The Hessling Editor

Version: 
4.0
Release date: 
Sunday, 16 August, 1992

License:

Interface:

Authors/Port authors:

THE is a powerful text editor modelled on the VM/CMS text editor XEDIT with the best features of Mansfield Software's Kedit.

THE; is freeware, distributed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE and is available for various Unix platforms (either a text-mode application or as a native X11 application), QNX, OS/2, DOS, Amiga and Win9x/Me/NT/2k/XP.

Like its relatives, THE uses Rexx as its macro language, which means that THE is a highly configurable and versatile editor. Since Version 3.0, THE also has user-configurable syntax highlighting.

THE OS/2 version is similar to EPM, runs within an OS/2 command window and is HPFS aware. THE also uses the OS/2 Rexx interpreter to execute macro files.

An extensive interface exists between THE and Rexx giving THE the complete power of Rexx.

This software is distributed as compressed package. You have to download and manually install it; if prerequisites are required, you will have to manually install them too.

Manual installation

Program is distributed as ZIP package: download to temporary directory and unpack to destination folder. See below for download link(s).

Install Regina Rexx is optional, THE also uses the OS/2 Rexx interpreter.

You can install the prerequisites with rpm running the following string in a command line:

yum install emxrt libc
Following links are to additional programs, not mandatory but useful:

Following ones are the download links for manual installation:

The Hessling Editor v. 4.0 (WarpIn package, 29/12/2022) Readme/What's new
Version 4.0 29-12-2022 --- New features: o Support 64bit Haiku o Increase maximum SELECT level to 50000 o Add fold.the for folding/unfolding code o Add completer.the for better command line file completion lookup o Add remote.the to enable editing files on remote server using ssh/scp o To overcome a lack of available packages for PDCurses, the source code for PDCursesMod is included in the source and built from that Still possible to build against pre-built PDCurses library o Add VARIANT to EXTRACT/QUERY to determine which THE variant you are running o Add MOUSECLICK to SET/EXTRACT/QUERY to set/query the time interval in milliseconds that a press/release of the mouse button converts into a mouse button click o Add GETSTEM, PUTSTEM, GETSTEMF, PUTSTEMF to EDITV command o Can build variants with HomeBrew for macOS. Formula created for each variant. --- Changed commands or behaviour: o Enable EXTRACT /SELECT to return maximum SELECT level in SELECT.3 --- Bug fixes: o Fix Bug #309 - crash with long TERM variable o Fix crash when calling SET FILENAME, FNAME, FEXT, FMODE, FPATH, FULLFNAME from batch. o Fix random crashes on macos when running OS commands. o Fix bug when specifying a specific THE variant to run via -R or --run-variant= switch o Re-enable mouse support in ncurses o Change to INSERT command in XEDIT COMPAT mode so that INSERT from command line with no line contents, inserts a blank line and moves cursor to file area. o Fix crash with TAG 0
 sourceforge.net/projects/hessling-editor/files/hessling-editor/4.0/the40os2.wpi/download
Documentation v. 3.1 (html format, 14/3/2017) Readme/What's new
The Hessling Editor v3.1 documentation, in HTML format.
 hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/editors/thedoc31.zip
Documentation v. 3.3rc1 (pdf format, 16/1/2012) Readme/What's new
The Hessling Editor v3.3rc1 Reference Manual
 sourceforge.net/projects/hessling-editor/files/hessling-editor/3.3%20Release%20Candidate%201/THE-3.3RC1.pdf/download
The Hessling Editor v. 3.3rc1 (11/7/2011) Readme/What's new
Version 3.3RC1 10-Jul-2011 --- Bug fixes: o SET TRAILING now works as advertised. o Fix for bug 2676591: EXTRACT CTLCHAR X will now return correct details o Fix for bug 2929608: SHOWKEY prompt clobbered with CMDLINE TOP o Fix for bug 3056302: Use correct gcc switch for --enable-bounds-checking o Fix for bug 3044075: Handled quoted filenames in various commands correctly o Fix for bug 3041350: Add start menu item for THE on Windows o Fix for bug 3041639: Be consistent in documentation with -u switch o Fix for bug 3313877: Allow prefix macro to be turned off o Fixed crash when HOME environment variable is too long o SET BOUNDMARK OFF now works o When copying text from the clipboard which is longer than the current WIDTH, the text is split at WIDTH as well as line breaks. This stops THE crashing. o Fix validation errors in DEFINE command o Fix for bug 3191866: :label definition for rexx.tld should be firstnonblank o Fix for SPLIT when changes were made to a line before the split. o Major rewrite of handling of syntax highlighting to fix several bugs. o Fix for EXTRACT CASE. --- Changed commands or behaviour: o Default mapping for mouse buttons that used to be mapped to BUTTON_RELEASE and some mapped to BUTTON_PRESS are now mapped to BUTTON_CLICK. o Prefix command and macro handling changed to be more consistent with XEDIT. o configure --enable-32bit on Mac OSX will produce a binary with only 32bit architectures in the universal binary. Use this switch when building THE to be used with ooRexx versions 3.x. o Documentation for SET CTLCHAR now requires colour specification o Default width of line increased from 512 to 1000 o When attempting to JOIN a line and the resulting length of the joined line would exceed WIDTH, issue error 154. Previously this used to truncate the line to WIDTH. o Default mapping of mouse scroll wheel up and down from UP 5 and DOWN 5 to BACKWARD 5 LINES and FORWARD 5 LINES respectively. o SET WIDTH will now adjust ZONE and VERIFY end value if they were specified as '*' o SET MSGMODE now accepts optional second argument of LONG or SHORT. o Extract MSGMODE will now return 2 values; msgmode.2 will always be LONG o Implemented Feature Request 3193579, EXTRACT DIRFILEID returns directory name when on top-of-file or bottom-of-file --- New features: o THE on Windows is now available as a Windows GUI application. It is provided as theg.exe. The original console mode THE is provided as thec.exe. o On platforms that support a text-mode THE and a GUI THE (Windows and X11), a new binary is provided; the or the.exe which is a front-end to either the GUI or text-mode binary. o Added optional PRIORITY to CURSOR command. The priority value is ignored. o Added FIELDWORD.3, VERSION.5 as new values from equivalent EXTRACT command. o Added syntax.the and rexx.syntax files as an example of context-sensitive help for writing Rexx programs. o Added attribute BACKBOLD to COLOR and ECOLOR commands; sets background to be bold. Same as BLINK on most platforms. o Added REMOVE as option for SET TRAILING - combination of ON and OFF. o Added most KEDIT line flag targets; NEW, CHAnged, ALTered and TAGged. LOCATE TAG will locate the first tagged line in the file. o Mac OSX binary distributions now come with natve OSX launcher; THE.app which supports dropping files onto the icon in Finder or the Dock. o Support building directly with ooRexx 4.x o Added configure switch; --with-global-profile to enable specification of the name of a global profile file o Add EXTRACT PROFile to determine which profile file is being used o Added support for Left and Right Mouse Scroll wheels. Defaults to LEFT 5 and RIGHT 5 respectively. Only working on X11 port at the moment. o FORWARD and BACKWARD commands now allow HALF and 'n Lines' options. o Added 'File' option to SET READONLY to apply readonly to the current file. o Added SET ERROROUTPUT to enable THE error messages to be echoed to controling terminal window.
 sourceforge.net/projects/hessling-editor/files/hessling-editor/3.3%20Release%20Candidate%201/the33rc1os2.zip/download
The Hessling Editor v. 3.1 (13/8/2002) Readme/What's new
Version 3.1 13-Aug-02 --- Bug fixes: o Fix bug with QUERY ECOLOUR on Win32 platform. o Entering a shifted character in response to FILLBOX command on X11 port resulted in incorrect values being inserted. o Fixed compilation errors on platforms that don't have KEY_MOUSE in curses.h o Fixed compile error on AIX when using REXX/6000. o Fixed bug with SET MARGINS; second parameter did not allow '*' to be specified. o Fixed bug with ZONE command when only the first parameter was supplied. o Fixed small bug with identification of magic numbers in new files when the first line was copied into the file. o Changed limit on number of files that can be edited from 256 to 2,147,483,647 o Fixed bug with sorting a file with only 1 line. o When two different files are displayed as a result of SCREEN command, and COPY BLOCK (box block) is performed, block in source window does not get reset. Now fixed. o Changed HTML TLD comment terminator from "-->" to ">" o Fixed bug introduced in 3.0; QUERY and EXTRACT would not recognise abbreviated keywords. eg. QUERY ARB would fail and you needed to use QUERY ARBCHAR. o When editing a symbolic link, unless BACKUP INPLACE is ON, the symbolic link was lost. This is now fixed. o Display of pending prefix indicator in STATAREA now clear. o Added workaround for bug in AIX curses, where the cursor would move down one line when typing text into the last displayed column and the screen autoscrolled. o Fix for column position being calculated as a negative value on some platforms, resulting in scrolling to the left beyond column 1. o X11 port of THE more stable on startup (with PDCurses 2.5) o Fix bug with changing file name, path or extension when run in batch mode. o Fix bug with resizing of THE window to a small number of columns; still potential crashes if the window is resized to < 10 columns. o Functions: focuseof() and focustof() returned the wrong value when on the command line and the curos was last on a line other that 'top-of-file' or 'bottom-of-file'. o Fix error with wrong command being repeated (with REPEAT) command in a macro. o Minor changes to deregister dynamic functions like parser.1() so that Object Rexx 2.2 on Linux does not leak shared memory and cause THE to crash. o Fix bug with syntax highlighting for LABELS. o Comments delimiters defined in TLD files can now be specified as case-insensitive. o Fixed bug with GET CLIP: under Win32. Now doesn't crash after multiple uses of GET CLIP: o Use of ALT keyword on :function definitions in a TLD file did not work. o Remove limit on 20 directories in MACROPATH; now no effective limit. o Fixed Rexx/Trans DLL on Win32 platforms that caused THE to not work with Object Rexx on Win2K and XP. o Allow CMATCH command to be executed from a batch command. o Disallow CURSOR HOME from a batch command. o Allow C-C, C-S and similar commands in OS/2 port (fix to PDCurses) o Fix bug with SET TRAILING and empty file. o Allow more flexible specification of hex and decimal strings in targets. / x'3e2d' / is now identified as a valid hex string target (with HEX ON of course). Bug #531800 --- Changed commands or behaviour: o Any ECOLOUR character can be used in the 'alternate' colour specifier for 'keywords' in a TLD definition. Previously, only the 'alternate' characters 1 through 9 were allowed. o Added optional targets on EXTRACT PENDING command. o Color on X11 port now behaves differently with PDCurses 2.5 and above. "Bold" colors are now drawn in the same font, but in a brighter color. This means that any monospaced font can be used; there is no need to have an equivalent bold font. o "Blink" color "modifiers" on X11 port now displays background in bright color. o Added extra color "modifier"; italic on X11 port. To display text in italics, you must have a normal font and italic font of the same size. o Cursor on X11 port can now be set to blink with PDCurses 2.5 and above. o The "find" family of commands can now be run without the mandatory string parameter. Like LOCATE, these commands can use the string used in the last "find" command if no parameter specified. o [SET] COLOUR and [SET] ECOLOUR have options to turn on or off display modifiers like BOLD, BLINK etc. These can be set for individual colour specifications or for all colour specifications. o Profile files specified with the -p command line switch will use the same mechanism for locating the file as is done with the THE MACRO command. ie THE_MACRO_PATH=/usr/local/THE set and mymacro.the is in /usr/local/THE; the -p mymacro will find /usr/local/THE/mymacro.the o When setting variables via EXTRACT with Regina, THE now uses direct setting rather than symbolic setting of variables. Should be no user effect. o POPUP command now returns POPUP.2 which contains the item number selected or 0 if nothing selected and POPUP.3 which is the item number of the line last highlighted. o POPUP command now has no effective limit on what can be poped up. If the number of lines or columns is too large for the size of the screen, scrolling is now enabled. o SET FULLFNAME now switches between displaying the fully qualified filename of the current file and the FNAME omponent of the file. o Rewrote build.the macro to use POPUP command and to not stay in the macro after the build is executed. o Number of lines in SET MSGLINE can be specified as * to indicate as many lines as will fit on the screen. The number of lines argument is now validated against the screen size and starting line argument. A new CLEAR argument is also provided to clear the msgline contents. o Slight change with syntax highlighting; brackets are not coloured if there is no MATCH heading in the associated TLD file or if SET HEADER MATCH OFF is set. o New optional specification for coloring functions not specified explicitely. o Minor changes to syntax highlighting of numbers. o SCHANGE now executes the previous arguments when no arguments are specified. --- New features: o Support for GNU Regular Expressions in LOCATE and ALL commands. Command syntax is LOCATE Regexp /RE/ and ALL Regexp /RE/ respectively. o Added new SET REGEXP command to allow specification of which Regular Expression syntax that is to be used in targets. o Added new Appendix (7) for explaining some details of Regular Expressions. o New command line option; "1" for X11 port. This runs THE in "single window mode". What this means is that every time THE is started, it checks to see if THE is already in "single window mode" for the curent user, with the same optional filename supplied. If so, the file or files requested to be edited on the command line are sent to the running instance and are added to that instances ring. Values from command line of -l, -c and -r passed to server and applied to the file being edited. Works on Unix with XCurses and ncurses. o Added SYNONYM command. Not a full implementation yet; doesn't support parameter reordering. o Add support for Rexx/Trans on Unix and OS/2 platforms. o Added new command SET EQUIVCHAR to set a character to be used in parameters that would normally take '=' to specify a value from the current file or view. Default value is '='. o All SET commands can now use EQUIVCHAR where appropriate. o Any command parameter that specifies a filename can use the EQUIVCHAR to specify portions of the filename. o Ports of THE now available for Amiga, BeOS, AtheOS, Linux/390 and Mac OSX. o Added QUERY/EXTRACT NBSCOPE; number of lines in scope. o Added EXTRACT FIELDWORD to return the current word in the current field. o Added new command, REDIT, to discard the changes to the current file and reload it back into the ring retaining the current location. o Added BOUNDMARK, a new SET command, and associated QUERY/EXTRACT and COLOR setting. BOUNDMARK displays vertical lines between characters indicating columnar areas like ZONE or TABS. Only significant on X11 port of THE with PDCurses 2.5 or above. o Implementation of :number, :column and :postcompare headers in a TLD file. o Added initial COBOL, MAKE and OPL TLD files in the distribution. o New command; SET HEADER, to turn on or off portions of the current syntax highlighting. o Added optional Common User Access (CUA) commands to allow THE to behave in a manner consistent with the CUA definition. New commands; SOS CUADELBACK, SOS CUADELCHAR. Changed commands; CURSOR now has a CUA option for UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT. enter command now has optional CUA option. MARK command also has a CUA option to mark a CUA block, which is like a STREAM block, but acts like the CUA mark. See the sample cua.the macro for setting up THE to work like a CUA editor. o Added new config.the macro. It is a GUI configuration tool for THE but is incomplete at this stage. This requires Rexx/Tk 1.2 or above to work. o Added new sample macro; tags.the. This is intended to be used with Exuberant Ctags. o Added new sample macro; nl.tld. This displays a POPUP with all the named lines in the file and moves the cursor to the selected line. o Added new sample macro; complete.the. This macro provides code completion for Rexx and C languages. Should be easy to extend it for other languages. o Added new colour setting capabilities; CPREFIX and CGAP. These are equivalent to PREFIX and GAP respectively, but relate to the current line. o Added THIGHLIGHT support; RESET, SET/MOD/QUERY/EXTRACT THIGHLIGHT, and [SET] COLOUR THIGHLIGHT. THIGHLIGHT displays found string or RE targets in the colour specified by [SET] COLOUR THIGHLIGHT. Also string targets in SCHANGE command also displayed in thighlight colour. o Added [SET] TRAILING to change behaviour of trailing blanks in files. o Added preliminary compatibility mode for ISPF. Changes include SET COMPAT, display of "TABS>", "COLS>" in prefix area for tabs and cols indicator lines. The changes are incomplete. o Added new command; CURSOR GOTO. This is similar to CURSOR FILE, but will move the cursor the the specified line/column even if they are not in view. o Added new SET command; TARGETSAVE. This allows you to specify which target types are saved for subsequent calls to the LOCATE command without any parameters. By default; SET TARGETTYPE ALL, the LOCATE command without any parameters, locates the last target irrespective of the type of target. This is the current behaviour. With SET TARGETTYPE STRING then the only target saved will be one that has a string target component. ie. if you executed LOCATE /fred/ then LOCATE :3 then LOCATE, the final LOCATE will look for /fred/ NOT :3 o Added new SET command; PAGEWRAP. This allows the user to specify if FORWARD and BACKWARD commands wrap to the bottom and top of files automatically or not. o Added new SOS command; SOS CURSORSHIFT. Similar to SOS CURSORADJ but shifts text to the right of the cursor to the cursor position. o Added QUERY/EXTRACT EFILEID to return the original filename of the current file. o Added QUERY/EXTRACT LASTOP to return the last operand specified for various commands. o Added SET FILETABS, TABFILE command and SET COLOUR/COLOR FILETABS and FILETABSDIV. FILETABS allows for a single-line window displayed at the top of the screen containing the filenames of all files (except the current file) in the ring. Clicking the mouse on a filename makes it the current file. o Added new prefix commands for all compatibility modes: +--------------- LC - lowercase line(s) UC - uppercase line(s) LCC - lowercase block UCC - uppercase block ( - shift left column(s) within zone ) - shift left column(s) within zone (( - shift left column block within zone )) - shift left column block within zone Not implemented yet... O - overlay line(s) - same as OVERLAYBOX (except ISPF mode) OO - overlay block(s) - same as OVERLAYBOX (except ISPF mode) +--------------- o Added or modified prefix commands for ISPF compatibility mode: +--------------- A - after target B - before target R - repeat line(s) RR - repeat block O - overlay line(s) - (ISPF behaviour) OO - overlay block(s) - (ISPF behaviour) COLS - column indicator line TABS - tabs indicator line BOUNDS - bounds indicator line +---------------
 sourceforge.net/projects/hessling-editor/files/hessling-editor/3.1/the31os2.zip/download
The Hessling Editor v. 4.0 (Zip file, ) Readme/What's new
Version 4.0 29-12-2022 --- New features: o Support 64bit Haiku o Increase maximum SELECT level to 50000 o Add fold.the for folding/unfolding code o Add completer.the for better command line file completion lookup o Add remote.the to enable editing files on remote server using ssh/scp o To overcome a lack of available packages for PDCurses, the source code for PDCursesMod is included in the source and built from that Still possible to build against pre-built PDCurses library o Add VARIANT to EXTRACT/QUERY to determine which THE variant you are running o Add MOUSECLICK to SET/EXTRACT/QUERY to set/query the time interval in milliseconds that a press/release of the mouse button converts into a mouse button click o Add GETSTEM, PUTSTEM, GETSTEMF, PUTSTEMF to EDITV command o Can build variants with HomeBrew for macOS. Formula created for each variant. --- Changed commands or behaviour: o Enable EXTRACT /SELECT to return maximum SELECT level in SELECT.3 --- Bug fixes: o Fix Bug #309 - crash with long TERM variable o Fix crash when calling SET FILENAME, FNAME, FEXT, FMODE, FPATH, FULLFNAME from batch. o Fix random crashes on macos when running OS commands. o Fix bug when specifying a specific THE variant to run via -R or --run-variant= switch o Re-enable mouse support in ncurses o Change to INSERT command in XEDIT COMPAT mode so that INSERT from command line with no line contents, inserts a blank line and moves cursor to file area. o Fix crash with TAG 0
 sourceforge.net/projects/hessling-editor/files/hessling-editor/4.0/the40os2.zip/download
Record updated last time on: 15/02/2023 - 22:02

Translate to...

Add new comment