SaintEdit is a System 7, squeaky clean, robust general purpose text editor-not a word processor, not a page layout program, not a draw program-originally designed to read and edit enormous text files from the internet. Though it was intended to be a simple, trivial piece of software when I started on it a few years back, it soon became a very significant, major project.
SaintEdit has an intuitive, aesthetically pleasing user interface It is extremely fast and does not bog down when the file sizes get large. Though it is commercial grade software, I have elected to distribute it as a shareware product, ridiculously priced at a paltry $10.00. (To register, go to "Register SaintEdit" under the Apple Menu.)
Features Include: ______________________________________________________
• System 7 Savvy
• Multiple open windows
• Memory dependent file size limit (greater than 32K!)
• Extensive Undo/Redo support
• Safe file saving routines
• Extensive Search and replace
• Color Day/Night Settings (change background color too!)
• FastScrolls™
• Drag and Drop any TEXT file
• Sleek Interface
• Printing Support
• Core AppleEvents
• Multiple Monitor Support
• Auto read UNIX and DOS files without messing with converters
• Print multiple documents from the finder
System Requirements: ______________________________________________________
ANY Macintosh capable of running System 7, though SaintEdit really shines if you've got a color monitor and gobs of RAM.
Memory Based Editing _____________________________________________________
I wanted speed, since RAM is abundant and cheap, there are no scratch files or spooling techniques, SaintEdit will be distributed with the RAM partition set to 1 M, this works rather well with a 512K text file load, although the undo support is memory dynamic, there are scenarios that can use up a lot of memory. As an extremely loose and general rule subject to change use the following formula -> (The sum of average working files) x 2. For example: I want to edit between 4 128K text files -> [(4 x 128) x 2] = 1024...
I can already see all the E-mail: "uhh, Craig, I found a bug - the thumb in the scroll bar doesn't move ‘till I let go of my mouse. Like, what's the deal?" This is not a bug - it's a feature of SaintEdit. This FastScroll option lets you scroll all the way to the top or bottom of a document without "tripping" on the thumb. If it really irks you, and you want the thumb to move as in other applications, simply turn off "FastScrolls" in the Preferences.
What's with the shamrock? _______________________________________________
The shamrock button toggles show/hide invisible characters. Since SaintEdit is fixed to a monospaced font, I did not use dots to denote spaces: it's hard to distinguish a dot from a period, and spaces are obvious.
About The Font __________________________________________________________
SaintEdit uses a customized version of the Monaco font with the following changes:
1. I added a slash to the zero '0' to differentiate it from capital 'O'
2. I modified capital 'I' to differentiate it from lower case 'l' (as in lime)
3. I changed <option> '1' from 'i' to the Blue Öyster Cult logo - ¡
I chose the default colors because they work quite well on color, gray scale, and monochrome monitors. You can edit the text, background and highlight colors by choosing “preferences” located under the "File" menu. (To restore the default colors, trash the SaintEdit Prefs file in the System Folder.)
Text Wrap ______________________________________________________________
The default window size 80 columns by 80 characters, the standard format of text in terminal programs.
UNIX and DOS files ______________________________________________________
Future releases will include, a spell checker (which is 75% completed), and will support PICT images. I am also considering writing a macro module.
Things you should know __________________________________________________
• Documents with lots of Tabs scroll more slowly when showing invisible characters.
• You can not have blocks of text larger than 32K without at least one carriage return.
• The special characters in the custom SaintEdit font will not print - In order to ensure print quality, SaintEdit uses the Monaco True type font for output.
Special Thanks _________________________________________________________
I would like to thank Rachel Dobkin for editing my "techo-babble" into readable documentation, and my ßeta testers (see about box) who were outstanding.
