DOS/Win3.X Text Editors

[Scott Stevens]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 06:34:38 +1100
"river" <river at zip.com.au> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Most of my old stuff uses RS232 (ie Intel SBC, MicroModule, SC/MP,
> homebuilt machines, etc) and I've found that Win98 Hyperterminal is
> pretty poor and I found my old 486 running DOS7 with Win3.1 to be a
> much more robust Hyperterminal.
> 
> My xasm programs are all DOS based, so I can move them to the Win3.x
> machine. I use the Context Text Editor (which I find to be very good),
> but it's for Win9.x systems. So, I am looking for a good programmers
> text editor for Win3.1/DOS. I can dig up my old SPFPC disks and run
> that, but I am wondering if anyone here knows of a good, powerful,
> mouse-driven editor that will run on Win3.x/DOS.
> 

The editor that I use on 32-Bit Windows machines, Textpad, also has a
16-bit version.  I first encountered Textpad (which is shareware,
produced and sold by a UK company) on the JAVA Development CD-ROM I
ordered from Sun Microsystems, iow: it came recommended by the Sun Java
guys.

The website for TextPad is: http://www.textpad.com/

The older page (not that easy to navigate to from the splashy new page
wanting to sell you the latest-greatest-Win32-version) to download the
Version 3 that will run on 16 bit Windows is:

http://www.textpad.com/download/ver3.html

It's non-Free software, has one of those 'time-out' nag splash screens
you have to stare at for a bit when starting the first instance, until
you register it.  Not sure if you can register the 16 bit version
anymore, my Version 3 key works for both the 16 and 32 bit versions.

Oh, and you can drag over your terminal.exe binary from Windows 3 to any
newer 32-bit Windows version, and just continue to use it.  There's no
reason at all to put up with HyperTerminal (they don't give you
bare-wire access to the serial port, which makes it useless for a lot of
hardware projects) for a rudimentary (albeit crude) TTY-type serial
terminal in Windows.

If you do much at all with serial terminals in Windoze, though, you want
TeraTerm:  http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.html , which
is available in 16 and 32 bit versions and is both serial-port and
telnet capable.  It does fairly decent VT-100 emulation, too.

-Scott