This is the Text Editor that defines the IbmEditorFamily.¹
Author: Xavier de Lamberterie Homepage: http://www.ibm.com Documents: http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/FINDBOOK?filter=xedit Manual: http://ukcc.uky.edu/ukccinfo/391/xeditref.html Family: IbmEditorFamily, MainframeEditorFamily Platform: IBM zSeries mainframe, VM/CMS OS License: Commercial (bundled with OS)
The look and feel of XEDIT are so popular that many former mainframers (and a few non-Mainframers) enjoy using this editor.
It derives its power from the extensive use of powerful editing commands and RexxLanguage as a MacroLanguage. Nearly every powerful function you'd want in a TextEditor can be done in XEDIT. In many ways, it has the kind of power that GnuEmacs only acquired much later.
On VM mainframes, XEDIT performs the role of user interface manager for many programs. For example, the FULIST program which is a general purpose file manager on VM is written as XEDIT macros (Editors Note: Can somebody confirm?) (FILELIST (which replaced third-party FULIST) and several other CMS commands are implemented as REXX code using XEDIT facilities.² --JLTurriff) Also, the email program is a set of XEDIT macros. The combination of RexxLanguage and XEDIT on z/VM CMS has made it a very powerful platform. That combination is to VM what piping is to UNIX.
XEDIT also uses the CuaKeyboardLayout, at least the parts that make sense on a 3270/3278 page-mode terminal. Since it was developed for that platform, as you might expect, it uses numbered function keys a lot. (In fact, CTRL-x, ALT-x, etc. key sequences do not exist in mainframe 3270 terminals.)
This is a FullScreen, PageMode Text Editor. That is, you make local changes to the screen buffer in your 3270 terminal, then by pressing a special AID key (Enter, PFn, PAn), you send those changes, plus any CommandLine commands or PrefixCommands back to the mainframe for processing. Note that XEDIT also supports a line-editing mode that is rarely used, so that conceivably it can be used with a hardcopy terminal (if you can find one :-) .)
It supports PrefixCommands. It also provides a CommandLine and a large number of commands for manipulating editor settings and data, which is extensible by use of macros.
Customization of startup settings is performed using a special macro called PROFILE XEDIT which is executed by default when a file is opened. A different macro can be substituted for PROFILE XEDIT in order to turn Xedit into a batch file processor or dialog manager.
XEDIT can also generate DifferenceFiles, the mainframe equivalent to Unix diff files, which are used by IBM software maintenance and development staff, as well as by some customers who wish to forego the expense of third-party change management software.
Clones include: THE and KEDIT(partial, e.g., no prefix macros)]. (In fact, THE clones KEDIT as well!)
Screenshot:
MOHICANS SCRIPT A1 V 132 Trunc=132 Size=10 Line=10 Col=1 Alt=10
XEDIT:
===== Last of the Mohicans
===== .sp
===== It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America,
===== that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered
===== before the adverse hosts could meet.
===== A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed
===== the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England.
===== The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his
===== side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids
===== of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains
|...+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7...
===== * * * End of File * * *
====>
X E D I T 1 File
²Because the lines in the file area of the screen can be formatted into I/O fields whose content can be manipulated by macros, Xedit can be made to behave as a full-screen dialog manager. Since PF keys can be dynamically reassigned, the entire user interface can be customized to make Xedit behave nothing like a text editor.
IBM also provides a package called CMS/TSO Pipelines, which is a sort of UNIX pipes on steroids, and is often embedded in RexxLanguage programs and XEDIT macros. A platform-independent implementation is available as an embedded component of NetRexx, which runs on all Java-capable platforms.