(BÞôa release history deleted to save space) 2.0 First official release. Of course, could not resist the temptation to add just one more feature. Turned on ^QI - jump to specified line number. ^F8 is the weenie key alternate. This is very useful when your assembler tells you that line so-and-so has an error. Just hit ^QI (or ^F8), and type in that line number. You will be moved straight to that line so you can fix it. 2.0a Also fixed complicated bug relating to the search and replace function. Didn't work correctly under certain, oddball circumstances. Calling it 2.0a due to foolishly giving out a pre-release 2.0... Dated 15 November 1993 2.1 Turned on ^KP to print either marked block or whole file. Added ^B/^F9 as a "zero MSB" function. Strips bit 7 off all bytes in the file. Useful for converting some types of text files created with WordStar DOCument mode (or others). Also discovered that the AECONFIG.COM program still said it was for AE ver. 1.9. This has been fixed to avoid confusion. Found yet another BUG in the search and replace function. If the replace string was the same as the find string prepended with something, a gross recursion of replacements would commence until the remaining free space in the file would fill with the replace string. This has been fixed. This fix REPLACES the fix installed in 2.0a. This is the way it should have been done in the first place. Added shell to DOS feature ^KF. Very handy to be able to do this. Added auto-save feature. Changed auto-save feature to make it transparent. See documentation for details. Changed insert/overstrike indicator from I/O to the more intuitive Ins/Ovr. Status line may now be configured off, if desired. A default file extension may now be installed into the program. Auto-tabbing now won't if the cursor is past an existing semi-colon. This effectively turns this off in a full line comment. Various little tweaks and enhancements. Dated 24 January 1994 2.2 Fixed file name question (Save As:) so that control-x would work properly. (Abort entry to null) Now also accept control-u in addition to for questions that wait for . (More WS compatibility) Fixed obscure bug in search and replace that only occurred if the status line was turned off. Not a serious bug, but a bug none the less. Re-wrote the prompted input routine used for functions such as load and save block, find, search and replace. Now handles Control-X, control-U, escape properly and remains in the same color rather than defaulting to B&W. Added support for ^P, insert literal keystroke. Allows entering most control codes directly into the file. Use with caution! Now all strings printed, including the sign off message, abort with error messages, etc. are printed with an internal string print routine. This allowed me to eliminate a couple of almost duplicate strings (one with $ termination, one with 00 termination) AND use the default screen color instead of B&W. Also resets typematic rate to default. It came to my attention (the hard way) that WinDOZE sets the typematic rate to ultra-fast, and doesn't bother to reset it back to normal upon termination. (Typical MS). This was driving me NUTS! If this causes a bunch of problems for folks, we can make it a configurable option of some kind, but I don't think it will... (yea, right...) Double key commands (^K, ^Q) now time out after 10 seconds and revert to normal input mode. This helps to prevent confusion when the operator presses the first key, then falls asleep at the switch. (Similar to WS) Dated 1 April 1994 2.2a Naturally, the day after release a bug is discovered. An internal protection mechanism would crash on certain XT machines. This has been removed. Dated 4 April 1994 2.3 Added feature to load block (^KR) to query about deleting the file just loaded. As I usually use ^KR to load a temp snippet hacked out of some other file, I usually don't want to keep it around after I've loaded it into the file I'm currently working on. Any key other than Y will prevent AE from erasing the loadfile... Beeps have been significantly improved. All beeping is now handled internally. This allows the program to have pleasant beeps, instead of utilizing the often piercing tone that MS-DOS gives us. There are also 3 different beeps to indicate different conditions. Added a new config byte to turn off beeping, if desired. Prompted inputs for search string, file load/save, etc. now support ^R in a manner similar to WordStar. Without going into a 5K discussion of how it is different, I'll leave that to the user. It isn't quite the same, but very similar. 99% of the time, the differences shouldn't matter... Line undelete (^U) is improved, and more WS compatible. (And saved several bytes!) Auto-Save now will upon execution of the Shell to MS-DOS feature. This allows shelling to MS-DOS without worrying about saving a changed file. If the program is configured to turn off insert on it will now also turn off insert on line delete as well. Dated 1 July 1994 2.4 AE now makes sure that trailing spaces/tabs are stripped off the last line in the file. This is primarily to eliminate trailing tabs from the auto-indent feature. AE also makes sure that the last line is terminated with the usual CR-LF pair. This is a notorious problem with some assemblers that BARF on an unterminated line. Fixes bug in the shift-left and shift-right functions (Control-Left/Control- right). This has been a long standing bug that was a stack imbalance problem that would crash the program sporaticly. As this feature isn't used too much, it didn't become noticeable until recently. Dated 12 September 1994 2.4a Once again, just after releasing a version I've been using for a couple of months, a bug is discovered. A minor cosmetic bug. If the save & exit function was aborted with escape or control-U, the cursor would end up at the end of the file, not back where it was before the save was attempted. Sigh.... Dated 15 September 1994 2.4b Changed the program so that the LPT number can be installed with the installation program (or DEBUG), instead of defaulting to LPT1:. Also fixed a potential printer status bug. If AE locked up on an off line printer before, this should fix it. Dated 10 December 1994 2.5 AE now remembers the last caps lock state when shelling out to DOS, if it is being used as a normal text editor or otherwise has the FORM7 option turned off. If the FORM7 switch is turned on, the proper caps lock state is restored, as before. AE now has dynamic printer configuration! In addition to the default printer (LPT1:, LPT2:, or LPT3:) configuration, this number can be changed at run-time with ^KN. Change affects current session only. Previous versions of AE had a strange cosmetic bug involving auto-save to an invalid file. This was related to the bug fixed in 2.4A. This has been fixed (I think), by a brute force work around. While doing this, I found 2 other obscure bugs that shouldn't have ever surfaced. Regardless, these have been fixed as well. Added Greek language support. See GREEK.TXT for details. You can now configure AE in reverse video modes and the colors will turn out correctly. Dated 1 July 1997 2.6 AE now has an optional HP compatible printer driver for printing Greek documents. AE also makes a rudimentary check for language when opening a file. If the program thinks the file is Greek, it will switch to Greek mode automatically. This is ONLY a rudimentary check, it will err on the side of English. AE now has time-outs on ALL multi-key commands both for convenience, and safety (allows auto-save to *always* work (when auto-save is enabled)). Alien system compatablity: AE now can digest LF-only UNIX type files, as well as CR-only files from Macintosh or TRS-80. It will automatically convert them to standard CR-LF line termination. Dated 8 June 1998 2.7 AECONFIG had a pseudo-bug from day one. If a hex number was entered in one of the hex number questions, and the alpha was lower case, the results would be incorrect. As I always keep my caps lock key on at the prompt, I never saw it. This has been fixed.... FINALLY! I *FINALLY* have implemented the WordStar command ^QP to jump to the previous location!!!! Lack of this had been bugging me for some time. The program also now changes any nulls to spaces upon loading, averting several nasty problems with assemblers that barf on this kind of invisible stuff! Did away with the configurator program! Now typing AE / (where is the desired name for the reconfigured AE) will invoke the BUILT-IN configurator. Although this makes AE.COM slightly bigger, the program requires no more memory than before as the configurator is overlaid by the stack if it isn't used! While working on the built-in configurator, I found a bug that had been present Athena only knows how long. Probably from day one. It was impossible to invoke a command line with a single character filename. This has been fixed! Another bug fixed: When in Greek mode, invoking a file operation now automatically switches to English for the file name question, then back to Greek when finished. The OS doesn't really like non-ASCII filenames... There's been a generation counter present in the program for a long time, it was incremented by 1 every time the configurator was run on the program, but nothing else was ever done. Now its value is displayed in the sign off message. Not a real feature, just some fun information. If you configure the program so many times that it reaches FF, it will stay there (or if you cheat and up it with DEBUG)! A bug crept in with AE 2.5 where a marked block would be "forgotten" when shelling to DOS, you would have to hide, then un-hide the block upon returning from the shell for it to work properly. This has been fixed. Dated 9 April 1999 2.7b (Limited release) Limited release version 2.7b fixes a bug where AE would forget that the file had been changed after doing a block load. This would allow you to ^KQ out of an edit session without asking if you wanted to "lose changes?". Dated 7 July 1999 2.8 I found that ^F1 was a very clumsy keystroke to use as a Greek language toggle, so I turned on the "OMNI" key on my OMNI key ultra keyboard. This is the center key of a dedicated cursor control keypad or the '5' key of the numeric keypad when numlock is off. Not all keyboards/BIOSes support this so ^F1 has been retained. If it works on your machine, it's easier to deal with... You may now also choose the shape of the on-screen upper case omega, either the familiar "modern" one piece, or the "traditional" two piece. For those who use the on-screen status line (labels for F-keys), this has been enhanced to display the functions for the control-F keys as well. It switches context when the control key is pressed or released. Sorry about the delay in releasing this version, it was my original intention to release it on 1 Jan 2000, but a niggling cosmetic bug related to the enhanced status line just would not go away. I finally squashed it on 28 December 1999, just not enough time to let the program out of ÂÞôá status - I like to test things before I release them (That's how I found the cosmetic bug in the first place!). Dated 29 March 2000 2.9 Welcome to the first AE of the third millennium! For the curious, AE 2.8 was released as AE 2.8f. The 'f' was an artifact of the âÞôá process and was meaningless in a released version! I was never really happy with the way the delete word key (^T) worked. It now works much better, more like WS. Word left and word right (^A & ^F) now are true word aware moves, not just synonyms for tab/back-tab. I also changed the way AE handles a printer that is off line or out of paper. Before, it would just beep and exit. Now it prints an error message and waits for the user to hit . This is great for network printers so you know if your print job actually went to the printer before you get up and walk all the way over there and find no printout... I also ran all the documentation files through a spell checker. Fixed lots of errors! BIG CHANGE: AE has always been a bit clumsy when editing lines longer than 80 columns. It was necessary to use control-left arrow and control-right arrow in order to shift the display left and right to reach the entire line. This was inherited from TED. I never thought too much about it one way or the other as I always like my assembly language source to be 80 columns or less. However, as I am increasingly using AE to edit other types of files, particularly HTML, this became annoying, to say the least. So now AE automatically shifts the display for you, like every other editor in the world... DEFAULT FILENAME: AE has had a default file EXTENSION for a long time. Now it has a default file NAME as well. This is "NONAME.EXT" where ".EXT" is the configured default extension. This was added primarily to allow autosave to have a filename to save to in the event AE was invoked without a filename. However, if you actually save and exit with the default name, invoking AE with no parameters will call up the previously saved file. BUGFIX: There was a bug where the automatic Greek toggle wouldn't work correctly (applies only to assembly language editing) under certain circumstances. This has been fixed. (TYPECAPS routine) Dated 4 April 2001 3.0 Final Release. This is the final release of AE. Shortly after I released AE 2.9 in April of 2001, I switched to Linux, and then more recently to the Macintosh with its wonderful BSD Unix based OS X. I have continued to use AE extensively on Microsoft based machines, but have had no reason to continue development. This is for several reasons: 1) Most importantly, I haven't been able to find anything "wrong" with AE, it fills my need for a text editor perfectly. 2) Likewise, I haven't been able to find any bugs! 3) I'm writing precious little assembly language, but have used AE extensively for web (HTML) editing. 4) I've finally been able to migrate away from Microsoft platforms. 5) Even within the Microsoft world, AE is showing its age, for better or worse. The Greek language support, and the necessary caps lock fiddling won't work under any NT based OS (NT, Win 2000, XP, etc). It also is still limited to 64K. All these things could be fixed, but I'm off to greener pastures. Therefore, this 3.0 "Final Release" differs from its predecessor in only three ways: 1) The *ONLY* operational difference is that if the FORM7 filter is turned off (Essentially making AE a normal text editor), caps lock is no longer turned on when exiting the program or shelling to DOS. As much as I still prefer to have caps lock on at the command line, having to log into case sensitive *nix machines made this a pain. Case sensitivity is ALWAYS a bug as far as I'm concerned, and is really the only shortcoming of the *nix family operating systems. 2) I'm releasing the source code! This source is written for the 2500 AD series cross assemblers, and will need to be tweaked to reassemble on others. Erase if not wanted. 3) The "out of the box" binary now has Greek language processing turned off. Run the configurator if you need it turned on! I have no plans to do further development or bug fixes on this program, although I'll continue to use it on Microsoft platforms as a regular text editor where the NT problems won't be encountered. If, perchance, I find a major bug after this release, I *MAY* fix it - this likelyhood will decrease with time. Lastly, as much as I love my Macintosh, I may very well create a similar editor for it - the GUI insistance of always having insert status ON, with no overstrike capability DRIVES ME NUTS! Plus, although with the Mac I've finally made my peace with GUI environments (The Mac is just so much more intuitive than Windoze, Gnome, KDE, etc), I still miss my WordStar keystrokes! Enjoy! Dated 7 January 2005