DOS ain't dead

Hi! Looking at the many editors included here:

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/report.html

you could try SETEDIT, TDE, VIM, ELVIS, FREEMACS, MSEDIT, MBEDIT or Blocek?

The VI or EMACS clones might be less interesting, but

http://www.braun-home.net/michael/mbedit/index.htm
http://osplus.sourceforge.net/
http://setedit.sourceforge.net/

or MSEDIT, TDE or the Unicode-supporting MinEd or Blocek could be useful. Note that most of those are 32-bit DOS apps, but I guess you do not need to be able to edit your 300 kB file on 8086

> -Supports large files
> -Highlights selected text using SHIFT+Arrow Keys
> -Highlighted disappears when arrow key is pressed w/o SHIFT
> -CNTRL+C Copies
> -CNTRL+V Pastes
> -CNTRL+X Cuts
> -CNTRL+F Searches

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FreeDOS / DOSEMU2 / ...

I’d recommend SETEdit or pico (http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/pico396b.zip)

There are tons ot ext editors out there. Here's a web site that lists several:

http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HomePage

Everybody has a preferred editor they use and the opinions can get almost religious in their fervor as to which one is "best".

The fancier ones will handle large files, multiple files at the same time, a good clipboard function, _configurable_ syntax highlighting (very handy when working with program source code), _configurable_ keyboard layout, etc.

I have two that I use all the time, one "fancy" program with all the extra features and a small, simple one that is only a few kB (easily fits on a floppy with lots of other files) and I use on boot disks for editing things like small batch files and CONFIG.SYS.

I think you're just going to need to experiment until you find what you're looking for.

> My real issue is that I need Notepad for DOS and if there is a DOS equal to
> Notepad in terms of text selection, and all keyboard shortcuts, it's the
> FreeDOS EDIT.EXE program. It seems to mimic Notepad in every way EXCEPT it
> has a cap on the size of the file being edited. Right now, I'm trying to
> edit a PowerBASIC .BAS file that's around 330KB. FD Edit.exe wants no part
> of it! Can anyone recommend a DOS text editor that:

Maybe The Aurora Editor is for you.

> -Supports large files

Open included 372KB file DOC\FUNCTION.DOX --> check

> -Highlights selected text using SHIFT+Arrow Keys

check

> -Highlighted disappears when arrow key is pressed w/o SHIFT

Make sure, you select "Aurora/CUA" editor style during install. (You can also change it afterwards by copying one or two files and recompiling the editor's macros.)

Apply this change to KBD.AML and recompile the editor (Alt+F2).
Please, consider this as a 'hack', because I just 'invented' this for you now. I didn't test for side effects.

--- STYLE\CUKBD.AML       Tue Nov 05 03:00:00 1996
+++ KBD.AML     Sat Apr 23 14:39:35 2022
@@ -221,11 +221,17 @@ object edit
   key  <alt e>         gotomenu "edit"         // to edit menu (cua)
   key  <alt t>         gotomenu "text"         // to text menu (cua)
 
   // Cursor
   key  <up>            up                      // move cursor up
+                       destroymark
   key  <down>          down                    // move cursor down
+                       destroymark
+  key <left>           left
+                       destroymark
+  key <right>          right
+                       destroymark
 
   // Cursor + CUA-marking
   key  <shift up>      up
                        smark
   key  <shift down>    down

check

> -CNTRL+C Copies
> -CNTRL+V Pastes
> -CNTRL+X Cuts
> -CNTRL+F Searches

For all: check

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Forum admin

Well, the built in editor for DOjS (see signature) does fulfill all your bullet points.
But because it was developed for a very specific task, it does not have a file dialog and does only syntax highlighting for Javascript...


> -Supports large files
> -Highlights selected text using SHIFT+Arrow Keys
> -Highlighted disappears when arrow key is pressed w/o SHIFT
> -CNTRL+C Copies
> -CNTRL+V Pastes
> -CNTRL+X Cuts
> -CNTRL+F Searches

---
Javascript on MS-DOS? Try DOjS https://github.com/SuperIlu/DOjS
Fediverse: @dec_hl@mastodon.social

You guys have been awesome in sharing your sources for editors. I'm going to download a few of these and see what I think works best. I left out F3 for repeat last search. Another Notepad feature I've been missing that's also included in FD Edit. Anyway, thanks to all that have replied!!

Jj

I really like sved (http://svardos.org/sved/). Super light and responsive with a good feature set.

SETEdit is good if you want something fuller featured and with good syntax highlighting.

Over the years, I've become accustomed to (pico initially) nano's keybindings because of all my Linux work. I appreciated that pico is available from djgpp though it lacks nano's syntax highlighting. Just like pico did in the old days.
(https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/pico396b.zip)

If you're ambitious, you might take a copy of notepad.exe and run it on DOS with HX GUI (https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/HX/releases)

For FreeDOS EDIT, Bernd Böckmann forked it and fixing bugs now.

For > 64K files issue I created an issue about this:
https://github.com/boeckmann/edit/issues/3

I don't know if it fits your requirements, but I like SSH ED:

"Simple Borland/WordStar-like texteditor. This is the editor I use for programming etc. The program is only 17 kb, and thus loads fast. Written totally in assembly."

https://shh.thathost.com/pub-dos/

It's on all my startup disks. :)

For serious work (as if I do anything seriously on DOS anymore :D), I use Vim. But that's a behemot. To big for DOS. I have uploaded older versions on Internet Archive, but if you need syntax highlighting, that's only supported from version 5.x. The last DOS version is 7.2. 7.3 could be compiled but it was very buggy on DOS.

https://www.vim.org/

Sorry, I changed the answer. It seems my additional suggestion doesn't implement everything the op looked. But there is no delete option, so I changed this post. :)