FRED EDITOR REFERENCE V1.1

(c) 1983 by David N. Smith
44 Ole Musket Lane
Danbury, CT 06810
17 July 1983




FRED is the FRee EDitor. It is distributed under the "freeware
concept" which means that you do not have to pay for it. You can
copy it, give it away, or do anything else with it except sell
it. If you find that it is very useful, you are invited to make
a donation or contribution to the author of $20 to help reimburse
him for his time and effort and to encourage him to write more
free software.

FRED comes with no warranties of any kind; it is available AS IS.
The author, uh, I would like to know of problems that users have
but makes no promise or guarantees that any problem will be
fixed. I have no plans for extensions to FRED. There are a lot
of fine editors out there for $100 to $150; if your needs exceed
FRED, I suggest that you look at some of these.



ABOUT FRED

FRED is a full screen editor for the IBM PC. It displays files
up to 1500 lines long and with lines up to 254 characters long on
a monochrome display or 80 column graphics display. The screen
is a window onto the file. The window can move up, down, left
and right.

If a file is too big to fit into memory, it complains politely;
if memory nears the limit while you are editing, FRED tells you
and lets you continue editing but won't let you add more lines.
In general, it is forgiving; you can even remove the diskette it
is reading from or writing to without bombing it or loosing data
in memory but I do not recommend it (nor guarantee it).

It updates the display buffer directly so that screen updates
appear instantaneous; it is fully possible to scroll through a
file at typamatic speeds.

FRED is written in about 590 lines of compiled BASIC and about 30
lines of assembler. Since its performance is horrid except when
compiled, source is not distributed.

FRED is similar to the IBM Personal Editor; most of it's keys are
the same and its approach to handling the screen is about the



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same. I use the Personal Editor; FRED was an experiment from
some time ago which I had laid aside. Several months of reading
the dialogs on the IBM PC Special Interest Group on CompuServe
convinced me that there are many people out there who still use
EDLIN and who will never pay $100 for an editor. Therefore I got
FRED out and polished it up a bit to give away. I hope that
people find it useful.

The documentation is somewhat sparse; there is no tutorial and
little else but a list of keys. I suspect that most PC users
won't have any trouble using it since most of the keys do the
"right" thing.

If you want to try it immediately, remember that F1 puts you in
command mode and displays a list of the commands and that F10
describes the other function keys; then just start trying things.



FRED FILES

The following files are a part of the FRED package. Only the
first two are needed to run FRED.

Filename Contents
------------ --------------------------------------------
FRED.DOC A ready-to-print FRED document
(what you are reading now)
FRED.EXE The FRED Program
FRED.HEX A transportable version of FRED.EXE
found on some interactive systems.
You run CVTHEX to make FRED.EXE.
(CVTHEX is also on the interactive system.)
FRED.GET A short note about how to get FRED
found on some interactive systems.



FRED COMMANDS

Commands are entered only after pressing the F1 key. Commands
may be typed in upper- or lowercase; in the following
descriptions, uppercase is used for command names and lowercase
for operands.

SAVE
Save the file to disk. The new file is written as
FREDFRED.TMP. Then the old file is renamed FREDFRED.BAK and
FREDFRED.TMP is renamed with the right name. Then
FREDFRED.BAK is erased. This process assures that that
there is always one correct copy of the file on the disk.
However, it does require enough working space to hold the



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largest file to be edited.

QUIT (or 'Q')
Quit editing. If the file has been changed, you will be
prompted for a 'y' before FRED really quits.

/string/

.string.
Locate the string between the slashes or dots. The trailing
slash or dot can be omitted.

NAME fileid
Give the file a new name.



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FRED KEYS


The following list defines the meaning of each key when in full
screen mode. When the command prompt is up, normal BASIC line
editing is in effect.

Alt-d
Delete a marked area; see Alt-l for more information.

Alt-j
Join the next line onto the current one at the end.

Alt-l
Mark the current line or extend a marked line. The first
Alt-l marks a line and displays it in reverse video. The
second marks all lines from the first one through the
second. Further Alt-l keystrokes extend the marked area to
the current line (or shrink it from the nearest edge).

Marked areas may be copied or deleted. See Alt-d, Alt-u,
and Alt-z.

Alt-s
Split the current line into two parts at the cursor. At
column one this adds a new lines before the current one;
this is how you put a new line ahead of the first one.

Alt-u
Unmark an area; see Alt-l.

Alt-z
Copy a marked area to just after the current line. A marked
area cannot be moved into itself. (The choice of Alt-z for
this function comes from the IBM Personal Editor.)

Backspace
Backspace over and delete the previous character.

Character keys, shifted or unshifted.
Enter the character into the current line. If in insert
mode, put it at the cursor position and slide the characters
under and to the right of the cursor to the right. If in
replace mode, replace the character under the cursor.

Ctrl-End
Position the cursor on the last line of the file. Keep it
in the same column.



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Ctrl-Home
Position the cursor on the top line of the file. Keep it in
the same column

Ctrl-Left
Move the cursor to the left 40 positions.

Ctrl-Pg Dn
Position the cursor at the bottom edge of the screen (or on
the last line of the file if encountered first). The column
position is unchanged.

Ctrl-Right
Move the cursor to the right 40 positions.

Cursor keys (arrows on numeric keypad)
Move the cursor up, down, left, or right one position. If
the cursor would move off of the screen in a direction in
which there is more data, then scroll the screen one
character in that direction.

Del
Delete the character under the cursor.

End
Position the cursor at the end of current line.

Enter key
Put a new line in the file and position the cursor at the
front of it. (Also see Alt-J.)

F1
Enter command mode. A list of the allowed commands is
displayed.

F2
Repeat the most recent locate command (see the "/" command).

F5
Clear the current line and position the cursor at the left
edge.

F6
Clear the current line under and to the right of the cursor.

F10
Display what the other function keys do.



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Home
Position the cursor in the first column of both the current
file line and the screen.

Ins
Toggle between insert and replace modes. The status line
describes which is in effect.

Pg Dn
Scroll down 20 lines.

Pg Up
Scroll up 20 lines.

Shift-F4
Undo a change to the current line. Once the cursor is moved
from the line the change cannot be undone with this key.

Tab
Tab right to the beginning of the next word. (Words are
groups of characters separated by blanks.)








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It is now 00:04 AM.
You have been groups of characters separated by blanks.)