Re: favourite text editors....

[Nathan Sivin nsivin@xxxxxxxx]

I definitely don't use XyWrite 2.x; in fact I haven't used v. 3
since v. 4 came out. I do still use PC-Write 3.02, which merely
goes back to 1989. It is still quite useful in two ways:

1. Its facility for making and *updating at any time* an ASCII
file named ED.DIR, which contains a current list of files in any
directory with full directory information, annotations and how-to
notes, etc., is unrivalled by any dedicated utility (I have tried
them all). I have one in just about every directory in my
computer. I will append the one for the PC-WRITE home directory
to give an idea of how useful they are.

2. Because it treats ASCII 10 and 13 quite differently from XY,
and records macros differently, it is sometimes quite handy for
cleaning up XY files in one way or another. For this reason, I
have customized its keyboard so that it is almost identical with
that of XY.

Cheers,
--
Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-6304
(215) 898-7454
nsivin@xxxxxxxx
------------------------- FILES IN \ED (PC-WRITE 3.02)
-------------
    \      0  8-11-00  4:56p
   ED.DEF   5950 11-21-94  8:19a Edit control
   ED.EXE  275424  1-10-89  4:08p Main program file
   ED.HLP  44686  3-22-93 12:50p EXPERT.HLP, mod. NS
    C.    8447  3-30-91 12:06p Resident TmsRmn, 12pt
    D.    2064  3-30-96  9:53a Same, Deskjet 500,
default
   DD.    2002 10-17-92  9:01p Same, draft
    G.    17018 12-18-94 11:40a Resident Garamond
   GD.    17090  8-25-92  4:37p Same, draft
    R.    17031 12-18-94 11:16a Same, Deskjet, R cart.,
incl. U
   ED.GEN   1229  8-07-94  3:53p Ruler file for generic
markup
   ED.PG   1433 10-18-90 12:26p For changing PCW to
generic
   D2P.EXE  77060  7-01-87  9:19a DCA to PCW conversion
   P2D.EXE  119020  7-01-87 10:19a Vice versa
  PRLAS.    4868 10-17-94 10:46a Default printer file for
HPLJ
   ED.PIF   995  8-26-00  9:49p Windows PIF
   ED.DIR   1283 10-28-97 10:35a This file