EDITOR WORKBENCH
     ----------------


     1. What is the Editor Workbench ?
     ---------------------------------
     The Editor Workbench (EW) is a simple text editor which
     edits plain ASCII files of up to 240 characters per line,
     999 lines per file, and a maximum total size of around 50k
     per file. It is designed as a programmers tool, not a word
     processor, so it doesn't offer features like word wrap or
     print formatting. Instead it allows the programmer to create
     a customised workbench for those programming languages which
     don't come in an integrated programming environment, such as
     the DOS BATCH language, or A86.


     2. Installation and Invocation.
     -------------------------------
     The program can be run from the hard disk or a diskette.
     Best results are obtained with a hard disk. Copy the files
     from the diskette into a subdirectory called EW.

     If you want to use a customised configuration for EW then
     you need to be in the EW directory when you start the
     program, but if you just want to quickly edit a file then
     you can be in any directory, but you will only have one
     screen of help information available when you press the help
     button.


     3. Trying out EW.
     -----------------
     First try EW in its simplest form, using the command C>EW.

     You will be presented with a menu of four options, change
     drive, change directory, edit an old file, or create a new
     file. If you specify a new file you are presented with a
     window to enter the file name. Whenever you are presented
     with a data entry field you may toggle insert on and off
     with the Ins key, delete characters with the Del or
     Backspace keys, jump to the ends of lines with Home and End,
     and erase to the end of a line with Ctrl/Z. If you have
     completely mistyped something you may untype any changes by
     pressing the f2 key BEFORE you enter the data.

     If you specify an old file you are presented with a menu.
     All EW menus are scrolling. If there are more options than
     can be displayed in the window then the menu will scroll
     when you cursor past the bottom. The Home, End, PgUp, and
     PgDn keys allow faster navigation of menus. Press enter to
     select an option, or the ESCAPE key to back out of the menu
     without making a selection. If you select a directory name
     (ends in \ on the menu), rather than a file name then EW
     will change to that directory and present a fresh menu of
     file names.

     At any time you can press f1 for HELP which summarises the
     edit key details. When you use a customised configuration
     you can get much more info from the help screens. Press
     ESCAPE to leave HELP.

     At any time you can press Alt/D to shell to DOS so that you
     can do the things that programmers always want to do in the
     middle of an editing session, such as running CHKDSK or
     formatting a floppy. To get back into EW from DOS type the
     command C>EXIT.

     When you have selected an old file or specified a new file
     you are dropped into the screen editor. There are few
     surprises in this editor. It is a simple 240 column screen
     editor.

     Ctrl/Z deletes to the end of a line, and if the cursor is in
     column 1 when you do this it deletes the whole line.

     The Insert key toggles the insert function on and off. When
     Insert is toggled on you can enter new lines just by
     pressing the enter key. If the cursor is in column 1 it will
     insert a new line before the current line. Otherwise it will
     open up a new line immediately after the current line.

     Ctrl/PgUp and Ctrl/Home get you back to the first line of
     the file. Ctrl/PgDn and Ctrl/End get you to the last line of
     the file. Press f4 and you will be asked which line number
     you want to go to. Press f6 and you will be asked to enter a
     string of characters, and EW will take you to the FIRST
     occurrence of that string in the file. It ignores
     UPPER/lower case differences for this search. Pressing f8
     does the same but finds the NEXT occurrence of the string
     after the current line.

     Press f9 to mark the start of a block anf f10 to mark the
     end of a block. Blocks can only be whole lines, not parts of
     lines. When you set up a block the lines are highlighted.
     Now you can use Shift/f9 to jump to the start of the block,
     Shift/f10 to jump to the end, and shift/f6 and shift/f8 to
     find the first or next occurrence of the string within the
     block.

     f3 brings up a menu of miscellaneous edit functions such as
     deleting the marked block, moving it to another part of the
     file, or sorting it.

     f5 brings up a menu of miscellaneous file functions such as
     writing the block to a new file, or combining a file from
     disc with the one in memory.

     Press ESCAPE to get out of the editor. If you have made any
     changes you will be asked if you want to save the changes or
     abandon them. When you have answered this question you will
     be returned to the main menu, which now contains more than
     just four options. Ignore these for now and just select
     Quit, or press the ESCAPE key again.


     4. Using EW with a monochrome screen.
     -------------------------------------
     Monochrome screens sometimes have trouble with the colour
     combinations used in software designed for colour screens.
     If this is the case try invoking EW with the /M parameter.


     5. Using EW with a file specification.
     --------------------------------------
     You can pass a file spec to EW when you invoke it, e.g.

     C>EW *.TXT

     This will limit EW's directory search to files matching this
     file spec. If you pass a filename without wild cards, e.g.

     C>EW FRED.BAT

     then EW will edit this file automatically, without you
     having to select the OLD or NEW options from the menu. File
     specs can be qualified with a directory and a disk drive
     identifier if desired.


     6. The ESCAPE character.
     ------------------------
     One of the most infuriating things about many editors from a
     programmers point of view is the impossibility of entering
     the escape character, ascii 27. In EW, you can enter this
     using the ctrl/E combination, and it is displayed on the
     screen as a back arrow.


     7. Defaults.
     ------------
     So whats so special about EW you may well ask, a pretty
     standard text editor with a DOS shell option. So lets see
     how we can get EW to do something a bit more useful to the
     Batch File Programmer.

     Invoke EW with the command

     C>EW /D=BAT

     This parameter causes EW to look for a Defaults File called
     BAT.DFT, which again is just an ordinairy ascii file set up
     using EW. (The default Defaults File is called EW.DFT but
     you don't have to have one). The defaults file specifies
     which directory and file spec, and help file to use, and how
     to interface to the language you are using.

     EW will now look only for batch files, i.e. using the spec
     *.BAT. Try loading an old file and the file list is now
     considerably shorter. Select TEST.BAT which is a very simple
     batch file. Try the HELP key and you will discover that
     there is considerably more HELP information than there was
     before and its all relevent to programming in batch. This
     help file is also just an ASCII file, set up with EW. EW is
     worth using just for the Help file alone!

     Now you can try those other options on the EW main menu.
     Select RUN to run your batch file without having to quit the
     EW program. Select Parameters to specify the parameters to
     be passed to your program. Select Show Output to remind
     yourself what the last screen of output looked like, and
     select Variables to see what the current settings of the
     environmental variables are.

     The Defaults option on the menu allows you to select a new
     set of defaults on the fly without having to exit EW.


     9. Influences.
     --------------
     EW was originally developed as a batch program editor, and
     has been greatly influenced by the wonderful development
     environments found in the Borland Turbo products.