HP OpenVMS Systems

Text Editor vs Word Processor?

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The Question is:

 
Using the EDT editor, is it possible to dynamically format
a text file?
 
Example:  If I insert an additional word when I'm using
a word processor, then text is automatically reformated
to adjust the line length.
 
Is it possible to do the same sort of thing in the EDT
editor?
 
Thanks, and BTW, finding your web page made my day!
 
 

The Answer is :

 
  The EDT and EVE editors are "text editors", not "word processors".
 
  EDT is among the older of text editors around, and it does not perform
  much of the autonomous text formatting performed by tools such as Word.
 
  While these autonomous capabilities can be useful with smaller text
  documents, they can cause performance problems with larger files.
 
  Editors such as EVE, which is the default editor on more recent OpenVMS
  versions, can perform automatic line wrapping on text insertion.  Like
  EDT, EVE and other editors require the invocation of a FILL (or similar)
  command to perform rewrapping after text has been inserted in the middle
  of existing text.
 
  The Wizard would not be particularly surprised to learn of a user-written
  TPU language editor extension that performed automatic text filling.
 

  

     

     
answer written or last revised on ( 16-JUL-1998 )
     
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