Stan writes: >Alida writes: >> 2. For most purposes, the user interface of HP EDIT [epithet deleted] > >One word: QEDIT > >Ok, two more words: buy it. A few more words... I use an HP3000 port of STEVI, a public-domain version of vi that works in the MPE environment. I also use QEDIT. QEDIT is a full-screen editor only in the loosest sense of the word. Unfortunately it has no choice, given the environment it works in. My preferred editing environment, at least when I can't use offline editing on the Mac, is several large windows with different source files, command line environments, etc., open at once. I use two editors: an HP 3000 port of STEVI (a public-domain version of VI), and QEDIT. STEVI is more full-screenish but is suited only to a system with a small number of users because of the way it must do I/O. It's also not very MPE-savvy, making only variable-length record files, and it's quite impolite in the way it deals with files it doesn't like. On the other hand, it's pretty much full-screen as long as you don't get too close to the bottom. QEDIT allows me to put the terminal emulator in block mode and use the terminal's native editing features. This is a rather limited set of features, as you might imagine. QEDIT also has to deal with an MPE limitation: large windows result in large block transfers, which don't work in VT (over a network). On the other hand, QEDIT is highly MPE-savvy, leaves my files with the characteristics with which it found them, is very polite and very careful with files it doesn't understand, and allows me to do a lot of things in MPE that I can't begin to do with STEVI. QEDIT is also rock-solid and comes with excellent support (infinitely better support, in a mathematical sense, than STEVI). So I usually use STEVI for small-to-medium size source files -- less than about 1,000 lines -- and QEDIT over a serial port with a Telamon Type-Ahead Engine for everything else: bigger source files or more exotic files of any size. Unfortunately, there's no one best tool on the 3000. Nick Demos ([log in to unmask]) has introduced a product that allows PC-style editing of HP 3000 files, but it seems to have some birth pangs. Good luck! -- Bruce --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Toback Tel: (602) 996-8601 | G is for Garbage. He whose sin OPT, Inc. (800) 858-4507 | It was to put such input in 11801 N. Tatum Blvd. Ste. 142 | By rule must stand beneath the spout Phoenix AZ 85028 | When his output's coming out. [log in to unmask] | -- The Programmer's ABCs