DOS ain't dead - ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free

Berlin, Germany,
13.05.2025, 22:18

ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free (Announce)

ALed is a small (75 KiB) but powerful text editor (see screenshots below). Last version was 1.53 from April 1991. (This version number is from the archive's name, but ALed's binary and accompanying .doc or .hlp file read 1.51 or 1.50. :confused: )

Although version 1.01 was distributed as 'FREEWare/Public Domain', at least version 1.5x was distributed as 'ShareWare'.

Alan Boulanger, author of ALed, send the following message to me.

From: Alan Boulanger <aboulang -AT- umass -DOT- edu>
To: Robert Riebisch <rr -AT- bttr-software -DOT- de>
Subject: Re: ALed text editor
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2025 09:20:45 -0400

Hi Robert,

Ah.. that takes me back. At the time no programming editors had
everything that I wanted so I wrote my own and sold it as shareware.

I am very happy to hear you're enjoying it.. The ASCII table and
programmer's calculator are my favorite features. It was a lot of fun to
write in Borlands Turbo C using only the standard C libraries so I had
to write all of the windowing software from scratch ( using direct video
paging ). The guy who wrote some ID software ( Commander Keen,
wolfenstein etc ) was a customer as was the Australian Telephone company
who bought a corporate license to place in all of their switches.

> 1) Are you the author of ALed?

Yes!

> 2) Did its source code survive?

Sadly not likely..

> 3) Would you mind to release ALed's source code under a libre license,
> e.g., MIT, GNU GPL...?

I would have as I'm a big fan of open source software

> 4) If sources are not available anymore, would you grant permission for
> commercial and non-commercial use for free (i.e., shareware registration
> is no longer required) and allow reverse engineering plus modification
> of the binary for, e.g., changing key bindings or fixing bugs if any?

I would be happy for others to use it for free providing I retain credit
as the original author in any derivative/modified work and get notified
( I'd be curious )

Thank you for reminding me of something I had fun writing 30+ years ago!!

- Alan

On 4/4/25 3:26 PM, Robert Riebisch wrote:
> Dear Mr. Boulanger,
>
> I hope, you are doing well.
> It might sound strange, but even in 2025 I enjoy to tinker with software
> from the good ol' MS-DOS days in my spare time. Yesterday I stumbled
> upon ALed and found it very useful, because of its features and small
> size. It even includes an ASCII table and a programmer's calculator!
>
> So, my questions are:
> 1) Are you the author of ALed?
> 2) Did its source code survive?
> 3) Would you mind to release ALed's source code under a libre license,
> e.g., MIT, GNU GPL...?
> 4) If sources are not available anymore, would you grant permission for
> commercial and non-commercial use for free (i.e., shareware registration
> is no longer required) and allow reverse engineering plus modification
> of the binary for, e.g., changing key bindings or fixing bugs if any?
>
> Cheers,
> Robert

Links

* https://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/pc/garbo/pc/editor/aled153.zip
* https://discmaster.textfiles.com/file/12465/floppyshareware.zip/floppyshareware/LUNACY/ALEDV1.ZIP
* Alan Boulanger : Department of Mathematics and Statistics : UMass Amherst

Screenshots

Main editing window:
[image]

Help screen:
[image]

Calculator:
[image]

ASCII table:
[image]

Maybe someone wants to heal the clock's y2k issue:
[image]

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jadoxa

Queensland, Australia,
14.05.2025, 04:08

@ rr

ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free

Post reply

> Maybe someone wants to heal the clock's y2k issue:

Here's some changes (in my bwdiff format).

File: aled.exe 002026: E9 C5 00 [ 1E B8 94 ] # remove closing screen message 00627C: 30 [ 94 ] # fix year in clock 00628E: F9 [ FA ] # day/ 006294: FA [ F9 ] # month in clock
For applying manually it's (all in hex):

offset: <new bytes> [ <original bytes> ]

The year fix is simple, it will break again if for some reason you go back to 19xx.

Berlin, Germany,
19.05.2025, 21:19

@ jadoxa

ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free

Post reply

> > Maybe someone wants to heal the clock's y2k issue:
>
> Here's some changes (in my bwdiff format).

Bwdiff is available from here, by the way.

> File: aled.exe> 002026: E9 C5 00 [ 1E B8 94 ] # remove closing screen message > 00627C: 30 [ 94 ] # fix year in clock > 00628E: F9 [ FA ] # day/ > 006294: FA [ F9 ] # month in clock >

Thanks! :-)
Could you please elaborate, how your year fix works?

> For applying manually it's (all in hex):
>
> offset: <new bytes> [ <original bytes> ]
>
> The year fix is simple, it will break again if for some reason you go back
> to 19xx.

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jadoxa Queensland, Australia, 20.05.2025, 02:15 @ rr	ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free Post reply
	> Could you please elaborate, how your year fix works? It subtracts (the low byte of) 2000 instead of 1900 (so it will also fail if you reach 2100, but so will the date itself, apparently; at least RBIL says the range is 1980-2099).

Zyzzle 20.05.2025, 06:22 @ jadoxa	ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free Post reply
	> > Could you please elaborate, how your year fix works? > > It subtracts (the low byte of) 2000 instead of 1900 (so it will also fail > if you reach 2100, but so will the date itself, apparently; at least RBIL > says the range is 1980-2099). Actually, I think the range for valid DOS dates is 1980 to 2107 - 128 year range.

jadoxa

Queensland, Australia,
20.05.2025, 09:19
(edited by jadoxa, 20.05.2025, 09:57)

@ Zyzzle

ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free

Post reply

> Actually, I think the range for valid DOS dates is 1980 to 2107 - 128 year
> range.

I think that's mostly the filesystem (year/month/day encoded in 16 bits, so there's only room for a 7-bit year). Some functions are bytes (so 1980 + 255 = 2235), others are words.

FreeDOS explicitly fails trying to set the year above 2099; it should still read the year (if you bypass DOS 2Bh), at least up to 6 June 2159 (65535 days after 1/1/1980).

Berlin, Germany,
20.05.2025, 12:18

@ jadoxa

ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free

Post reply

> > Could you please elaborate, how your year fix works?
>
> It subtracts (the low byte of) 2000 instead of 1900 (so it will also fail
> if you reach 2100, but so will the date itself, apparently; at least RBIL
> says the range is 1980-2099).

Thanks!

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bocke

17.05.2025, 22:32

@ rr

ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free

Post reply

That's great. Thanx for the effort. :)

I have asked the author of Zeus Editor for earlier Windows 3.1 versions. I didn't ask for source, though. He sent me a mixed bag of WIN16 and WIN32 versions of which some were full versions. I didn't yet get around to publishing them online. I think even 32-bit ones work on WIN32s on Windows 3.1.

Is there any interest for those, too? If yes, I will upload them faster. Author gave his permission to publish on Archive.org, but asked me to post a link to his current version of Zeus for modern versions of Windows.

I'm kinda procrastinating on this as I have to write informative descriptions for each. And IA inteface sucks. So many times got stuck on upload and lost the original description text.

Berlin, Germany,
19.05.2025, 21:21

@ bocke

ALed (ALan's Text Editor) version 1.53 now free

Post reply

> I have asked the author of Zeus
> Editor for earlier Windows 3.1 versions. I didn't ask for source,
> though. He sent me a mixed bag of WIN16 and WIN32 versions of which some
> were full versions. I didn't yet get around to publishing them online. I
> think even 32-bit ones work on WIN32s on Windows 3.1.
>
> Is there any interest for those, too? If yes, I will upload them faster.
> Author gave his permission to publish on Archive.org, but asked me to post
> a link to his current version of Zeus for modern versions of Windows.
>
> I'm kinda procrastinating on this as I have to write informative
> descriptions for each. And IA inteface sucks. So many times got stuck on
> upload and lost the original description text.

One day someone comes along and will be grateful you finally did so.

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