topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Tuesday March 19, 2024, 12:57 am
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Jussi Jumppanen [ switch to compact view ]

Pages: [1] 2next
1
Best Text Editor / Re: best text editor was killed by Borland
« on: May 14, 2014, 12:42 AM »
have a look here, for a little regex comparison of some editors:

I'm the author of the Zeus editor referenced on that page and I just read that link again. Brings back memories :)

To this day I'm not really sure what noman9607 meant when he wrote this:

Boxer and EmEdit have full PCRE and .NET capable regex engines respectively.
..
If Zeus would upgrade to modern regex standards I could do the same with zeus.

As far as I can remember, the Zeus of that vintage had the same regexp engine it has today (be it the current engine has had a few updates since) and that engine is PCRE :huh:

Unfortunately he never posted an example of the regexp that was giving him trouble, so it's hard to know exactly what was causing the issue :(

2
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 25, 2013, 06:58 PM »
Some error when it asks me to take a look inside a log and report it to the developers.

The message box would have been pointing you to the Zeus error log and the crash dump file.

Usually those two files are enough to get to the bottom of most Zeus errors.

I really do not like two versions of software: those which crash during installation and those which crash the moment I start to use them.

I agree with you on that one. ;)

In fact for a long time now it has been my policy that if you manage to crash the latest Zeus Edit Pro version, report the bug and I can manage to replicate and fix it, you will get a free registration.



3
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 24, 2013, 07:37 AM »
Downloaded Zeus Lite. Installation. Open file --> error.
Uninstall.
The free Zeus Lite is just the version 3.80 version of Zeus, which means it dates back to around 2004.

So as you can see it is getting a bit long in the tooth :(

At the time it was developed Windows XP was on the desktop, so it should run fine on that system.

But it has only ever been lightly tested on Vista and Windows 7 and never on Windows 8 so for those systems it might not be such a good fit.



4
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 22, 2013, 07:20 PM »
They look like totally different approaches
I'd agree with this assessment.

I've not used Sublime or TextMate but from what I read they use more of a plug-in approach to configuration. To add a feature you download and install a plug-in.

Zeus does not use that approach, but instead provides an editor that can be configured by the user. As such it uses an approach more similar to editors like Vim, EMACS, SlickEdit etc.

As to which approach is best, that is another discussion ;)

Zeus has always be designed as an alternative to Visual Studio and as such it has many Visual Studio like features (i.e. project/workspace, project make, compile, class browser, source control integration etc). In that sense Zeus is more of an IDE than an editor.

Now I suspect Sublime might offer those IDE like features via plug-in (I don't know) but as your review shows, Zeus has those features pretty much out of the box.

5
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 18, 2013, 07:02 PM »
the ability to beautify code (though I'm sure I could integrate a third party tool to do that.

Yes, it is possible to beautify code inside Zeus via a macro and a third party tool.

An example of how to do this can be found in the astyle.lua Lua macro.
 
To see how that macro works open a test C# file and located in the Macros panel or menu you will find an option to re-indent and re-style the current file.

Thanks for writing this review, I've very much enjoyed reading it :Thmbsup:

It's always good to get a user's perspective of Zeus as it shows where the software can be improved.

6
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 13, 2013, 08:07 PM »
On a hunch, I do the same thing- add to SCC, cancel... and the information appears.  Not the most intuitive, but it works.

I have to admit the Zeus SCC is a bit confusing and it can probably do with some improvements.

There is no option for automatic check out on edit, but as that has been requested a few times I guess it might need such an option. Something for a future version.

To add some clarity this is how it should work here is a quick overview.

Initial SCC Setup
Zeus will work with any SCC version control so the first thing that needs to be done is for that to be setup.

That is done at the editor level using the Options, Editor Options menu, Source Control panel where you select and enable the source control.

Binding a Workspace to SCC
To use the source control the projects inside the workspace need to be bound to the source control.

The binding details are stored in the Workspace, Source Control, Options menu.

There you will find the Project Name, Aux Path and Local Path, an option to enable source control and a Run Setup Utility button.

Since you imported a Visual Studio solution that already contained version control bindings, that process should have already filled in these details.

When there are no binding details it is best use the Run Setup Utility as that will let you browse the source control looking for a suitable project.

Looking at the source control error message you posted I can see the AUX Path is empty which is why the connection the to source control failed.

However, those binding details should have been available as they should have come in when the project was imported?

It looks like this may well be some sort of incorrect state bug and by this I mean, because the project was newly imported it was not quite in the correct state.

By doing your work around that fixed up the issue buy fixing up the state of the project, but I suspect if you had closed and reopened the project that too would have probably worked?

I add a file to the project in the workspace, and it's not added to the project in Visual Studio

Yes, Zeus will never touch any Visual Studio files.

However, if you had added the project inside Visual Studio, there is an option to update the Workspace inside of Zeus and the workspace is automatically updated the next time it is opened.

It probably should also do that check for update whenever it is re-activated. Another something for a future version.

I ran into a problem with ctags when there were icons included in the project.

I'll look into this.

As you suggest, it looks like xtags/ctags might have run into trouble processing the icon file.

That message box dates a long time to when the user had to manually configure the PATH and as that is no longer required I suspect the dialog can be removed.

it wasn't perfect.

Zeus is certainly not perfect and there are always things that can be done to make it better.

The next version will no longer have that xtags message, so that in itself will be a small but nice improvement :)

7
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 07, 2013, 11:26 PM »
WordStar works completely differently from just about all Windows editors I've seen with many operations needing two-key commands
Not unlike EMACS in that regard and Zeus has an EMACS binding that was added on the request to an EMACS user.

many operations needing two-key commands like Ctrl+K,B, and marked blocks being persistent
I turned on Wordstar in Zeus to test Ctrl+K,B and I can see it turns on the block marking. I could then mark a region of text by moving the cursor with the keyboard.

After I had marked a region of text I ended block marking by using the Ctrl+K,K keys.

That marked area would persistent even if I used the keyboard to moved the cursor to another page or if I started entering new text.

But the marked area was removed if I used the mouse  to move the cursor and that may well be a bug, I'm not sure?

As I've never used Wordstar, I don't even know if the behaviour I described above is even correct :(

But that keyboard behaviour is user configurable ;)

Is it possible for users to do their own keymapping?
 
Yes.

And is such a feature available in the free version?
 
Yes.

8
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 05, 2013, 11:08 PM »
I didn't see a way to default this to a selected choice
There is no option to configure this, but I will give it some though  ;)

though I do note that the tools menu doesn't include user defined tools on the right click menu.

You can configure this using the Add to popup menu option found in the Tools, Macros and Templates sections of the document type configuration.

I did notice one thing.  As I said, I have extra files in my solution- for documentation that I've created.  If I build the whole solution, it chokes on the documentation project, though Visual Studio knows not to build it.

It looks like you've found a bug :(

I'll add it to the Zeus bug list.

9
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 03, 2013, 08:35 PM »
Also, I wonder if there's a clear policy for upgrades?

How Zeus upgrades are handled is brutally simple as they are nothing more than a point in time marked as an upgrade releases.

To understand this consider the history of upgrade releases as shown here.

From that link assume a user made their purchase at the time of this upgrade release.

    Zeus for Windows 3.97k Upgrade Release

That user would then get all these as free upgrades:

    Zeus for Windows 3.97l Patch
    Zeus for Windows 3.97n Patch
    Zeus for Windows 3.97m Patch
    Zeus for Windows 3.97o Patch


But they would have to purchase an upgrade to the 3.97p release (or just continue using the 3.97o version indefinitely).

Also note the last release was also an upgrade release:

    Zeus for Windows 3.97p Upgrade Release

That means the next release (due out shortly) will be a free upgrade.

Finally any registered user reporting a crash or a major fault will generally get a free upgrade, provided the version they are running is not too old.


10
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 03, 2013, 08:12 PM »
I'd like to know how much WordStar emulation the current version of Zeus has.

I'll be honest; the emulation modes in Zeus rely heavily on user feedback.

Since I'm a Brief user, all I ever use is the BriefEx keyboard mapping and have next to no knowledge of these other mappings.

These other mappings where added as and when requested by users and as such they reflect that particular user's knowledge of their favourite mapping.

But as the keyboard mapping in Zeus configurable, I don't see why the support for Wordstar can't be improved.

If there are keys missing just let me know.

11
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 03, 2013, 07:53 PM »
> not sure what allow nested comments does.

Those setting controls how the block comments work.

Consider how the block comments work in C++ (and most other languages):

      /* this is comment
      /* this is comment
      */ this is not comment

The block comments above are not nested as both of the /* end at the single */ end comment.

Sure enough there are some languages out there that work like this:

      /* this is comment
      /* this is comment
      */ this is still a comment
      */ this is not comment

Don't ask me which language they are, but somewhere along the line a Zeus user would have asked for this feature.

> I'm not sure what the Quick Help tab is used for on first viewing.

Quick Help lets you integrate help files into the editor.

For example if you have the MSDN installed on your machine that would be one of the first things I would recommend adding to the document type.

But the Quick Help can also import chm or hlp files.

To see how it works consider this Zeus macro function:

      beep_disable()

Place the cursor on the beep_disable function and then use the Help, Quick Help Current Word menu (or Alt+Q).

Cheers Jussi


12
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Zeus Edit
« on: September 02, 2013, 10:10 PM »
> the only thing that might be of some concern to some is that it shells out to run another installer.

FYI the second installer that gets run is the C Runtime Redistributable installer as provided by Microsoft.

Cheers Jussi

PS: I'm enjoying reading your review and look forward the next chapters. Your daunting before, it's now overwhelming observation is quite an accurate description of most people's first impressions.

13
Zeus Lite is a free editor for Windows:

    http://www.zeusedit.com/lite

It has configurable syntax highlighting, column marking, regexp, proper macro scripting (ie editable), ftp editing, user defined keyboard mappings etc.

14
General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors
« on: October 20, 2009, 12:04 AM »
But I'm sure that Vim is the fastest might-be-used-as-an-IDE editor out there.

How do you define fastest?

Zeus is an IDE like editor and it starts in about a second, file load times are generally under a second and the keyboard response is always snappy.

Zeus even supports the project/workspace model and a workspaces with several thousand files will generally open in a second or two.

15
General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors
« on: May 28, 2009, 07:37 PM »
Just tried it on a 60.9MB
But in the context of this thread, 60.9MB is not a large file.  Even Zeus will handle 100MB files with out any problems.

The original request for an editor that could handle 1 or 2 Giga byte sized files.


16
General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors
« on: May 04, 2009, 11:53 PM »
but I seem to remember cost being an obstacle
Hey Jussi - maybe a DonationCoder discount is in order (can't hurt to ask, right?).

There is a Zeus Lite version that is free of charge: http://www.zeusedit.com/lite/


17
General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors
« on: May 04, 2009, 11:48 PM »
The help file lacks detail and also contains inaccuracies [see line wrap below].

I can't argue about that. The Zeus help file is in desperate need of a re-write :(

It's a trial and error exercise to work out what they are.
Or posting a question to the Zeus forum or sending the question to e-mail support ;)

The column mode doesn't work as completely as in other editors. You cannot select a zero width column.

If you use the Edit, Text Marking, Toggle Column Marking menu followed by a few down arrows and you will have a column of zero width.

If you then type left arrow, the highlight changes color and this indicates you now have a column of none zero width.

You cannot type or paste text into each line of the selected column.
That is correct.

I could not for the life of me work out how to temporarily change the syntax [aka document type] of the current buffer.

You have to save the file to disk with a given file extension.

There is also an option to set the default File, New file extension using the Options, Editor Options, General panel.

It seems to be bound to file extensions which, if true, is completely useless to me.

That is correct. All syntax highlighting, compile, tool, build configuration details are bound to the file extension.

This configuration model makes it possible to have the same Zeus interface behave differently for different file extensions.

For example assume a c/c++ file is active. Hitting the compile button will run the c/c++ compiler.

Now assume a HTML file is active. That exact same compile button will now validate the HTML.

In both cases all errors get displayed in an errors output window and the user can use this window to navigate to the errors and warnings using the same next/previous errors button of the toolbar.

I could not find how to toggle word wrap [aka line wrap] on/off.

There is a keyboard function called LineWrapToggleEx that will do this.

So for example you could bind this function to keyboard key.

 
The diff function doesn't display side by side and I couldn't find an option to change this behaviour.
In the Options, Editor Options, Miscellaneous panel there is an option to run an external diff, for example something like this: windiff.exe $f1 $f2

What this means is you can run the diff in Zeus but you have the option to view the results of the difference in any external difference tool.

Sorry, couldn't find how to extract matching lines.
It should be as simple as using the Edit, Find in Files menu to bring up the dialog and then do:

1) Type in the what ever string you want found in the Find What field.
2) Type *.* in the File Filter
3) Type in the directory into the Directory field

But one thing to remember is the \ character is used to designate an end of line marker via \n so if you actually want to search for a \ character you need to type in \\.

Opened 10-20MB files quickly but choked completely attempting to open a 1.4GB text file. Sounds extreme, but a basic requirement in my field.
Zeus is an in memory editor so it will generally not have a problem loading multi-megabyte files provided the machine has enough RAM.

But as you have found gigabyte files put too much demand on the system RAM for them to load.

But I would have thought there wouldn't be many text editors that could handle the editing of a 1.4GB text file.

The only one I know of is Vedit.

No recent file list in File menu.
There should be a recent file list in File menu.

If a file is closed that file will be added to the File menu MRU list.

The MRU list is also attached to the workspace (configurable) which means each workspace has its own MRU list.

18
General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors
« on: May 04, 2009, 09:33 PM »
Apologies if, by not including it, I have sold your product short I will check it out again.
Absolutely no apology required. Zeus is not that well known.

I’d love to hear your feedback regarding Zeus be it good or bad or indifferent ;)

19
General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors
« on: May 04, 2009, 09:23 PM »
Two things that I really need and not many editors provide: ctags integration

In Zeus any file that is added to the project/workspace is automatically tagged (i.e Workspace, New menu to create a workspace and add files to a project in the workspace). The results of the tagging is displayed in the class browser panel.

Also the tags information is automatically updated each time the file is saved to disk or the workspace is opened.

and split window so you can show two files. Vim does that, but not many others.
Since Zeus is a MDI application it can display any number of files side by side (i.e. use the Window, Tile menu)

It can also display two locations of the same file (i.e. the document view can be split into two views).

20
General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Of: text editors
« on: May 03, 2009, 10:17 PM »
I can't find one editor that does everything that I need.
OK, as the author of the Zeus for Windows editor/IDE, I'll bite ;)

Your Good Points

Under constant development
As is Zeus.

support requests are answered promptly
Any forum question is generally answered in 24-48 hours.

somewhat extensible through scripting - I don't think Activex objects are creatable though
large file handling
It is extensible through scripting.

one of my first tests when evaluating a text editor is it's ability to handle a multi-line regular expression search and replace.
Emeditor handles this without problem or the need to learn an obscure flavour of regex.
Zeus uses the \n character to represent the line feed and it uses the perl/unix flavour of regex.

macro recording, editing, storing, etc is the cleanest and most usable that I've seen
Recording a macro: F7 do your stuff F7
Playback the recorded macro: F8
Load a saved macro: F9
Playback the recorded macro: F8

All Zeus macros scripts are just texts files so they are very easy to edit.

highly extensible via macros and plugins.
Zeus is scriptable but does not have any plugin expansion option.

block selection mode just works.
Yes it does ;)

enable it temporarily when selecting via mouse, allows pasting from clipboard into selected block, zero width blocks, etc, etc.
It has column, line, block and ragged mouse marking modes and they are mouse and/or keyboard driven.

multiple concurrent selections - when enabled, many non-contiguous text sections can be selected, copied, pasted, etc. I haven't seen this in any other text editor.
Zeus does not do this :(

Your Bad Points

recording and saving macros is very un-intuitive.
Zeus scripts are wrtten in the scripting language chosen by the user (i.e Lua, Python, VbScript, Java Script, Tcl etc).

They are just text file and contain scripting code in the language of choice.

multiple regular expression engines supported - this should be a positive, but I find it a bit confusing when I have to switch between them occasionally.
Zeus uses a perl/unix regular expression engine.

Some have said this is a poor choice for a regexp engine but personally I find it very useful, since any vim, emacs, awk, sed, perl, python regexp will more often than not also work in Zeus ;)

finding stuff in the default menu structure and options screens is difficult.
Documentation is always an issue :(

no built in support for file comparison and the plug-in is clunky and basic.
It has built-in file difference and also has an option for external file difference.

other functionality provided by plugins are not as polished as the built-in versions in other editors. e.g. sorting, extracting lines containing a search string, etc.
Zeus has built-in sorting and can also extracting lines containing a search string. It does this by wrapping a gui dialog around the fgrep tool.

same scripting documentation issues as Ultraedit
Documentation can always be better but the forum does help ;)

takes a bit of time to set it up as, out of the box, it is fairly spartan.
It can also takes time to setup.

Being java-based, it doesn't handle large files well.
Zeus will load a 10 meg file in about 4 seconds.

For some reason, the font rendering on some low-end LCDs is pretty rough. I'm not sure if this is the fault of the JRE, Jedit or how I have configured stuff.
Zeus is a windows application so the fonts are handled by windows.

No print preview.
It also has no print preview :(

Plugins are especially useful for integrating with other tools, e.g. clearcase, scripting engines, command interpreters, etc, etc.
It can integrate with Clearcase, Visual Studio, Perforce, Subversion, CVS etc version controls and can run almost any command line.


21
Jussi Jumppanen,

Is it possible to get Python shell in Zeus(for interactive purposes)?

There is no interactive Python mode in Zeus, but you might be able configure a pseudo interactive mode by adding a Zeus tool item that runs the python script via the tee utility (i.e. run python + script via tee inside of Zeus as a tool):

http://www.zeusedit....m/viewtopic.php?t=74

It would be even better if Ipython would run inside Zeus instead of standard python shell.

Since Zeus is c/c++ and Ipython is .Net this is not really possible.

22
Is Zeus portable, i.e. can you run it off of a USB stick?
I not really sure :-\

My guess is the software will run off the USB stick (i.e just copy the install file to the stick) but it definitely won't be 100% portable.

The exe will always make sure a a handful of registry entries exists on the machine so it will access the registry when run.

23
I'm not Jussi, but I've downloaded and installed it and it appears to be a 'registered' copy upon installation.

What mwb1100 is 100% correct. This is a fully registered version of Zeus that will never expire and can be used free of charged.

But remember this version is about 5 years old, so it is missing a lot of features found in the latest Zeus release.

If you find the software is missing a feature, chances are that feature will exist in the latest Zeus release ;)



24
I upgraded to version 3.94a from 3.93 for which I paid full price less than one year earlier. I regarded the upgrade price to be too high and was very disappointed to find that the two versions were virtually indistinguishable to me.
One version of Zeus runs quite happily right next to any other version, provided each version is installed in a different folders. So this is where the trial version is invaluable.

If it was me, I would just run the newer trial version for the full 45 days, just to see if added any value. Naturally if I found there was nothing in it for me I would not bother with the upgrade and just wait for the next release.

This has always been the recommended approach to upgrading and the user is even reminded of this on the Zeus upgrade page: http://www.zeusedit.com/purchase.html

I suspect you might sell more copies/upgrades if you were to adopt versioning that is more in line with the rest of the world.
You might be right, but the Zeus version numbers are now part of history ;)

25
Excuse me, but I am running the five year old version 3.94a and now you're at 3.96r?

Zeus is actually at 3.96s ;)

That change is in the SECOND DECIMAL PLACE of the revision number. That's supposed to be MAJOR?

Zeus has never really had a MAJOR version number. The first and last MAJOR version number was back in the days of 3.0 when the editor was completely re-written when compared to the earlier 2.75 version.

After that point releases came out ever 8-10 months and with each new release the first decimal place of the version was incremented.

Move on 9 years using this approach and there is no more room to increment the version number and the version number can't go to 4.0 since there are no plans to re-write the current 3.x code base :(

So solution was to move the version increment to the second decimal place.

Now that also worked for a while (i.e. 3.91, 3.92, 3.93, 3.94, 3.95 etc) but it's obvious this scheme is also doomed to fail.

So move on to 2007 and this all has to change. Rather than releasing every 8-10 months, releases are now being done more frequently and to designate the version a letter is added to the version number.

Now while this scheme is also going to run into trouble some time in the future, at least there are a lot more numbers to play with ;)

I am running the five year old version 3.94a

While the version number may not have change much, the version 3.96s is nothing like the 3.94a version.

In fact the 3.94a version is so different from the latest Zeus it can be downloaded free of charge from this link:

http://www.zeusedit....m/z300/ze32r394a.zip

It's like a Zeus Lite version ;)


Pages: [1] 2next