PWB - alternative?

[thomas_remkus]

I like to work in DOS. Tools and utilities are often DOS-based because they are easy to script (bat). I am currently using edit.com to work on my files and would not mind using PWB or a free DOS environment that would allow my errors to show at the bottom and have them point me to the correct file with my errors. Right now I'm using RadAsm and have it setup to work on MASM and my Visual Studio 2005 compiler. Warnings and errors are helpful in windows, it's just that I enjoy the DOS environment and like the no-frills feel when I'm programming.

I have a full MSDN, is there a way to setup PWB so it's not key-flakey as I have read about on here? I would like to have a DOS environment that can work with what I need and not need to load a windows development editor if not needed. If needed, my preference is RadAsm.

Thanks!

[hutch--]

thomas,

The last time I saw a PWB work correctly was in win95 dos without Windows started. It was always slower in a dos box and it is not very good at all in CMD.EXE in NT based systems.

[thomas_remkus]

Well, that's unfortunate. I have been using edit.com and that's just not very friendly. Also, I have been experimenting with mcedit from cygwin and that's a better editor at times, but not really what I'm looking for. If you have a suggestion on a DOS-based editor that would be nice. If there is not a free one then that's fine too and important to know so I don't waste time looking.

Very interestingly enough, you sort of bring up something that I have thought about for a while. Is there a way to take a Windows 2000 or XP machine and allow it to load but just to DOS with most if not all the other services running? I know there is a "/safemode" in the "boot.ini" (or something similar) but that does not leave the GUI from being absent in the load process. I would love to load just to DOS with all the services running and not have to turn my shell into CMD. Again, if this is not possible, that's good to know and I'll push on to something else.

I understand that emacs and vi are good editors ... but I've never been successful in understanding them enough to get them to do anything but frustrate me.

PS: Thank you for your direct and polite response.

thomas

[PBrennick]

Forget about doing that with an XP machine. XP boots directly into Windows without any command.com or similar loading first. Once XP loads, THEN you can run cmd.exe or command.com, the roles have become reversed from what they were with 9x machines.

Have you tried freedos?

Paul

[japheth]

Hi,

there are lots of good DOS (or text mode) editors, but you are probably posting in the wrong forum. Use something like

http://www.drdosprojects.de/forum/drp_forum/

I also work in text mode most of the time, using VC and FTE and console compilers/assemblers.

Regards

Japheth

[hutch--]

thomas,

There is another choice with XP or Win2k, load the free Microsoft VM and install dos 6.22 or early win95 dos. Then you can install and configure the PWB and it will work fine. Trick was to use enough expanded memory for the PWB to make it run reliably.

[Ghirai]

Try to use ee, it's a lot simpler than vi.

Here are the man pages (ee stands for easy editor): http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=1&topic=ee
Here's another page with a brief description: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/is/unix/ee.htm

Being a unix tool, i have no idea if you can run it with cygwin, but i assume thee is a way you can get in running on win.

[PBrennick]

There is also VIM which is an easier to use version of VI.

Manpage for VIM

The description from the manpage...

Vim is a text editor that is upwards compatible to Vi. It can be used to edit all kinds of plain text. It is especially useful for editing programs.

There are a lot of enhancements above Vi: multi level undo, multi windows and buffers, syntax highlighting, command line editing, filename completion, on-line help, visual selection, etc.. See ":help vi_diff.txt" for a summary of the differences between Vim and Vi.

Paul