. o Search and replace functions. o Support of Drag-and-drop file opening, and file manager associations. o Clean, uncluttered design. o EXE is entirely self-contained - no external DLL's or VBX files are required. o "Split" window mode, allows two views of the same editor file. Handy when you need to refer to another place in the document. o User can define start-up screen size and position. o Several keyboard commands familiar to users of older text editors, and Wordstar command compatibility. o Floating hints on toolbar controls (can be disabled). o All the usual Windows functionality. Installation ------------ Installing Prolix is quite simple: o Put the prolix.exe file in any directory you want, such as c:\windows. There are no other files required. o From the Program Manager, open the group window that you want Prolix to appear in. o From the File menu, choose New. o In the New Program Object dialog box, select the Program Item option, and click the OK button. o In the Command Line field, type in the complete path and filename where you put Prolix, such as "c:\windows\prolix.exe". o Click the OK button. The Prolix icon will appear in the group window. Prolix will create a default configuration file (prolix.cfg) the first time it's run. It doesn't touch any existing .ini files or modify your system configuration in any way. Using Prolix ------------ Most of the functions in Prolix are obvious, so I won't go into detail about them. However, a few aren't immediately apparent. In addition to opening files with the File|Open menu and the Speedbar, Prolix supports Drag-and-drop. When Prolix is running, highlight one or even several files in File Manager, then drag them onto the Prolix window. Prolix will open an editor window for each of them. Prolix can also be used with the "Associate" feature of the File Manager, so that when you double click a .txt file, for example, a new copy of Prolix will run and automatically open the file. Check your Windows documentation for information on setting up Associations in File Manager. Lastly, Prolix can load files listed on it's command line. This means you can call it from other programs, and feed it the files you want to edit. Although Prolix was not written as a Windows 95 application, it has been tested under Win95 to some extent, and ran without problems. Beta team --------- Special thanks to the people who beta tested Prolix for me and provided valuable comments and ideas - Doug Bora, Chris Gramer, Jim Hargrove, Ulrich Hermans, Dan Jones, Steve Lange, George Roberts, and Dave Stephans. Contacting the author --------------------- If you wish to contact me for any reason, I can be reached in the following ways: o Internet eric@kobayashi.com o WWW http://www.kobayashi.com/maru o Fidonet 1:115/327 o BBS The Aircrash Bureau, Chicago IL (312) 278-1195 Revision History ---------------- 1.00 October 21, 1995 Initial release 1.01 November 18, 1995 Added Ctrl-O keyboard command for File| Open Bugfix to allow F4 (Search | Go to) to work without having to first pull down the Search menu 1.02 December 1, 1995 The default Insert-mode text cursor changed to a horizontal underline to make it more obvious which character position was being affected. No longer strips whitespace preceding an end-of-line (CR/LF) character. This will make Prolix more useful for editing large files that may contain line-length-sensitive data. Bugfix to correct a GPF condition on some Windows 3.10 systems when Prolix was first run.