Big files

["Carl Distefano" cld@xxxxxxxx]

For some years the Jumbo U2 has had a facility for editing big (really
big) files in XyWrite 4, called BigEdit. It's an essential tool for me,
and when some compatibility problems cropped up under vDos(Plus), I
decided to tinker, and ended up developing it further. I've now added a
suite of commands to U2 that extends this facility and makes it fully
compatible with vDos(Plus). It's called BigED.

BigED allows you to open and edit files up to 511 MB in size, in Xy4-
DOS. The new extensions include the ability to edit multiple big files
(up to 9 simultaneously), a number of bookmarking options, and some new
search options, including grep- (or Google-) style searches. BigED
includes a panoply of "BigXX" commands that facilitate navigating,
editing, and saving big files. Normal XyWrite commands work, too.

While working on BigED, I put together a number of big text files that
may be of general interest, not just to U2 users. These include the
classic 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (all 29 volumes)
from Project Gutenberg, which I've compiled into a single 265-MB text
file; and a compendium of dictionary and thesaurus files (94 MB in all)
that I've accumulated over the years, lightly formatted for XyWrite.
These files are available from the XyWWWeb miscellaneous downloads page,
http://xywwweb.ammaze.net/dls; (see "E-Texts").

BigED handles the Britannica beautifully. I've tried loading this
humongous file in Word, Notepad, and Metapad, but they all choked on it.
The only other editor that loaded it without a peep is the splendiferous
EditPad Pro.

The latest U2 also includes a new routine, LEX, for searching through
the dictionary/thesaurus files. (All of these files have the extension
.LEX, for lexicon; they are text files with some XyWrite formatting).
LEX [word] usually returns a plethora -- superabundance,
oversufficiency, superfluity, redundancy, profusion, surplus, surfeit,
satiety, glut, excess, overflow -- of synonyms and definitions.

XyWrite 4 users can download the latest U2 here:
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/XYWWEBU2.ZIP

To take full advantage of the BigED search options, MT.EXE (the MiniTrue
regular expression engine) must be present in Editor's directory. It's
part of U2EXTRAS:
http://users.datarealm.com/xywwweb/U2EXTRAS.ZIP

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx