Welcome to Wed

Wed Windows Editor is the premier text editor for Windows 95, 98, NT. With BRIEF compatible keystrokes, unlimited undo/redo, unlimited file size and a host of powerful features we are confident, you will find Wed an indispensable tool. Wed Menu system is designed to allow you to learn Wed's shortcut keys.

Basic Editing functions

Wed editing keys confirm to Windows standards. Navigation keys, mouse operations, copy, cut and paste functions work as expected. Additionally, Wed responds to BRIEF compatible keystrokes.

Whenever there is a conflict, Wed attempts to allow the action with the most productivity.

For a quick view of key assignments refer to Wed's menu system, or the keys section below.

Selecting text

Wed provides several ways to select text. The standard selection keys work as expected, and advanced selection methods are available.

    Holding shift and navigating up and/or down will start row selection.
    Holding shift and navigating left and/or right  will start column (block) selection.
    Dragging the mouse up and/or down will start row selection.
    Dragging the mouse left and/or right  will start column (block) selection.

Wed's principal selection method is Alt-L for row select, Alt-C for column (block) select. Navigation keys will extend selection.

Selection shortcuts:

    Use Alt-V to select the current word
        Mouse double click will also select the current word
    Use Alt-M to select (mark) the current block, as understood by 'C'
    Use Alt-P to select the current paragraph as in text file paragraph (empty line)
    Use Ctrl-A to select the whole buffer (file)

Selection can be canceled by pressing Esc or Control Break.

Copy/Cut/Paste

    Wed has two clipboard systems. The     The standard windows clipboard works as expected.     The holding buffer system has ten buffers, and two major modes:     Row mode copies/cuts whole lines.
    Column mode copies/cuts block of text delimited by column (block) highlight.

To copy highlighted text, use the Plus (+) key on the number keypad. (Gray Plus)
To cut highlighted text, use the Minus  (-) key on the number keypad. (Gray Minus)
To paste holding buffer text, use the Ins  key on the number keypad.

    If shift is held while copying/cutting, the holding buffer appends the new data to the old. This is useful for accumulating text in the holdings.

To switch holding buffers, use Alt-0 Alt-1  ..... Alt-9

Holding buffers are automatically saved and re-loaded into Wed.

Searching text

    To search for a text use Alt-S. This displays a pop-up window, where the text to search for can be entered. Previous searches can be recalled with the up and down arrow keys.
The search will display a list of matches in a pop-up window. Navigating in the pop-up window will move the cursor in the main window. Pressing Enter or Esc will close the pop-up and put you onto the match.

    Entering Hit Mode. Alt-H enters hit mode, which displays only the lines with matches.

    Use Alt-S to start Search
    Use Alt-T to start Search/Replace
    Use F5 to jump to previous match  (updated live)
    Use F6 to jump to next match  (updated live)

The action of F5 and F6 are updated live, so matches will hit correctly even if the buffer changes. This is most useful on macro playback.

While in Search pop-up

    Use Navigation keys to jump onto search hits
    Use Alt-C To change all occurrences in one buffer
    Use Alt-O To change one occurrence
    Use Alt-G To change al occurrences in every selected file (Power User Be Aware)
    Use Alt-E To close all search pop-ups

Search has three modes:

Function Search:

The function search depends on the following algorithm:
    Non empty column(0)  before the line with "{" in colomn(0)  [the first position]

Regular expression syntax:

Searching can be interrupted with Esc or Ctrl Break at any time.

Macros

    Wed has a powerful macro facility. Recording a complex action, and playing it back with a single keystroke makes for a very powerful tool.
    To start recording press F7. Keystrokes are recorded in order they are pressed. Hitting F7 again will stop recording. F8 will play the recorded macro. Shift-F8 will animate the macro, ss the working of the macro can be observed. (debugged)
A recorded macro can be saved to a file for later use. Named macros can be reloaded into the currently selected macro buffer.

Wed has ten macro buffers. They can be selected with the keys Ctrl-0, Ctrl-1 ... Ctrl-9
Macro buffers are automatically saved and re-loaded into Wed. (persistent macros)

Undo/redo

When Wed changes a buffer, it saves undo information. When an undo is applied, Wed saves Redo information.

    To undo a change use Alt-U
    To redo a change use Alt-R

  Undo/Redo information is  automatically saved and re-loaded into Wed. (persistent undo)
This means Wed saves all the information to reconstruct every modification to your file. Undo/Redo can be applied at any point, Wed will safely walk you back and forth on the changes you made.

  For data safety, undo is limited to 10.000 saves. If that is exceeded, undo discards the oldest undo information. Wed saves undo information to the undo file. This means one can undo changes beyond file save boundaries. Undo will clearly prompt you if it detects an undo/redo beyond file save boundary.

CoCo code collection

Programmers accumulate a wealth of code over time. CoCo will help you organize that code into a hierarchical tree. The principal means of transferring data between buffers and CoCo is the Holding buffer/Clipboard.

Tech Notes

Wed will remember most everything about the current session. It will reload the edited files, position the cursor to the last edited point. Wed will also reload the undo/redo information of these files.

Wed will remember all ten Holding buffers, and all ten Macro buffers, and automatically reload them on startup.

Resetting Wed Configuration:

Deleting the registry key

    \\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\PeterGlen\Wed

will reset Wed to its original configuration.

Copyright Banner:

  The Banner is intelligent to assist one in productivity. If the editor is started in short succession, the copyright banner will not be displayed.

Interactive:

  Wed's interactivity features let you cancel any lengthy operation, including load/save/find/copy/paste. Canceling any action is atomic, the canceled action will have the correct undo/redo, and will preserve data integrity. Canceled Read/Load will mark the buffer read only, so partial files will not overwrite originals.

    These set of features are great when editing remote files.

Status Bar:

The status bar consist of the following items:

Wed will provide good visual feedback about the current action on the status line.

Wed Features:

Keystrokes

Alt Key Combinations
 
Alt-A Save All Wed keystroke
Alt-B Show Buffers Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-C Start Column Highlight Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-D Delete line Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-E Edit file (multi open) Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-F Pull down File menu Standard windows key
Alt-G Goto Line Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-H Enter Hit Mode Wed keystroke
Alt-I Insert incremented number Wed keystroke
Alt-J Jump to CoCo Wed keystroke
Alt-K Kill to end of line Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-L Mark Line Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-M Mark Block Wed keystroke
Alt-N Create New Buffer Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-O Open file Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-P Select paragraph Wed keystroke
Alt-Q Maximize current Buffer Wed keystroke
Alt-R Redo Wed keystroke
Alt-S Search Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-T Change Text (taush) Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-U Undo Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-V Select viewed word Wed keystroke
Alt-W Write buffer Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-X Exit Brief Compatible keystroke
Alt-Y Maximize viewing area Wed keystroke
Alt-Z  Maximize main Wed keystroke

Control Key Combinations
 
Ctrl-A Select All Standard windows key
Ctrl-B Insert 'C' template Wed keystroke
Ctrl-C Copy to clipboard Standard windows key
Ctrl-D Goto Next Difference Wed keystroke
Ctrl-E Save As Wed keystroke
Ctrl-F Find Standard windows key
Ctrl-G Close buffer Wed keystroke
Ctrl-H Backspace Standard windows key
Ctrl-I Tab Standard windows key
Ctrl-J Insert Java Template Wed keystroke
Ctrl-K Switch on/off hex mode Wed keystroke
Ctrl-L Lowercase word Wed keystroke
Ctrl-M Enter Standard windows key
Ctrl-N Create new buffer Standard windows key
Ctrl-O Open file Standard windows key
Ctrl-P Print buffer Standard windows key
Ctrl-Q Cascade windows Wed keystroke
Ctrl-R Goto previous diff Wed keystroke
Ctrl-S Save file Standard windows key
Ctrl-T Tile Windows Left/Right Wed keystroke
Ctrl-U Uppercase current word Wed keystroke
Ctrl-V Paste from clipboard Standard windows key
Ctrl-W Capitalize current word Wed keystroke
Ctrl-X Cut to clipboard Standard windows key
Ctrl-Y Redo Standard windows key
Ctrl-Z Undo Standard windows key

 Data preservation

    Wed will take good care of one's data. The following safeguards are implemented: Data produced by Wed is saved under a directory where the application's executable lives. In the standard installation it is:

    C:\Program Files\Wed\

File specific information is saved to a hashed name of the file's full path. For example the file:

    'c:\autoexec.bat' has the hash of  '0x12a4e903'    (your hash may differ)

To find out the hash value for a particular file, use  --- Menu -> View -> File Properties  ---- Or right click on edit window and select -> File Properties

Hash is case sensitive, so UNIX files will hash correctly.

In this section, we used 'NNNNNN' to denote the file name hash, 'ApplicationRoot'  to denote the path where Wed lives.

Initial backup of your file:

    Whenever you open a file, Wed saves the original under
         ApplicationRoot/wed/data/NNNNNN.bak
    If file is larger then 2 Mbytes, no initial backup is done.

Auto save after 30 seconds:

    If no key is pressed for 30 seconds, Wed saves the changed files in:
        ApplicationRoot/wed/data/NNNNNN.sav
    If file is larger then 2 Mbytes, no auto save is done.

Persistent undo information:

    File can also be reconstructed from the undo information. The undo is saved as a plain text, so it relatively easy to reconstruct the original data.

    Undo files can be found in:
        ApplicationRoot/wed/data/NNNNNN.udo

    Redo files can be found in:
        ApplicationRoot/wed/data/NNNNNN.rdo

These locations are also useful to clean out Wed created files from the system.

Unix Files:

  Wed will auto recognize UNIX/DOS file format, and will treat the file accordingly. This means one can seamlessly edit files from most any source without conversion. Wed will save the file in its original format. Naturally, one can convert between the two formats. To convert a file to be saved in a different format, goto Menu point View -> File Properties -> Force UNIX/DOS
  Auto recognition allows multi platform file editing. One Windows machine can control it all. With Samba installed on UNIX, one can edit any imaginable file on any platform.

Wed Limits:

        Search result box display limit:                       32000 hits                     (user prompted when near limit)
        Undo buffer size:                                           10000 transactions         (FIFO discard)
        Max. file size:                                                2 billion lines                 (limit of long)
        Maximum number of files simultaneously:       64                                  (Windows Window Limitation)

Uninstall:

Wed can be uninstalled with ease by standard Windows means. The Uninstall will not clean any Wed generated data like Undo/Redo, Auto saves, or Backups.
If you would like to clean out any/all of the preceding see:

    ApplicationRoot/wed/data/*.*

Spell Check:

Wed Spell check is constructed to be simple. (So the final product will fit on a floppy). To invoke the spell check

    Use: Shift-F7 or the Advanced menu -> Spell Check

Controlling spell check is easy. The popup window will give four options

Spell check can be controlled by single hand.
Wed will start spell check from current cursor position,  and operate to the end of the document.

String Spell Check:

Wed will parse source files for strings and comments, and spell checks inside the strings and comments. To invoke advanced spell check

    Use: Control-F7 or the Advanced menu -> Strings Spell Check

Wed will parse according to 'C, C++' language's string and comment rules. Please note that the parsing has a limited ability to handle complex syntax.

Dictionaries:

Dictionaries are simple text files, one word per line.

To modify the main dictionary, one can edit/replace:

     ApplicationRoot/wed/spell.txt

Be sure to delete spell.idx before proceeding. (Wed will rebuild the index)

To modify the custom dictionary, one can edit:

     ApplicationRoot/wed/spell.cus

No Index is needed here.

Foreign language dictionary:

Simply replace spell.txt with your version of the dictionary and delete spell.idx

Multiple open:

There are multiple open menu points on the file menu. Source and Destination directories are remembered separately. Multi Open will start from the last selected directory. This saves enormous 'mouse mileage' when grabbing data from different projects in different directories.

Hit Mode:

    Hit mode is a special display mode that shows only the lines that match a particular search. This is an extremely powerful feature, that allows the editor to see and modify only the lines that have matching criteria. Nice to see all variable references on one screen.

    Copy/Paste operations - while in hit mode - copy only the lines that are hit. For example: hit mode can be used to display all function names in the code, highlighting and copying them will produce a list, that contains all the function prototypes.

    Macro recording  - while in hit mode - operate on only the lines that are hit.  For example: hit mode can be used to display all function names in the code, one can record an editing session that is applied to the hits only.

Pressing Enter or Esc will exit hit mode.

Tabs:

    Wed will auto recognize presence of tabs on loading a file. If no tabs are detected, Wed will save the files with tabs replaced by four spaces. If Tabs are detected Wed will save tabs as intended. To force a file to be saved with/without tabs, goto Menu point View -> File Properties

Hex Mode:

Problem with foreign characters? Wan to see what is really there? Tab or Space? Hex mode to the rescue. To enter Hex mode

Use: Ctrl-K or Menu -> View -> Hex Mode

In Hex Mode the buffer is Read Only for character insertion/deletion.
Pressing Ctrl-K again will exit Hex Mode.
 

Locking The Keyboard

The keyboard locking function will disable every  non menu key. It is useful to prevent unwanted editing of the buffers. (Ex: Coffee break) Mouse functions, System functions, and Menu functions will be unaffected.

To Lock/Unlock the keyboard:

Use:  Menu -> Advanced  -> Lock/Unlock Keyboard
 

Wed Written by Peter Glen, 1999.