Questions about portability from a Kedit user

[billdehaan]

Hi;

My apologies if I'm breaking new user protocol by starting a new topic, but I searched and found no answer to this, and I didn't find any existing topic where this was appropriate.

I have been a happy Kedit user for 25+ years. Sadly, with the authors' retirements, development has stopped. While Kedit still works as well as it ever has, it's not evolving, and I'm looking to a more current editor, one that is still being developed.

I'm looking for an editor that supports macros, since I find I write a lot of them in Rexx to handle all the weird log file analysis I do. Zeus' support for macros, with support for many different macro languages certainly seems compelling, at least on paper.

Zeus is on a list of four that I found that I want to check out (the others being UltraEdit, MultiEdit, and SlickEdit). I've just spent about a month working with the UltraEdit demo. One thing that I quickly discovered was that in my day to day work, I really do need my editor to be portable. I hadn't realized how much time I spend being called into the lab to analyze output log files on other PCs. Fortunately, there is an portable UltraEdit version, and I ended up switching to that.

I'd like to take Zeus out for a spin, but if it's not a portable app, or it can't be made to work as one, that's probably going to be a showstopper for me, so I figured I should ask up front.

Anyway, has anyone done this? Made Zeus work on a USB drive? Any comments would be appreciated. I don't want to spend a lot of time learning the editor to find out that it's wasted time if it's tied to one PC and I can't take the environment around with me.

Also, if any ex-Kedit users are out there, and have any Kedit to Zeus recommendations, please feel free to let me know.

Any and all help is appreciated.

[jussij]

I'd like to take Zeus out for a spin, but if it's not a portable app

Zeus is not truely portable because it will write to and read from the local user section of the machines registry.

Anyway, has anyone done this? Made Zeus work on a USB drive?

Even though Zeus is not portable, I would have expected it to still run fine off a USB stick.

If you copy the entire C:\Program Files\Zeus folder to the USB stick and then run Zeus from that USB folder on another machine I would be expecting Zeus to run just fine.

But I have never tried this myself so I might be wrong.

What sort of error messages are you seeing

Cheers Jussi

[billdehaan]

Zeus is not truely portable because it will write to and read from the local user section of the machines registry.

Okay, I'm not too worried about that; what I'm thinking of more is whether or not the editor configuration is portable. By that I mean that when I customize the editor with my preferred key bindings, macros, tab/font/etc. settings, would those travel with the configuration, or would they be bound only to my base PC?

Even though Zeus is not portable, I would have expected it to still run fine off a USB stick.

If you copy the entire C:\Program Files\Zeus folder to the USB stick and then run Zeus from that USB folder on another machine I would be expecting Zeus to run just fine.

Okay, when I start test driving it, I'll give it a shot. Is that directory hardcoded? One of the reasons that I prefer portable apps is that I've got a nonstandard directory hierarchy, although the standard environment variables (%PROGRAMFILES%, %APPDATA%, etc.) are configured properly.

What sort of error messages are you seeing

None yet. I've not installed the editor yet. If the answer was "no, Zeus cannot be used portably", then I wouldn't bother evaluating it.

I'll give it a shot and report back.

[jussij]

Is that directory hardcoded? One of the reasons that I prefer portable apps is that I've got a nonstandard directory hierarchy, although the standard environment variables (%PROGRAMFILES%, %APPDATA%, etc.) are configured properly.

No. The directories are softcoded and follow the Microsoft User Data model that you refer to.

By that I mean that when I customize the editor with my preferred key bindings, macros, tab/font/etc. settings, would those travel with the configuration, 77or would they be bound only to my base PC?

This is a valid point.

Because Zeus follows the Microsoft User Data model Zeus will run fine off a USD if the machine is Windows XP.

But it will not run correctly if the USB is running from a Windows 7 machine, the reason being Windows 7 expects the user data to be located in the roaming profile section of the machine.

So by default this is not going to work.

But there is a work around

Zeus has an option to load it's config details via the command line (for more details search for Command Line Arguments in the Zeus help file).

I think the steps below would allow you to run Zeus from a USB on any version of Windows:

(1) Copy the Zeus binary files (i.e. C:\program files\Zeus) to this USB to a location like this:

L:\Zeus\

(2) Copy the Zeus configuration files.

You can locate the user configuration folder using the Zeus Macros, Load menu and in the resulting dialog move up one folder.

Then copy the following folders from the directory above to the following USD directories:

L:\Zeus\zConfig
L:\Zeus\zHelp
L:\Zeus\zScript
L:\Zeus\zTags

(3) Create a batch file to run Zeus using the -u command line option:

Code: Select all

@echo off
REM Start Zeus using the l:\Zeus configuration folder
start "" "C:\Program Files\Zeus\zeus.exe" -s -u L:\Zeus
exit

Cheers Jussi

[billdehaan]

No. The directories are softcoded and follow the Microsoft User Data model that you refer to.

Good. All of the machines I work with follow that model.

But it will not run correctly if the USB is running from a Windows 7 machine, the reason being Windows 7 expects the user data to be located in the roaming profile section of the machine.

Currently, all the machines I work on are XP (well, I think there may be one or two legacy Win2000 or NT boxen), so that's not an issue. We will inevitably be moving to Win7 or Win8, whenever corporate decides to, so that will be a future consideration.

I was more concerned about things like taking the editor down to the lab, popping in the USB, and getting a "this copy of the editor is not registered" message, which, all other issues aside, would make our corporate auditing department freak out.

And, of course, issues like having all the customizations lost.

But there is a work around

That's good enough for me. One thing I did with Kedit (haven't needed to do it with the UltraEdit trial, because that is a portable app) is set a number of DOS environment strings, which Kedit macros would then query in order to get correct behaviour. [/quote]

I think the steps below would allow you to run Zeus from a USB on any version of Windows

I'll try this when my UltraEdit evaluation expires, which I think is in 3 or 4 days. At that point, I expect that you'll see me in the forums asking a lot of "how do you do this" questions.

[jussij]

Currently, all the machines I work on are XP

That is the simplest option since it means you only need a full copy of the C:\Program Files\Zeus folder.

issues like having all the customizations lost.

This should not happen.

I was more concerned about things like taking the editor down to the lab, popping in the USB, and getting a "this copy of the editor is not registered" message

I had not thought about this

You are correct. This will be an issue

But what should work is entering the Zeus license key just once from inside the version of Zeus running from the USB.

This will write the license details to the user section of the registry for that machine, so the next time the USB version should run fine.

Also the Zeus license does allows for this. The Zeus license allows you to install Zeus in more than one physical location.

The Zeus license just asks that for any one license there is only ever one Zeus user using the software at any one time.

One thing I did with Kedit (haven't needed to do it with the UltraEdit trial, because that is a portable app) is set a number of DOS environment strings, which Kedit macros would then query in order to get correct behaviour.

To do this with Zeus just run Zeus via a batch file and in that batch file set the environment variables before starting Zeus.

You can then access those environment variables inside the Zeus macro using that scripting languages environment API.

For Lua for example this would be:

Code: Select all

local value = os.getenv(varname)

At that point, I expect that you'll see me in the forums asking a lot of "how do you do this" questions

I look forward to it.

Cheers Jussi

[billdehaan]

I had not thought about this

You are correct. This will be an issue

But what should work is entering the Zeus license key just once from inside the version of Zeus running from the USB.

This will write the license details to the user section of the registry for that machine, so the next time the USB version should run fine.

Ah, well, then. I will probably update the Zeus batch file to write that to the registry when I run it. The last thing I want to do is be dragged down to a new lab PC, and see that there's a VP and two customers in front of it, asking me to show them something in the logs, and get a licensing error message. Bad career move.

Also the Zeus license does allows for this. The Zeus license allows you to install Zeus in more than one physical location.

Well, it will usually be on a USB drive, which by definition will only be in one location at a time.

The Zeus license just asks that for any one license there is only ever one Zeus user using the software at any one time.

Ah, the old Borland agreement, eh? That's another reason I like portable apps. I'm not keen on paying to run the app on my work PC and my home PC.

You won't have to worry about piracy. I tend to customize my applications so much that they're essentially unusable to anyone but me. That's actually one of the complaints people have when they visit my desk; "why can't you use a regular editor like everyone else?". I've installed a copy of Notepad++ on my desktop to appease them, but never look at it myself.

To do this with Zeus just run Zeus via a batch file and in that batch file set the environment variables before starting Zeus.

That's the plan. I use a batch scripting language that is to batch files what Zeus hopefully will be to Notepad. Most of my scripts use environment variables to branch to the behaviour appropriate for the machine.

You can then access those environment variables inside the Zeus macro using that scripting languages environment API.

That's something that surprised me about UE; it doesn't seem to access the DOS environment. Of course, I haven't really needed to, within the editor, but I was surprised at the omission.

For Lua for example this would be:

Code: Select all

local value = os.getenv(varname)

Not much of a change from Kedit's

Code: Select all

localvalue = dosenv(varname)

I look forward to it.

I've downloaded, but not yet installed, the v3.97h release. I see that the zip file contains an exe and a bunch of .BIN files. I assume that there's a .CHM file in there? Is there a .PDF or other manual file that I could go through, prior to actually running the thing?

One criticism I have of UE (which I am definitely not dissing, I am quite impressed with it) is that because it's 20+ years old, the documentation is a series of deltas on deltas on deltas, with some things in the online help, some in the forums, some in the web-based help, and some only in the v11 or v12 or v13 readme files. That's an issue for new users, something that I hope to avoid.

I have discovered in my evaluation that some of my previous assumptions were wrong. There are features that Kedit has that UE doesn't, but I often found a new UE feature that allowed me to perform the desired task as well, if not better.

So now Zeus is going to have to compete against both Kedit and UE functionality. Don't worry, after Zeus, just think what I'm going to put MultiEdit and SlickEdit though...

[jussij]

Ah, the old Borland agreement, eh?

Yes indeed.

Not much of a change from Kedit's

The example I quoted is for the Lua scripting language.

But one think to remember is Zeus can be scripted in quite a few different laguages.

I myself like Lua but other language options like Python, Java Script etc are also possible.

I assume that there's a .CHM file in there?

Yes there is a CHM help file.

Is there a .PDF or other manual file that I could go through, prior to actually running the thing?

I would also recommend reading these to sections of the Zeus forum:

Scripts - http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewforum.php?f=10
Tips and Tricks - http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewforum.php?f=5

because it's 20+ years old, the documentation is a series of deltas on deltas on deltas

Unfortunately, since Zeus is some 18+ years old it suffers a similar issue.

The other issue for Zeus is the fact that it is so configurable. Being highly configurable makes it very difficult to document everything.

There are features that Kedit has that UE doesn't

If you find similar features missing from Zeus, I'd be happy to hear about them.

So now Zeus is going to have to compete against both Kedit and UE functionality.

I look forward to your feedback

Cheers Jussi

[billdehaan]

But one think to remember is Zeus can be scripted in quite a few different languages.

Yes, that's a big plus. I'm used to REXX, but in the past I've used MultiEdit (which used a C language syntax macro language), Brief and Emacs (which used Lisp), and now UltraEdit (which uses Javascript). I've also done some ASP scripting in VB. Of them all, I'd say that the C- or REXX- type languages are the quickest; the Javascript is the most verbose, and Lisp is my least favourite.

What really matters, I've found, is not just the syntax of the language, but the primitives that allow access to the edit document. For example, I'm surprised that UE can't determine the user insert/overtype state from within a macro, that sort of thing.

I would also recommend reading these to sections of the Zeus forum:

Scripts - http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewforum.php?f=10
Tips and Tricks - http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewforum.php?f=5

Will do.

Unfortunately, since Zeus is some 18+ years old it suffers a similar issue.

The other issue for Zeus is the fact that it is so configurable. Being highly configurable makes it very difficult to document everything.

That configurability is one to the things that I'm looking for. My Kedit personal macros library consists of 246 KEX (macro script) files and 41 KML (macro library) files that I've written over the years. A wc -l shows that I've written 40,245 lines of macros/library functions since 1992 (that's when Kedit implemented the REXX language parser).

To be fair, a lot of that is because Kedit is a text editor, rather than a code editor (it predates IDEs), so a lot of those macros are to add features that modern editors include automatically, such as displaying a list of all C++ methods in the file being edited.

I found with UE that I've really only written 8 scripts and one script library of functions. I was expecting to write a lot more, and I'm sure if I end up selecting it, I'll inevitably end up doing so. But what I found was that a lot of the scripts I intended to write/port were unnecessary, since there was already existing functionality in the editor that would made the script redundant.

If you find similar features missing from Zeus, I'd be happy to hear about them.

Well, the major one, which I suspect will be true of all non-XEDIT based editors, is the ALL/MORE/LESS, RANGE, and ZONE commands. I'm currently in a long discussion with other UE users in their forums about this, because many think that "code folding" is the same thing.

In Kedit/Xedit, each line has a "scope" value associated with it. This can be accessed through the macro language. The ALL command restricts the file to including only those lines which meet the matching criteria. You can then use MORE and LESS to extend and restrict other lines.

This is like code folding/line hiding in other areas, except that non-visible lines are effectively no longer in the file, so far as the editor is concerned.

Say I have a function of the form "f(a,b)", and I've realized that for every instance where a is either 3 or 7, if the value of b is 5, then the value of b should be changed to 16. I can do this with:

Code: Select all

ALL /y = f(3,/
MORE /y = f(7,/
CHANGE /, 5)/, 16/ALL *

In other folding/hiding editors I have seen, that CHANGE command would replace all instances of ", 5)" to ", 16)" within the file. So instances of "y = g(3, 5)" would become "y = g(3, 16)".

Like regular expressions, code folding is incredibly powerful once you get used to it. But outside of Xedit- or SPF- based editors, it doesn't seem to be a very well known feature. It's probably because it comes from being a line-based editor concept, and most editors today are stream- and token- based in their approach. To be fair, Kedit can't do a lot of things token-based editors can, either.

I look forward to your feedback

Be careful what you wish for

[jussij]

Say I have a function of the form "f(a,b)", and I've realized that for every instance where a is either 3 or 7, if the value of b is 5, then the value of b should be changed to 16. I can do this with...

I can see how this could be a very powerful feature to have.

In other folding/hiding editors I have seen, that CHANGE command would replace all instances of ", 5)" to ", 16)" within the file. So instances of "y = g(3, 5)" would become "y = g(3, 16)".

I have not seen a folding editor that can do this and I'm not really sure it is folding as such.

From what you describe the ALL/MORE/LESS commands act more like filtering actions than folding actions and the CHANGE action is nothing more than a regular expression like search and replace on those filtered lines

To me this sounds a lot like a very user friendly, graphical version of SED.

I am not familiar with the code folding in UE, but for the code folding I have seen it is nothing more than the hiding a set of contiguous lines of code.

What you described is more powerful than that because the lines do not need to be contiguous.

Cheers Jussi

[billdehaan]

I have not seen a folding editor that can do this and I'm not really sure it is folding as such.

That's correct. It's known as "selective line editing". Of course, lines that are not selected are not displayed, so usually when I raise the issue, most people say "oh, yes, editor X has that; it's called code folding".

From what you describe the ALL/MORE/LESS commands act more like filtering actions than folding actions

That's exactly correct.

Say you have a file with lines 1-100. After running some ALL/MORE/LESS criteria, only lines 1-5 and 96-100 are within scope. Until you change the scope again, lines 6-95 are essentially not in the file; the only way to tell is that you will see them in the line number field:

Code: Select all

* * * Top of File * * *
00001 this is line 001
00002 this is line 002
00003 this is line 003
00004 this is line 004
00005 this is line 005
---------------------------------------------------- 90 line(s) not displayed ---------------------------
00096 this is line 096
00097 this is line 097
00098 this is line 098
00099 this is line 099
00100 this is line 100
* * * End of File * * *

Now, if you save the file, it will save the selected lines, but outside of that, lines 6-95 effectively aren't there. If you run a macro that loops through the file line by line, it will treat line 96 as the next line after 5 (unless you mess with the scope control itself in the macro).

To quote from Kedit's help file:

Using KEDIT's selective line editing facilities, you can exclude certain portions of your file from your display. With SCOPE DISPLAY, the default, lines that are excluded from display are also excluded from processing by most KEDIT commands; these commands act as if excluded lines were not present in your file.

With SCOPE ALL, KEDIT commands operate on all lines of your file, even though some of them may be excluded from display. SCOPE ALL is rarely used except in specialized situations within macros. In most situations the default of SCOPE DISPLAY is appropriate.

While most commands avoid excluded lines when SCOPE DISPLAY is in effect, there are a few exceptions. The FILE and SAVE commands and menu items that write your file to disk always operate on your entire file, writing even excluded lines to disk. The SORT command and the Actions Sort dialog box sort all lines in the target area of your file, even though some of these lines may be excluded lines.

and the CHANGE action is nothing more than a regular expression like search and replace on those filtered lines

Well, the change command in Kedit supports regular expressions, but that's outside the issue of line selection. It was just the command I used in the example.

To me this sounds a lot like a very user friendly, graphical version of SED.

No, that's not quite right. I've used SED (of course, perl replaces sed, these days), it's not the same thing.

I am not familiar with the code folding in UE, but for the code folding I have seen it is nothing more than the hiding a set of contiguous lines of code.

That's correct. That's not to pick on UE here, most editors that support code folding do it that way. It's more of an outlining feature, so that you can see code structure. It's definitely useful, but it's a display only feature. If you fold the code, and then do a global change, it will affect code within the folds as well. That's not true of the Kedit/Xedit scope mechanism.

As I said, outside of Kedit and SPF type editors (both derived from IBM mainframes), this is not at all common.

What you described is more powerful than that because the lines do not need to be contiguous.

That's exactly correct.

In my job, I often get log files from the field that are hundreds of megabytes of formatted telegram data. Things like the ALL command let me filter on specific criteria to see only the telegrams that are relevant. Using ALL and MORE, I've been able to pull 23 offending telegrams out of a file of over 2 million lines in under a minute.

Of course, part of that is due another feature called ZONE, which lets me search only in certain columns (the telegrams are fixed format). So in a 2M line file, it's only a couple of commands to the editor to find what I want:

show only lines that include both strings "SRC18" and "DEST13"
remove any lines that have 0x13 in columns 133-136
remove any lines that have 0xff in columns 199-203
remove any lines that do NOT have 0x00 in columns 119-122
remove any lines that include the string "CHKSUM ERR"
add all lines that include the string "SRC13 RESYNC"
add all lines that include the string "DEST18 RESYNC"
add all lines that include strings "SRC13" and "TIMEOUT"
add all lines that include strings "DEST18" and "TIMEOUT"

etc. Of course, that can all be put into a macro.

Seriously, as you can imagine, the above would be a 12 line REXX macro that takes under a minute to write, and outperforms perl scripts that people end up spending an hour writing.

If you're interested in what scope filtering can do, download the freeware Hessling editor (http://sourceforge.net/projects/hessling-editor/files) and try it out. Like Kedit, THE is an editor that's based on the Xedit design, although Kedit is significantly more powerful. But it has implemented the ALL and SELECT commands (but not the MORE or LESS commands).

If that can be added to Zeus, you might have a product differentiator.

As I said, I really doubt Zeus will do this. But you did ask me to mention any feature I thought might be missing

[jussij]

No, that's not quite right. I've used SED (of course, perl replaces sed, these days), it's not the same thing.

The reason it looks like SED to me is because the ALL is effectively an IF statement and the one of the reasons SED was created was to add this sort of IF functionality to regular expression search and replace.

In psuedo code this feature feels a lot like this to me:

Code: Select all

IF (line matches this condition) OR (line matches this condition) THEN
      perform action on line
ENDIF

But since I have never used KEdit I might well be totally wrong

That's correct. That's not to pick on UE here, most editors that support code folding do it that way. )

Zeus code folding is no different.

Seriously, as you can imagine, the above would be a 12 line REXX macro that takes under a minute to write, and outperforms perl scripts that people end up spending an hour writing.

I certainly can see how powerful this feature is.

As I said, I really doubt Zeus will do this.

Zeus definitely does not have this feature.

Cheers Jussi

PS: This KEdit discussion led to thinking about REXX since I remembered using that language in my OS/2 days.

It turns out IBM has Open Sourced REXX and better still there is a version of REXX that supports WSH.

Since Zeus supports WSH in theory this means you would be able to script Zeus in REXX.

I had a play with the WSH verison of REXX and with a few minor changes to Zeus it does seem to be work

If you're interested I'd be happy to upload a Zeus beta release with this REXX functionality

[billdehaan]

The reason it looks like SED to me is because the ALL is effectively an IF statement and the one of the reasons SED was created was to add this sort of IF functionality to regular expression search and replace.

In psuedo code this feature feels a lot like this to me:

Code: Select all

IF (line matches this condition) OR (line matches this condition) THEN
      perform action on line
ENDIF

But since I have never used KEdit I might well be totally wrong

Well, not totally. Conceptually, it's close. But with SED, you'd be recalculating the condition between operations. When you've got a 2 million line file, you really don't want to do that

Zeus code folding is no different.

As I'd expect.

Historically, the reason Xedit (and SPF) had this on IBM mainframes was because memory was limited, so users could not load large files entirely into memory, they could only grab so many pages from disk at a time, and then swap them out. The ALL command was IBM's answer to that: it allowed users to control which sections of the file would be in user space, rather than just the current position and X lines before and after it. Edit operations were restricted to what was in memory at the time; parts of the file that were paged out to disk would not be touched. And since most languages then were column-oriented (RPG, Fortran, COBOL, etc), it made sense to allow those operations to be column-based, as well. For example, all Fortran comments start with a C in column 6, so a user could load only those parts of a file that were not a comment into memory to work on.

Of course, when PCs arrived, 30 years later, memory was cheap enough that editors didn't need paging control. If a file was too big, they simply wouldn't load it. So unless the people writing the PC editor were mainframe hacks (like the authors of Kedit and SPF/PC and THE), that functionality wouldn't occur to them.

I certainly can see how powerful this feature is.

Big time. I suspect I'll still keep Kedit for some text editing, regardless of which editor I end up selecting for code editing.

It turns out IBM has Open Sourced REXX and better still there is a version of REXX that supports WSH.

Yup, they've had a few of those over the years.

The main problem with them is that the strength in REXX is not the language itself, but the underlying OS support for it. IBM mainframe OSes all had it (or EXEC2), so all the tools on the OS just called the OS for script processing, and added their own callback methods. It wasn't until recently that PC operating systems started doing the same sort of thing, which is why Javascript is getting popular on Windows and Linux PC systems.

Since Zeus supports WSH in theory this means you would be able to script Zeus in REXX.

Not really surprising. Of course, the important bit is making sure that REXX can invoke all of the Zeus primitives, and set/get the proper return codes.

I had a play with the WSH verison of REXX and with a few minor changes to Zeus it does seem to be work

If you're interested I'd be happy to upload a Zeus beta release with this REXX functionality

Sure. It would probably be amusing to see if any of my Kedit macros would run. I suspect most likely not, since they all call Kedit primitives, but it might be fun to see if it could get any of them to work. There's a version() method in Kedit that reports the editor's OS version ("KEDIT", "KEDIT/OS2", or "KEDIT/WINDOWS") and the version and revision level. If there's something similar in ZeusEdit, I could probably write macros so that the same macro code could be portable between editors

[jussij]

Since this thread was getting a bit long and contained many different points I have taken the ALL/MORE/LESS topic and created a new file file filtering topic here:

http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewtopic.php?p=9561

Cheers Jussi

[jussij]

Here is a link that describes how to write Zeus macros in REXX.

http://www.zeusedit.com/zforum/viewtopic.php?t=6602

Cheers Jussi