Copyright: Gator Help Copyright ® 1995 T. Henschell


Contents
 Gator Edit help table of contents

Welcome to Gator Edit 1.2. If you have a super VGA screen, you might want to break the table of contents out into its own window. Click the first bone in the index below to do that. This will allow you to keep the contents screen open, so you will be able to quickly jump around inside the help file. You may have to size the main window to make the two help windows fit comfortably beside each other.

The help engine will remember the main window's position, but it will not remember the floating window's placement. That window's place is set by hard-wired data compiled into this file. (The moral of this tale being you adjust the main window if you want them to mesh nicely next time you load the file.)

To exit, click the Exit button on the button bar above this window. It'll close both windows. If you want to close the floating index, double-click the system button in the upper-left-hand corner of that window. It'll close, but this window will remain open.

Float the table of contents

 Basic information

What is Gator Edit?

How to install the program

How to operate Gator Edit

 The user interface & program configuration

Keyboard shortcuts

The file menu

 Printing

The edit menu

The text menu

The view menu

The search menu

The options menu

The window menu

The help menu

 Gator Edit's tools

The toolbar dialogue

The status line

Right mouse button

 Support information

Limitations & bonuses

Got a problem?

Support sites

 Technical and other information

Advanced information

Copyright information & disclaimers

Thank you, thank you

The credits

 Registration information

Why should you register?

Registration information


What is Gator Edit?
 What is Gator Edit™?

Gator Edit is a powerful text editor. It's designed to be used by anybody who needs to edit text files such as your system configuration files (we have a special menu item just for that) or just about anything that's plain ASCII text. Gator Edit is an award-winning program, and was a finalist and then first runner-up in the 1995 annual ZiffNet-PC Magazine shareware competition. We're very proud of that, since only the best of the best make it that far, so that's why we're mentioning it here.

If the file you want to edit was created by something like Word for Windows or Ami Pro, it may have formatting codes, so you don't want to edit it with Gator Edit. But if it's "plain" text, no matter what the size, if you have the memory in which to load the file, you should be able edit it.

Gator Edit loads the entire file into memory. If you want to edit a five megabyte text file, you'll need five megabytes of contiguous free RAM in which to load it. Gator Edit will use up to (but no more than) 16 megabytes of RAM. That's the biggest file you could potentially load.

That's the only significant restriction, really---well, that and the limit to 100 files open at once.

Another question I know you're asking is why the heck it's called Gator Edit, and what's that dog in the About box have to do with things? I'll explain that eventually. Suffice to say that we think Gator Edit will---like man's best friend---quickly become your faithful companion, ever-ready to help you with daunting text-editing tasks.

Gator Edit™ was created by Dangerous Cybernetics™. Derek Backus, a self-taught programmer who works largely in Pascal, wrote most of the code. The user interface and all the program graphics were designed and created by Todd Henschell, a nationally-published author, screenwriter, and technical writer. He created the documentation, too, which is the file you're looking at right now.

Dangerous Cybernetics™ is the author of what we think is the best off-line QWK mail reader for Microsoft Windows, CMPQwk Reader. If you haven't tried CMPQwk Reader, we bet you'd like it, so give it a try. Users who register CMPQwk get a hefty discount when they register Gator Edit, too. (It doesn't work the other way around, sorry.)


Installing Gator Edit
 How to install the program

Gator Edit™ is easy to install. Run SETUP.EXE and tell it where you'd like it to put Gator. It will ask for permission to create some icons for you in a program group. We suggest you let it do that. It will ask you if you want to replace Notepad with Gator Edit's NOTEPAD.EXE vector program. That file will direct calls to run NOTEPAD.EXE to Gator Edit. Every user should decide that one on his or her own.

By the way, we worked hard to make Gator Edit a well-behaved Windows application. It puts nothing in your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM or \WINDOWS directory (not even an INI file). It knows where it keeps its INI (in its own directory). We thought you'd like that.

So our program won't litter your hard disk with bits of itself. Gator Edit is house-trained, you might say...


 How to operate Gator Edit

Gator Edit™ is designed to be simple. It's designed to be powerful. A common problem with many editors is that the powerful ones are often confusing and geared to programmers or techno-wizards. We think that's wrong, so we worked overtime to make the power in Gator Edit easily accessible. Gator Edit is, as we say, "An editor for the rest of us."™

Unless software is easy to use and configure, it's a waste of time, we think. We bet you'd agree.

 File formats:

Gator Edit will only edit plain text files like your SYSTEM.INI or WIN.INI. It won't open Word files, Write files, or anything but unadulterated ASCII text. Or---perhaps---it might open them, but you would not want to edit them with Gator Edit. You might lose formatting, or even corrupt the file (it's hard to say, it depends on the word processor file in question).

Gator Edit will browse the text components of binary files, and in fact it may think a word processor file is a binary file, and because of that it would protect you from damaging it. The exception would be an RTF file, which is really just a special type of plain text.

 Available memory:

There are only a few limitations covering what the program can open. You must have sufficient free memory to load the entire file into RAM. If you've got a six megabyte text file and want to open it, you'll need six megabytes of free memory. Not six total, but six contiguous megabytes of memory free before you can begin.

That's an important distinction, so make a note of it.

If you try to load a file that's larger than free memory, you may send Windows into a swapfile-crunching frenzy, or you may just crash the editor. It will attempt to determine how much memory it needs to load a file, but it may fail at this. We've opened six megabyte text files with no problems on our high-performance test machines. Your mileage may vary. We've tested the editor on machines with four megabytes of memory and machines with 16 megabytes.

Ninety percent of our users will never reach the ceiling of available memory, but there is a limit, so we thought we'd mention it.

To take Gator Edit for a test drive, try a small text file. The readme.txt file that comes with Gator Edit will do nicely if you still have it. Play with it, mangle it, and see how Gator Edit works.

Then create a new file, poke around, see what happens when you play with the toolbar and the various menu items. We think you'll find that the program is laid out logically and with thought given to putting the most frequent items on the first-level of the menu.

 User interface:

We worked very hard to put the items in Gator's menu in sensible places. We tried to give them logical shortcut keys whenever possible. Things having to do with text are in the text menu, things having to do with editing (cutting, pasting) are in the edit menu, and so forth. Just where they should be.

Where it was possible, we put images on the toolbar buttons that matched what the function was going to do. If you see a ! on a button, that always means, "all" such as Close all, Save all, and so on.

There are explanations of every menu function and toolbar icon in the status line. These will appear when a particular menu item is highlighted or the mouse is over a button on the toolbar.

There's a right mouse button menu, too. It has most of the text and edit controls on it. Try the right mouse button with some plain text and some highlighted text, you'll see it's "intelligent" and knows what to do if you highlight something. It'll give you the menu items applicable to highlighted text if you have some, and it'll suppress those if you don't.

Once you've played with Gator Edit, read the help for each menu item. The toolbar builder has its own section, as does the program's hot keys or "shortcut" keys. We think the keyboard is better than the mouse for most editing chores (after all, you are typing when you're editing) so we didn't skimp on them. Many of the keyboard shortcuts are similar to those on other editors, so you may already know them.

 Using Gator Edit's help:

Part of operating Gator Edit is using this help file. I use a few conventions that should help you find important information quickly.  If you see something like...

 Note: pay attention to the notes.

...you might want to read that paragraph closely, it contains important information that may be critical to your successful use of Gator Edit.

If you see a paragraph like...

 This paragraph contains useful information about something.

...it means there's a tip there, or something I felt needed further refinement or mention.

The other bullets, arrows, and check-boxes are just that: bullets, arrows, and checkboxes. Gator's likeness divides sections I felt needed dividing, and there are other graphics used throughout the help file merely to make it look a little more interesting. There's no reason help needs to be boring.


 Keyboard shortcuts

We've loaded Gator Edit™ with as many shortcut keys to as many functions as we could possibly provide. Many of them are like other editors, some are unique to us. If you think we missed one you need and you can find a free key combination that makes sense, let us know and we'll try to get it into the next release. You might want to print this page to keep it handy. Once you learn these, you can speed through your text-editing chores.

 File menu shortcut keys:

New	ALT+N

Open	CTRL+O

Close	CTRL+L

Save	CTRL+S

Save as	ALT+M

Save all	ALT+A

Insert file	CTRL+I

Find file	ALT+D

Load system files	ALT+Y

Print	CTRL+P

Printer setup	ALT+SHIFT+S

Exit	ALT+X

 Edit menu shortcut keys:

Undo	CTRL+Z

Redo	CTRL+SHIFT+Z

Cut	CTRL+X

Copy	CTRL+C

Paste	CTRL+V

Delete	DEL

Delete line	CTRL+Y

Delete to end of line	CTRL+E

Insert line after current line	ALT+I

Insert line before current line	CTRL+N

Repeat line	ALT+R

Select All	CTRL+A

Cut and append clipboard	CTRL+U

Copy and append clipboard	CTRL+D

Copy to new window	ALT+C

Paste to new window	ALT+P

Set place marker	CTRL+SHIFT+[0...9] - up to ten markers

 Note: you cannot use the numpad keys for this function, Windows assigns a different value to a numpad key when you've pressed the shift key. Use the numbers above the main keyboard.

Go to place marker	CTRL+[0...9]

 Text menu shortcut keys:

Spell-check	CTRL+K

ROT13 encrypt	ALT+1

 Note: so you can type in high ASCII using the keypad keys (these require numbers plus the ALT key) the keypad 1 key does not work for this function.

Indent with tabs	ALT+B

Indent with spaces	ALT+J

Shift to lower case	ALT+L

Shift to upper case	ALT+U

Toggle case	ALT+Q

Center text	CTRL+B

Flush left	CTRL+J

Flush right	CTRL+Q

Wrap to paragraph	CTRL+W

 Find menu shortcut keys:

Find text	CTRL+F

Find & replace text	CTRL+R

Find next	F3

Go to line number	CTRL+G

 Window menu shortcut keys:

Close all	ALT+K

 Quick format shortcut keys:

Change local margin	F2  (Don't set this larger than 1,000 columns.)


File menu
 The file menu

This section explains the Gator Edit™ file menu items and what they do. The file menu is used for just what you think it is used for, manipulating, saving, creating, and finding files. Finding files? Yep, in addition to editing them, we have a powerful file-finder, too. It's built right into our editor. Right from the hit list when you search you can pick up to 100 files (or the number that will fit into available memory, whichever is smaller) to load into Gator Edit.

Hey, we lose stuff just like everybody else! Now we can find stuff, too.

New - allows you to create a new plain ASCII text file. You can have as many "new" windows open as you like, (well, up to 100 and if you want more than that then we think you're a bit out of control). They're all called NONAMExx where xx is the number of that window. If you pick File/Save As and give it a name, the NONAMExx is replaced by the name you provide.

 Note: Gator Edit does not "track" how many files you have open. You can click on the New file toolbar button until several hundred windows are open if you have the memory. However, you will run out of unique filenames after file number 99. The new filenames Gator uses are NONAME00.TXT through NONAME99.TXT. We did not limit this function for a reason (a power user may want to have more than 100 new windows for some purpose), but you should be aware that if you create more than 100, you could run into very nasty conflicts. Most users will never open that many windows and shouldn't worry about this.

Open - loads the "open file" dialogue. From that dialogue select a file from those listed. You won't see hidden or system files, and that's probably just as well, you won't need to (or want to) diddle with those. Gator Edit will transparently load Unix or MAC text files (assuming they have DOS filenames and reside on a DOS-format disk, of course). You need do nothing special, it recognizes them automatically and takes the correct action to read them properly.

You can open just about any text file you'll run across. With the common dialogue we use you can browse around, and select (with the viewing filter) what types of files you want it to display. Drop down that list and you'll see it's got some nice pre-set filters, and you can add one of your own via the Options/Default file mask, too.

 Note: you can open and browse through (and copy to the clipboard) the text inside program and other types of binary data files, but you cannot edit them. When you attempt to open a non-text file, Gator will ask you if you would like to view the text contained in the file. It will strip out high ASCII characters and display the "normal" text components of the file, line-by-line. It may take time to do this if you've opened a large file. Set the file open filter to *.* if you want to open binary files. Binary file loading will happen "in the background" whether or not you have background operation enabled.

Close - closes the current file (it will prompt you to save the file if you've changed it, if not it will silently close the file).

Save - saves the contents of the current file to disk. Once you've saved a file, you can't revert to the previous version unless you have a backup copy. Gator Edit saves in whatever format the file was in when you opened it. If you've opened a MAC text file and pick Save, it'll be saved in MAC format. To convert to plain DOS 8-bit PC ASCII from an alien format, you'd need to pick Export, explained in the third section below this one.

Save as - exactly the same as Save, except you can use this process to change the file's name. The original file is left "intact" or how it was before you altered it between the last save and this one. If you continue editing, your changes will be saved into this new "changed" file name.

Delete current file - this will close the front window, and if there is a corresponding file on the disk (you've saved it or opened it) it will delete the disk file. So it's really two operations in one: closing the window and killing any disk file that exists. If you've opened something just to see what it was and decide you want to delete it, this operation will do that for you in a single step.

Export - you may convert to one of three formats.

MAC text - this is the format used by the Macintosh, it differs from DOS format in the way it handles new paragraphs. MAC text has a carriage return but no line feed in their plain text format.

UNIX text - this is the format used by Workstations such as Sun or Silicon Graphics, AS-4000's and other UNIX systems. It differs in the way it handles a paragraph breaks. UNIX text has a line feed but no carriage return.

DOS text - this is the format we're all used to, like your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files. It's plain text, and a paragraph break consists (generally) of a carriage return and a line feed. Too bad we can't all get along and use the same text file format, don't you think?

Open CMPQwk folders -  if you use our off-line mail reader CMPQwk 1.4x, you can browse, copy into text files, and print the contents of your folders from inside Gator Edit. It's nice to be able to jump in and read something in the stored messages there without loading the mail reader. You can't delete or create folders or folder items, just browse those that already exist. If you own CMPQwk you probably know how to use our folders, and this function is just like CMPQwk's feature, only it's more limited.

 We don't suggest you open your folders in Gator Edit, leave it open, and then browse them again in CMPQwk, especially if you've got Gator Edit set to be your folder viewer. Possible conflicts might arise. But this function is a good way---working outside of the mail reader---to collect and paste-together stored information or quickly look something up that may be stuffed into a folder. You can do complex searches within a single message using Gator Edit's search engine.

You can open dozens of messages (up to 100 or the number that can be held in available memory, whichever figure is smaller), then pick Close to return to Gator Edit and your selected messages, which will be opening (or already open) behind the folder dialogue box.

 If you are using another INI file with the /i:[filename] parameter, or have moved the program and the first line of the CMPQWK.INI file points to an incorrect or non-existent directory, create a "dummy" CMPQWK.INI with the correct CMPQwikPath= variable in it or fix the path that is in error in the existing file. That line must point to the correct directory for the CMPQwk folder viewing option to function correctly. Gator Edit will fail to find your folders 100 percent of the time if this path is incorrect, even if you do have folders in another directory.

Find file - this will load Gator Edit's powerful file finder. Is there a text file you made a couple of years ago lurking somewhere on your network? If you know the drive letter and a word or two that might be inside it (to narrow the search) you can find the thing even if you don't know the file's name.

To use the file finder, click on Find file (or the Find file icon on the toolbar, if you've put one up there). In the box marked Directory, type in the letter of first drive you want to search. You can search only one at a time, but you can keep searching other drives after the first. If you don't have a clue where the file is, type in C:\ if you want to search your C: drive. The \ is important! Be sure to check the "Search subdirectories" box, too.

In the File mask box type in a wildcard such as *.txt, or *.ini, or whatever you think might be close to the name of the file you wish to locate. The mask can use wildcards like annual.* (find all files that start with annual) a*.t* (find all files that begin with a and have a suffix that begins with t) and so on. The latter one would generate a hit on annual.txt, art.tmp, and animal.tif. That's the case assuming these files existed on your drive in or under the search directory.

You can type in *.* but to have it search efficiently when you do that, you must enter something in the Expression box below. You do not have to enter an expression if you use a sensible mask, but if you don't have a clue as to what the file name in, you can rely on the expression function to find it.

The box marked Expression is for you to use to enter some text that might be in the file. You'll want to pick something that only that file would contain. If the file is a plain ASCII text file about your annual report, you might want to type in "profits." The Expression box will let you use complex expressions such as "profit | loss." The | sign means "or."

This allows you to build up multi-layered logical expressions that can refine and narrow the search. They can be quite complex, and of course the more complicated, the slower the search.

If you play with this, you'll quickly see just how powerful our search function is. We doubt you'll ever lose your text files again if you've got Gator Edit handy. Here's a list of the expression functions it supports and what they mean:

| - this means the same as "or" in English. Dogs or cats.

^ - the caret means find a file that's got the search word immediately after the caret as its first line. For example: ^dog would find any file that has, as its first word, "dog."

$ - the dollar sign at the end of an expression means to match the end of a line. For example, dog$ would find a file that has a line that ends with dog.

. - the period represents any single character. For example: Aire.... would find any file that has the word Airedale in it, but it would find AireFlex, too.

* - the asterisk represents any "group" of characters. For example: do* would find dogs, does, don't, and so on.

+ - the plus sign represents a match to one or more of the expression's characters. For example: bo+ will match bottle and boo. It finds all "hits" either partial or complete.

( ) - the normal brackets are used to "collect" elements of your expression into single objects, although within those objects can be multiple expressions.

[ ] - the square brackets are used to represent a group of single characters. Single characters put inside brackets will generate hits individually. For example: [dog] will find any file that has a d, an o, and a g but NOT if it is spelled "dog."

[^word] - means locate any file that matches the other elements of the expression but does not have the word in it. For example: ([^dog] vet) means find a match for vet as long as the file does not have the word dog in it.

Another point to remember is that once you've got a "hit list" in the search dialogue listbox, you can use the right mouse button to click on as many of the items as you'd like to open (up to 100 if memory permits it) and then select Open Marked to load them all in one fell swoop. If you think there are multiple files you'd like to open, select them all when the search is finished, because the list will be blank the next time you pull it up to search.

You can mark the files with either the left or right mouse button, but an accidental double-click with the left will open only a single file, the one whose name you double-clicked. The right button is a bit easier for mouse-challenged folks. Double-clicking with it turns the highlight on and off, but does not load the file.

Your carefully-crafted expression will be remembered from session to session if you have acted on it (started and completed a search) at least once.

 Keep in mind if you are searching an entire disk and you've got a very complex expression, your search may take a long time. If the search string contains multiple compound expressions and your file specification is *.* the search engine will have to look through every character of every file for a match, in the process parsing the files through the logical construction you've given it. Simple searches can locate a file on a large disk in moments. Complex expressions may take an hour on a big network hard disk, it'll depend on how fast your computer is, how fast your hard disk is, and so forth.

Load system files - in one step you can load all the significant system files for editing or examination. You can specify in GATOR.INI two other files you want to be loaded when you edit system files. For example, PROTOCOL.INI for Windows for Workgroups users. Look for the lines:

SystemOther1=

SystemOther2=

Type in the full path and name of any file you want to get auto-loaded when you select this option. If you use a multi-boot program, for example, that has a file called BOOT.CFG (I do), you can change the first line above to:

SystemOther1=c:\boot.cfg

The next time you select Load system files (you'll have to close and re-start the editor), it'll load up BOOT.CFG, ready to edit.

 Note: unless you are editing a backup copy, you cannot edit GATOR.INI with Gator. Use Notepad or make a backup copy, edit that, then copy it over GATOR.INI after Gator Edit is closed.

Print - selecting this brings up a dialogue that displays how current printing options are set, and lets you perform other functions (such as changing printers). The options that appear are explained in the next section, Printing.

Exit - closes Gator Edit. It will prompt you to save any files that you have modified since you opened them, and it will silently close any that have not changed.

Last-ten file list - Gator Edit will store the names (and paths) of the last ten files you open. If you are usually editing the same files over and over, you can quickly fire them up by picking them from this list. If you created a file in one directory, and then later on used File Manager or the DOS prompt to move the file, and then pick this file name from the last ten list, you will get an error message. The message will advise you that the file no longer exists in that path, and asks you if you would like to search for it. If you pick yes, the Find file dialogue appears. (See the explanation of that menu item above.)

 Note: the program will automatically fill in the file name and drive identifier of the last drive on which the file was located. This will destroy any other data you may have entered into the file finder dialogue. So if the file GATOR.TXT was located in C:\UPLOAD\TEXT but you moved it, the file finder dialogue will appear with GATOR.TXT filled in as the file name, and C:\ as the path from which to begin the search.


I grew up with this huge and rumbling air conditioner in my bedroom window. It was military surplus (my Pop loved bargains like that) and when you turned it on, the lights in the house dimmed.  Nothing more than five feet from it got cool, and the only thing that flexed was the windowsill holding the thing up---it must've weighed 600 pounds. What this has to do with Gator Edit, I've got not the foggiest idea...but I needed something that matched "Airedale" and that was the first thing to leap into my mind. Sigh...


 Printing

This section explains how Gator Edit™ prints, and what options you have available to you when you select "print" from the File menu. Gator isn't a fancy word processor, but you can do some nice things with printing in version 1.2 (and later).

Printer selection - choose the printer (if you have more than one) to which you want to send the print job. Any printer supported by Windows will be fine, although Gator will not print in color to a color printer, it will only print monochrome text.

Page selections - select what you want to print. Your options are:

All - print the entire file.

Selected lines - if you've highlighted text prior to selecting Print from the menu, this item will be enabled. Gator will print all of the highlighted lines (not just the highlighted characters, but every line that has a highlight mark in it). If you only need a snippet printed, this a very fast method.

Print from page ? to page ? - If your file has formatted page breaks and they are at about 60 lines per page (assuming the "typical" font, you can use this item to pick specific sections of a larger file to print. Most folks are familiar with such a feature. If your text file isn't formatted in this fashion, you might have a hard time figuring which page is what. Best bet: look at the line counter and assume about 60 lines per page, that will get you into the ballpark.

Current font - the currently selected font is displayed in a sample box. This box is "live," so if you click on Page setup and change the font, the display here will change, too. When you select a font, that font becomes Gator's "default" font for all printing until you choose another font.

Printer setup - this button loads the printer setup dialogue for the currentl default printer. If you wish to set up another printer, change the default by using the drop-down list of available printers at the top of this dialogue. What appears when you select Printer setup depends on your system, printer drivers, and printer.

Page setup - this allows you to change how Gator treats your page. You'll be presented with several options here, and they allow you to control with fine precision how your page is formatted, what headers and footers appear, and what left margin the program uses. Changes here become Gator's defaults for all sessions until you alter them once again.

Headers (primary & secondary) - You can define headers here, both primary and secondary, for the left and right sides of the page. Headers can use variables, which replace the typed-in "code" with real information. You can put in text that   you want repeated in all pages. For example, if you wanted a primary right header to say, "Installation notes - Page 3," you'd type in, "Installation notes - Page %p" and Gator will provide the actual printed page number on the fly for you. Define the headers how you like them, there are default settings that will make sense for most print jobs. What you enter here becomes the defaults from the time you change it until the time you feel the need to alter it again.

The variables Gator uses are:

%d - current date

%t - current time

%p - page number

%f - file name (the DOS file name of the text file you're printing).

Left margin - this box lets you increment the margin in or out by very  fine values. The default value will produce a one half inch margin on most printers. Using this method (rather than inches) or other "real" numbers lets you alter the margin by miniscule amounts. Experiment using blocks of 20 or so, or even less if you want to move the margin by just a few pixels-worth. A value of 0 will begin the printing at the edge of your printers "printable area," which may vary by printer make and model.

Bottom margin - this lets you adjust how closely to the text will print to the bottom edge of the page. The same number values as in left margin (above) apply here. Most folks will not have to fiddle with this, but if you have a dot matrix printer, you may want to adjust this up and down. This defaults to 125, which should work for most uses.

Font - select a font to use for this document. You can use any font on your system, and any pitch, however sizes and typefaces that are large or bizarre may produce unpredictable results. If your document has lots of high ASCII in it (such as a screen from a BBS) or hax box line characters, you'll want to use a font like MS Line Draw. If you use a typical True Type font, the box characters will come up looking like A's with umlauts over them, or U's, or other bizarre items. This is not Gator's fault, this is because the character set of the DOS file doesn't match the font tables provided with most True Type fonts. Use a font that does provide those extended ASCII characters and printing will look as you think it should.

 Note: MS Line Draw is available from many BBS systems as GC0651.EXE (or Zip). If you get that file and install it, you will find that your high ASCII text files will print quite well.

OK - finish with page setup, using the values you have entered and save them as the defaults.

Cancel - throw away your changes and go back to the prior dialogue or menu.

Help - load this file at this section of the help.

Some printing tips:

 Don't select a font much larger than 12 point or you might end up with truncated text if the text goes all the way to the "typical" margin. Use common sense here. Pick an easy-to-read font. Your best bet will be nine or ten point Arial or MS Line Draw.

 Remember, Gator isn't a desktop publishing program, it's a simple text editor. It's not going to do multiple fonts per page, or fancy formatting. It's for plain text files.

 If you want to do fancy layouts, purchase a real word processor or page layout program like Ami Professional from Lotus, or Corel Ventura. Gator will do what he can to get you what you want, but if you want complex multiple-font page layouts with graphics and so forth, this is the wrong program for you.

 Don't select a word wrap length much larger than 72 columns. You may find your text going off the page. Gator prints what's "on the screen" and it tries to stay true to that (as true as it can). This means if you've got a line that's 700 characters long and you don't have word wrap on (and set at 70 or less in most situations) you'll end up with 70 characters or so out of your 700. The rest will go bye-bye off the margin. Enable word wrap, then print.

 Word wrap doesn't mean put in hard returns, it means fit the document to your specifed wrap size. When you save it (with some exceptions) that line really is a single line, it's just being "fit" to the wrap length for you for you so you can see it on your screen.


Edit menu
 The edit menu

Undo/undo text operation - if you've goofed something up (a single operation) you can undo it and go back to the last state of the file. The undo function does not tell you (like some word processors do) what it is you are going to undo, we're assuming you remember it. It has a limited size, but most operations will be "un-doable." Block text operations are all un-doable due to the way the program writes out a backup copy first.

Redo - you thought you goofed it up, but no, you didn't, it's correct. Un-does the Un-do, and puts back the changes you made in the last operation. You can toggle back and forth if you want to see the way something looks with the changes and then looks without them (great for formatting a plain ASCII table or chart). The toolbar Undo/Redo icons are very nice for this.

Cut - cuts the selected text to the clipboard. You must select text with the mouse or keyboard before this will do anything, of course. Use the mouse and drag the cursor across text, or hold down the shift keys and move the cursor keys if you prefer the keyboard.

Copy - lets you copy any text you've marked with the mouse or cursor keys into the Windows clipboard. This way you can get the text into another program or data file if you want.

Paste - pastes the contents of the Windows clipboard into the document at the cursor's current position. Make sure the cursor is where you want the text to go before you select this option.

 Note: clipboard functions are limited to 64,000 bytes. This is a limitation of Windows, not Gator Edit™, and since we don't have a private clipboard (which isn't really practical in an application like this) you'll have to work around this limit.

Delete - deletes highlighted text without cutting it to the clipboard. Unless you select UNDO right away, the text will be lost "forever." You can restore the file from a previous save if you have backup files enabled. This function assumes you want to throw the text away and not paste it in later.

Delete line - does just that, deletes the current line the cursor is on. The whole thing will be gone when you use this, including the return character. If you delete a line, the line below it gets "bumped up" to fill in the gap.

Delete to EOL - toasts all the text from the cursor's position to the end of the line. If you've got a line you want to truncate, pop the cursor to the point that you want to be the last character, then select this item.

Insert line after - inserts a blank line below the cursor's current line.

Insert line before - inserts a blank line above the cursor's current line.

Repeat line - if you put the cursor on a line you want to duplicate, it will copy it and put it below the current line. It just rubber stamps the line for you. No clipboard required, just click it and you've got a dupe. Nice for doing tables and repetitive designs.

Select all - selects the entire file, every line and character. You can then do with it what you would like to do (delete, copy to the clipboard, etc.). If you click on the selected material, it will "un-select" it.

 Note: Select all will not work if you have background loading enabled until the entire file has been loaded into memory. The reason for this is simple: how can you select all when "all" isn't loaded?

Cut & Append - the Windows clipboard only holds one thing at a time, right? Not with our program. We let you append to the clipboard. Highlight text you want to delete (but keep for a moment) and it will be "stacked" below the prior clipboard contents.

 Note: if the contents of the clipboard are graphical (such as a copied bitmap) Gator Edit will empty the clipboard before putting text into it. Text and graphics can't coexist on the Windows 3.1 clipboard. If you have a graphic there you want to save, better paste it into something first.

Copy & Append - same as cut and append, only it does not delete the marked text from the document. Same restrictions apply to the clipboard contents, non-text will be erased.

Copy to new window - got something you want to pull out of one file to put into a new file? Just mark it and select this item. It is all these steps in one: Edit, Copy, File, New, Edit, Paste. This should save some time for everybody, we thought. There's no good reason why an editor can't do this, and how many times have you run two copies of Notepad to do something like this? I've done it plenty of times. It's stupid, annoys us, and we're not going to make you do it.

Paste to new window - if the contents of the clipboard are text, you can get them into a file quickly by selecting this option. Same as above, only it relies on the prior clipboard contents for its source. It's another time-saver if you've put something into the clipboard in another program and want to get it out of the clipboard here.

Set marker - if you've got a long file you need to quickly navigate, you can set up to ten bookmarks (held in memory while the file is open). If you have a large file, setting multiple markers can help you go back and forth between distant sections. Markers will be labeled 0 through 9, with up to ten at once per file.

 You can assign any number position to a marker, they do not have to be in order or even consecutive. You could assign your first marker to slot number one, and your next to slot number seven. The numbers only define how you will locate them, not their order in the file.

 Note: you cannot use the numpad keys for this function when using the set marker hot keys, Windows assigns a different value to a numpad key when you've pressed the shift key. Use the numbers above the main keyboard.

Go to marker - if you've set a marker (or markers) this option will open a list box that displays them, and double-clicking a marker will take you directly to it, putting the cursor exactly where you had it when you set that particular marker. When you select this item, you'll see a 40-character sample of the marked line to the right of the number assigned to that marker. This will help you pick a bookmark if you don't know the exact number mark you're seeking. Choose a mark by double-clicking it for maximum speed, Gator Edit will go straight to that mark. You can choose one and click OK, too.

Insert file - if you pick this, browse around and find a file, then choose "OK" the editor will attempt to insert the file beginning at the cursor's current position. Be sure you've got the cursor where you want the text to be put before you continue.

This function is a "merge" function. If you have five files you want to merge into one (say they were too big for Notepad in one file, but now you've got Gator Edit), just open the first, put a blank line at the end of it, pick File/Insert, then pick the second file, put a blank line at the end of that, and so on. Save them under a new name using Save as, then you'll have all five in one file.


Text menu
 The text menu

The text menu contains tools for manipulating the contents of the page in certain special ways. Some of the functions require that you have word-wrap enabled (they'll be grayed-out if you do not have word-wrap on). In any case, using some of them without paying attention to where your margins or cursor are may make a mess out of your file.

 Note: all block text operations have a maximum amount of characters they can manipulate. Do not try to use them (with the exception of ROT-13 and sort) on more than 64,000 characters. That figure includes spaces.

Word wrap - if you want the editor to automatically wrap your text entry at the column you specify in the item above, check this menu item. Some text menu functions do not work unless word wrap is on. When you type, the editor will jump back to the beginning of the next line if the word you are typing is going to collide with the right margin.

 When opening very large files (.5MB or larger) you may want to turn word wrap off.  If word wrap is on and the file already has carriage returns, you will double the amount of time it takes to open the file (as it parses through it looking for lines that are too long). If the file needs to be wrapped, it's best to wrap it after it is open, when the entire file is in memory and you've seen whether or not it needs to be wrapped.  Wrapping a large (multi-megabyte) file may take several minutes or more as the editor parses through the file. If you are on a low-memory 80386 system, it could take fifteen or twenty minutes if the file is very large (greater than a megabyte).

Spell-check - Gator Edit™ has an optional spell-checking module. If you use CMPQwk 1.4x, you don't need to install it. Gator Edit will automatically detect the location of your CMPQwk spelling module under most circumstances. It will enable the spell-check menu item, and Gator Edit will share spelling engines and personal dictionaries with CMPQwk 1.4x.

Using the speller is just like using CMPQwk's speller, or most Windows spell-checkers. You'll be presented with the word the speller doesn't understand, a suggestion or suggestions, (if it can find one) a text-entry line on which you can edit the flagged word if you'd like, and buttons to add the word to the personal dictionary, replace it with one of the suggestions, ignore it, ignore all instances, and so forth. Double-clicking any of the suggested words is the same as clicking it once and then clicking Replace.

ROT13 encode/decode - this tool will apply ROT13 encoding to the selected text, or if no text is selected, to the entire file.  ROT13 is a commonly-used technique for "protecting" people from viewing text they may find offensive (for example dirty jokes in public messages). Internet E-mail is often "shifted" with ROT13 encryption.

It's actually not encryption at all, but it shifts every letter to the right 13 characters (and begins again when it reaches Z). So A is N, B is O and so forth. If you ROT13 some text by mistake, you can simply ROT13 it again and it'll "come back." Why? Because half of 26---the number of letters in the alphabet---is 13. Imagine the letters on a hula-hoop, with A and Z touching.  If you go halfway and then halfway again, you're back where you started.

 Note: ROT13 will not work if you have background loading enabled unless one of two conditions is true. Either the entire file is in memory if you have not selected text, or you must have selected some text (Select all won't work unless the file is loaded all the way, either). Once the file is fully in memory, either method (highlighted or not) will work.

Indent with tabs - if you want to offset the selected text with TAB characters, pick this. The editor will ask you how many TABS to use. Note that if you send the text into the margin and you've got word-wrap on, you'll make a big mess of things. This feature only works on text that you've highlighted.

Indent with spaces - same procedure as above, only uses the specified number of spaces. Watch out for your margins, if you space it into the margin, you'll foul it up. This feature only works on text that you've highlighted.

Lower case - shifts all highlighted characters to lower case no matter what case they are now. This feature only works on text that you've highlighted.

Upper case - shifts all highlighted characters to upper case no matter what case they are now. This feature only works on text that you've highlighted.

Switch case - an interesting tool that lets you toggle case. If the text contains mixed case such as The Dog jumped over the Fence, when you highlight it and pick Switch case the line will be changed to: tHE dOG JUMPED OVER THE fENCE. A specialized function but it can come in handy in certain cases, such as repairing text typed when the caps lock was left on by mistake. This feature only works on text that you've highlighted.

Center - centers the marked text. Word-wrap must be on for this to work. It will attempt to clean up the paragraph as much as possible in the process, but if you've got stray hard returns in it, it may not come out the way you expected. This feature works on the current line (where the cursor is) or on all highlighted text.

Flush left - will take highlighted and perhaps mangled text and slam it against the left margin.  Can be used to undo indented paragraphs. Word-wrap must be on for this to work. This feature works on the current line (where the cursor is) or on all highlighted text.

Flush right - will take the highlighted text and force it over to the right margin. Word-wrap must be on for this to work. This feature works on the current line (where the cursor is) or on all highlighted text.

Wrap to paragraph - if you've got a paragraph or several paragraphs that break before you want it to, or has "malformed" breaks (lines are too short because of too many returns) and you want it to block up into a single, nicely-formatted paragraph, highlight it and select this item. This feature works only on text you have highlighted.

Insert hard returns (CR/LF) - this functions nearly the same as the Wrap to paragraph feature, however it will insert hard returns at the end of each line. A "hard" return is a real return character that does not rely on the word wrap state of your editor to form paragraphs. This function is handy if you are taking the text file into a program that demands there be hard returns at every line in order to keep formatting.

Sometimes taking plain text files into other editors or word processors works better using this format (sometimes not). However the feature is there for you to use if you need it. To see how this is different, look at a "wrapped" paragraph with word wrap on, turn word wrap off, then back on, then wrap it using this function and turn word wrap off again---instead of long lines going out to the middle of the next state, the paragraph will stay formatted when word wrap is off.

Sort lines - will sort lines (as long as there is a carriage return character after each line) by alphanumeric value. A dialogue will appear offering some options:

Ascending - will sort from 1 to [highest number] and from A to Z.

Descending - will sort from [highest number] back to 1 and from Z to A.

Case Sensitive - if you check this, text sorting operations will consider case as an element on which to sort. Words beginning with a capital letter will always come before the same word with a lower case first letter and before any words that begin with lower case letters. Using this with Ascending sort would sort cats, dogs, Cats, Dogs like:

Cats

Dogs

cats

dogs

File statistics - the program will give you a complete breakdown on the front window, including number of words, number of characters, file size in K-bytes, and the "modified" status of the file.


If you are loading CMPQwk with the /i: /c: switches to point to alternate configurations, and you don't have a CMPQWK.INI file located in your windows directory that has, on the first line, CMPQwikPath=D:\CMPQWK (where D:\CMPQWK is the correct drive and directory where the CMPQwk main spelling files are located) you can make a dummy CMPQWK.INI file and put it into the Windows directory to direct Gator Edit to the location.

The file you create for this purpose must be called CMPQWK.INI, and it need only have the line CMPQwikPath=[drivename:][\pathname] in it. If you already have a CMPQWK.INI file in your Windows directory (even if you're using another INI file with the command-line option) and it has the correct path to CMPQwk in it, the auto-finder will get the path to the dictionary and spellers files and automatically enable spell-checking.


View menu
 The view menu

The view menu controls part of how Gator Edit™ looks to you, and what tools it shows on the application workspace.

Toolbar 1 or Toolbar 2 - you can enable or disable the toolbars. You can select either of the toolbars or turn the toolbar off altogether if you need more screen real estate for edit windows. The program will remember which way it was when you left. See the toolbar section for how to set up the icons on the toolbar. You may only show one toolbar at a time.

When you choose between the toolbars, the displayed toolbar will change instantly, and you can quickly switch back and forth if you'd like, in the event you do not have sufficient screen real estate to do what you want with a single toolbar. Plain VGA users will find it possible to use the larger, better-looking toolbar items if they build two.

Status line - you may enable or disable the status line (the gray line at the bottom of the window that shows you column, line numbers, and so forth. This setting, too, is sticky. See the status line menu for explanations of what the status line does.


Search menu
 The search menu

Here is where you'll find the options for finding text (or text strings) when you need to search through a large file. The settings you enable for search (and search and replace) are sticky. If you want to to always appear set for a certain method of searching, set it that way and Gator Edit™ will remember the settings from session to session with no effort on your part.

Find - Want to look for a certain word or phrase? Enter that in the dialogue that will come up when you click on the find menu items here. Both Find and Replace have the same options, so instead of making you read through two lists, the options in the item below apply to both.

Replace - does a "search and replace" operation on the entered text. You can get text into the search and replace box by highlighting text then picking Replace from the menu. Gator Edit will insert the text you had highlighted into the dialogue for you. So when you've located the first incidence of the text you want to locate and change, highlight it, pick Replace from the menu, and that text string (or character) will appear already filled-in. Unless you do this, you must manually enter what you want to find and what you want to put in its place. There are some options you'll have to set:

Match case - only flag a "hit" if the exact case matches. Will match Dog with Dog but not dog with Dog or doG.

Whole words only - only flag a "hit" on complete examples of the word. For example, it will match super with super, but not super with superman or superman with super.

Search Forward - start the search at the cursor's position and search until you cancel or until the end of the file.

Search Backward - it'll back up through the file looking for the specified text.

Start at the first line - search in both directions (back to the beginning and then past where the cursor is now until the search reaches the end) for all matches to the entered text.

Selected text only - only search through highlighted text (you must highlight text before enabling this, of course, or not much is going to happen).

Start at cursor - the program defaults to starting at the cursor's position, not at the beginning of the file. If you turn this off, it'll start at the beginning of the file.

Go to line # - If you know on which line the item you're looking for resides, tell the program and it'll jump there. A quick way to skip through unimportant sections of the file if you are familiar with it to that degree.

Gator Edit will remember a nearly unlimited number of items on the search and replace menu drop-down pick list. Just open the list that appears by clicking the arrow in the items text box. Pick the search object you want if it appears from that list, and it'll be used in the search (or replace). During normal operations, Gator Edit will remember (practically) every search and replace item you enter. Once you've closed the program, it will remember (during the next session) the last ten.

During a single session there could be thousands of items on the drop-down list (if you've searched for that many words). The actual hard-coded limit is about 16,000 search or replace objects, assuming you've got sufficient memory in which to store that many. This is probably more than anybody will ever need.


Options menu
 The options menu

The options menu is where you will set up how you'd like the program to operate. You can define TAB styles, whether or not the program makes backup files, and so forth from this menu. If the program does not operate as you expect it, you'll probably find something here that will change it so it works the way you like.  The configuration panel is organized just like the familiar "tabbed index" everybody knows how to use.

Toolbar - we'll cover the toolbar in its own section, see Toolbar.

Configuration - loads the master tabbed configuration index. Select any of the items below to see explanations of each tab.

Editor options

File options

Font options

Bark options

Sound options


 Editor options

Editor options control how the program handles text flow and spacing.

Word Wrap - set word wrap column and default state (on or off).

Wrap at column - you can specify the column where you'd like the editor to wrap text. It defaults to 80 columns. You might want to set it down to less that that, perhaps 65 or 72. Eighty columns is the maximum that most letter-paper-sized printers can handle, and that setting leaves you with no margins.

 Gator Edit can wrap paragraphs up to 5,000 columns, however this is more or less impractical for any use we can imagine. That's ten times the column limit in Qedit for DOS, by the way. We suggest you stick to 1,000 columns or less, that setting is larger than anything 99% of the world will ever use anyway. Gator Edit has been tested with wrap margins up to 9,000 columns and worked fine, but not all text functions may function normally beyond 1,000 columns due to the way they are structured.

Turn on by default - sets the "default" setting for word wrap state. If you want all new windows to open with word wrap enabled, check this. If you want word wrap off by default, uncheck it. You can toggle each individual window's word wrap state independant of this setting, from the text menu word wrap item.

Save with CR/LF - tells Gator Edit™ that, when you have word wrap enabled, you want the files saved as though word wrap was OFF and you'd put hard returns at the end of each line. If you are going to send a file to a system or program that doesn't wrap the text, you will need to enable this. If you are unclear what this does, it keeps the formatted text looking like Gator's screen does. In other words, if you have word wrap set to 72 columns and you create a file, then save it with this enabled, if you open it in another program that does not wrap text, the text will still appear as you intended, wrapped at 72 columns with hard returns.

Tabs - allows you to set options for TAB stops.

Tab size - you can set the actual amount of spaces into which tab characters are translated. This is another method of collapsing a tabbed file to take up less screen (or printed page) space.

Fixed - fixes TAB sizes to a set space-value which you can define. The cursor will jump X spaces no matter where it is.

Real - uses TABS like a typewriter (if you are, let's say, five spaces out the TAB takes you to the next logical TAB, which might only be three spaces away, rather than a fixed amount of space from the cursor's position every time).

Smart - uses "intelligent" TABS. When you press the TAB key, Gator Edit looks for the beginning of a word or expression in the previous line (or lines) to align the cursor with, so it creates a column automatically when you start typing. To see this, enable this feature, begin a new line by hitting the space bar eight times or so, type a bit, press return and then hit the TAB key. The cursor will jump to the same column as the previous line (unless you have enabled programmer's indentation, in which case the return will leave you at the same column as the beginning of the prior line).

Auto scroll speed - when you use Auto Scroll to read a long text file you can use this item to define how quickly (or slowly) it moves the text upward. The numbers are milliseconds, so 500 would leave each line in place for 1/2 second. We think 400ms is a good speed for most folks, but set it to whatever you like. Evelyn Wood students will no doubt want to try it at 10 or 4.

Auto-indentation - tells the program to use "sticky" indents, like a programmer's editor. If you TAB into the middle of the page (and have this enabled) when you press Enter, you won't return to the left margin, you'll stay at the boundary of the last TAB, as if it were your new margin. Very handy when typing in columns or putting in "commented" text.

Maximize edit window -  if you check this, every edit window will come up "maximized" which means it will take over the application's workspace. This is the direct opposite of "tiled" which lets you show more than one window at once. If you are running in 640 x 480, you might want to set this option to give you some elbow room on your page.


 File options

File options control how Gator Edit™ handles reading and writing files to your disk.

Options - set file-related parameters.

Create backup file - if you want the editor to create *.BAK files every time you edit a file (littering your hard disk with little editor droppings in the process) you can leave this enabled. Sometimes it's nice, though, because you may mangle a file then save it, then say, "Oh, shhhh...." If you've got this enabled you can open the BAK file and pick File, Save as and save it over the mangled copy. User's discretion here: Gator Edit does not clean up BAK files on exit.

Reload last open files - if you enable this, the editor will, the next time you start it in any means other than double-clicking a file name or passing it a file name, load the entire set of files you were editing the last time you closed it. If you have a group of files you're working on and they're scattered all over your system, you might want to enable this to save some time.

Open files in the background - this option allows you to open in the background large files that might take several minutes to load. When enabled, the program will allow you to work on part of the file (or view it) while it continues to open as a background process. This option has several drawbacks, and you will need to treat the file---as it is opening---differently. The first thing to note is that users with very fast machines (486 50 Mhz or better with 8MB or more of RAM) should leave this unchecked. Files will open much more quickly with it unchecked, although it will take 100% of the CPU to open files. With a fast CPU this will rarely cause a problem with a file transfer or other concurrent process.

You can't perform certain operations (saving, Select all, ROT13) while you're opening a file in a background process. You must to wait until the file is completely loaded to use features like that.

If you do a lot of communications with a moderatly-powerful system this is a good option to leave checked because it forces Gator to give up CPU time. If you want to open a truly huge file (a megabyte or so), you can open the file and then minimize the editor and let it process in the background. That way if you have a BBS file transfer taking place, you should not "time out" or cause it to abort. (See the note below if you're using a slower 80386 machine.)

You can elect to open a file in the background and continue to work on another text file inside the editor, too. When the CPU is "free" for a moment, the file in the background will continue to load. If you switch to that window (or restore the window from an icon) and watch the line total indicator on the status bar, you'll see it opening the file a segment at a time. When another window is in front, you'll see its total line count, not the background-loading file.

 Note: setting this option will greatly increase the amount of time it takes to load very large files (a megabyte and beyond). It can take ten minutes to load a single megabyte file if this is on. For smaller files the difference isn't that noticeable, and the increased flexibility (and friendly, cooperative nature this gives the program when you might be using communications) is worth the loss in speed.

 On a very slow low-memory system (less than eight megabytes on a 386/25 Mhz machine) we suggest you do not attempt to load large files with this set to on. You will tie up the editor for a huge amount of time, gaining virtually nothing.

The fact is that it's hard to really multitask with a slow low-memory system, and this program is no different from any other one in this respect. For slower systems and files 500K or less, this option should keep you from "locking up" your system and timing out downloads while you are working.

 Suggested settings:

386 25Mhz with 4MB RAM - 500K (or less )	enable

386 25Mhz with 4MB RAM - >500K	disable

386 25Mhz with >4MB RAM	disable

386 33Mhz with 4MB RAM - 500K (or less)	enable

386 33Mhz with >4MB RAM	disable

386 33Mhz / 40Mhz with >4MB RAM	disable

486 SX with 4MB RAM (up to 500K)	enable

486 SX with >4MB RAM	disable

486 33Mhz with 4MB RAM (up to 500K)	enable

486 33Mhz with >4MB RAM	disable

486 50Mhz / 66Mhz with 4MB RAM	enable

486 50Mhz /66Mhz with >4MB RAM	disable

486 50Mhz EISA, Pentium-class, servers	disable

On any system when you want to open

files larger than 1/3 of installed RAM	disable

Track last 10 files opened - if you check this option, Gator Edit will append the path and filename of the files you open to a list stored at the bottom of the File menu. Simply click the file you want to load again on that list and Gator will open it (saving you a few steps if the file still exists on that drive and in that path). If the file has been moved, Gator will offer to locate the file for you, and then will load the file finder automatically if you tell it to look for the file. The name of the "lost" file will automatically be filled into the file name box on the file finder dialogue.

File mask - define what files Gator Edit shows you when you pick File/Open.

Default file mask - Gator Edit lets you define what it will show "by default" when you click on File, Open. You can set up to ten default user file types (there are some already set up for you as samples, too). If the file type you want is already there, double-click it to make it the default type, then click on OK to close the Options panel.

If you need or want to add a new file type, the procedure is very simple. Click on Add, then enter the long description youd like to see to the right of the wildcard display you will have to enter in a moment. For example, if you want to see a listing of DAT files such as USER.DAT, you could type in DATA files. In the wildcard entry box enter, *.DAT. That would show only *.DAT when you pick File/Open from the menu.

If you have already created a file mask, or want to edit one of the pre-existing masks (or remove them) you can do this, too. Highlight the entry youd like to alter, and click on Edit. Change it however youd like (keeping in mind that broader wildcards will show more files), then click on OK to close the box. Double-click the listing of your changed entry to make it the currently-selected default file display type.

To remove a type, highlight that listing and click on Remove. It will be deleted from the list of available masks (although you can add it again later if you want). The usual wildcard characters apply here, although you can't use the character for the mathematical expression pi, which most folks wouldn't need to use during the normal course of operation. If you do this (the program uses that character internally) unpredictable results may occur.

Keep in mind that broad wildcards may cause you to see binary files and text files in the same display, and of course you cannot edit binary files with Gator (although you can view them).


 Font options

Font properties and options define how Gator Edit™ looks to you.

Select font - you can pick a fixed font (and font color) from your available installed fonts. We suggest you try MS Line draw (available on CompuServe and BBS systems around the world). It shows most high ASCII characters, and generally looks good. Use whatever one you like, though, from your available pool. You can only select from available fixed-pitch fonts (like MS Line Draw).

Select background color - lets you set the editing window background color. If you don't like the default window color you can pick something else from the color common dialogue.

 Note: Windows will only use the color shown in the box marked Solid when you bring up the custom color palette. You can't apply "dithered" colors to a text window. To see the chosen color correctly displayed, expand the palette (by clicking the button marked Define custom colors) then look carefully at the box marked Color/Solid. The solid color (the color in the box below the word Solid) is the color that the editor will use. You may be surprised at your selection unless you pay attention to this, and you must click Define custom colors to see this feature in the common dialogue we use for this function. This is a limitation with Windows and edit controls, not with Gator Edit. If you want to see a sample showing a selection and then what color will appear, click sample.

Gator Edit will display the changes in font and color that you make in the box marked: Sample.


 Bark options

Bark options control whether or not Gator Edit™ barks at you.

Bark Rate - Gator, like all dogs, likes to bark if you ignore him. You have the option of setting his barking behavior or putting a muzzle on him. You must have a sound board or Microsoft's speaker driver for this option to have any significant effect.

Never - Gator will shut up. He will not bark at all when he's minimized. This is the "muzzle it, pooch!" setting.

Once - Gator will bark the first time you minimize him, but not after that. He will bark once in each session, the first time you minimize him, so if you close him and then open him again, he will bark once when minimized but not again until you close and re-open him. This is the default setting.

Always - Gator will bark every time you minimize him in a session. He doesn't like to be ignored. If you think his barking is funny, you can set the bark rate to this value. This is the dog-enthusiast-only setting. He doesn't continue barking, but barks twice each time he's made into an icon.

Or you could try waving a bone at the screen and see if that makes him stay quiet...


 Sound options

Plenty of people using Windows 3.1 have sound boards, and we felt we should let those people have some fun. Gator Edit™ will use sound if you want, or he will stay quiet. You can control how sounds are used (or not used) from this tab.

 Note: sound management utilities like Wired for Sound, or Plug-in for Program Manager, Whoop it Up, and so forth may interfere with Gator Edit's ability to use the sound board---or even worse---cause your system to lock up. We suggest you disable those programs (if you use one) or if the program offers an option to "ignore" an application, have it ignore Gator Edit. From this point on all of our applications (not just Gator Edit) will be fully sound-enabled.

Enable sound - this checkbox turns Gator's sound functions on (or off if you uncheck it).

Current path - shows the current path to the directory displayed in the WAV file list box.

Sound actions - this listbox shows all possible events to which you can assign WAV files. When you perform those actions, Gator Edit will play the WAV file you have associated with that function.

Files - displays a list of WAV files in the current directory. You can navigate using this list box as you would in the Windows Control Panel system sound applet. You can use sounds for different functions that are located in varying directories.

 How to assign a sound to an event:

To assign a sound, click once on a Sound action event. For example, select "File open." Click the mouse in the Files box on the right, and navigate until you've found a directory where there are WAV files. To assocate a file with an action click the left mouse button once on that file. To hear the WAV file you're going to associate with that event, double-click the file's name. To assign sounds to other events, repeat this process until you're satisfied, then click OK or press Enter to exit from the Sound options tab.

 You might want to use some common sense when assigning sounds to frequent events. For example, if you assign a ten-second-long sound file to "File close," if you have ten files open, then click the Close all toolbar button, you'll clip the sound as each file closes, creating a staccato-like effect that most folks will find displeasing. Choose shorter sounds for regular functions and you will usually be happier with the results. Gator Edit ships with some practical (and brief) sound files that most folks will find appropriate. The Star Wars theme is great, but do you want to hear it twenty times a day?


Window menu
 The window menu

You can control the Gator Edit™ MDI windows from this menu (and switch to any open windows you may not be able to see on the application workspace).

Tile - arranges all of the windows on the application workspace as if they were bathroom tiles. Of course, if you've got fifty of them open this will get very interesting and they will be too small to use. Gator Edit tiles vertically (side-by-side) first, the most logical way to tile a text file.

Cascade - arranges all of the windows in a "stack" descending from left to right (and then back again if it needs more space). Probably a more practical way to display more than five or six windows.

Arrange icons - if you have a lot of documents minimized on the application's workspace, and they're in a mess, this will line them up neatly.

Close all - closes all open files, and prompts you to save any files that have changed.

Split/Unsplit - if you have a long text file and need to look at two different portions of it at the same time, select this option. You can cut and paste between the sections as if they were in two different documents. An easy way to check through a long text file for consistency in style, formatting, etc. This function is easy to use because you're already used to using multiple windows, we just let you do it in the same file (or multiple files at once). You can split as many windows as you want into pairs, cutting and pasting between them.

Turn sync scroll on/off - very powerful option that will let you compare as many files as will fit on the screen to look for line-by-line differences. If you tile all windows and then turn this feature on, using the arrow keys to scroll the window you were in when you enabled the option will make all the windows scroll in sync with it. Using the page-down key may throw the windows out of sync. The elevator bar has no effect and is "turned off" when this function is enabled.

Turn auto scroll on/off - this makes it easy to read through a large README.TXT or other plain ASCII file. If you turn this on, Gator Edit will start scrolling through the file at the speed you've set in Options, Auto scroll speed.


Help menu
 The help menu

That's how you got into this file, most likely.

Index - loads this file at the Table of contents section.

About - the About screen will show the copyright notice and author's credits if you know the secret keystroke. What's the secret keystroke?  I'll never tell.


The toolbar
 The toolbar dialogue

The toolbar builder is very simple to use. The thing to remember here is that it's like a toolbox.  You've got tools you're using and tools in the box. When you decide you don't want to use a tool (or icon) you must toss it back into the toolbox.

You build the toolbar by dragging icons left and right and dropping them where you want them to go. You can have one of three types of toolbars, but Gator Edit™ only allows you to use one type at a time.

Small - has the teeny Microsoft-like buttons. VGA users should pick this one, SVGA users should choose one of the other two.

Small with text - has the small icon and explanatory text beneath that. This toolbar type takes up more screen real estate than any other, but the text can be helpful when learning how to use the program.

Large - has nice large and colorful buttons---can you tell this is my favorite toolbar type? Best for SVGA users running at 1024 x 768 or higher resolutions.

The toolbar builder won't let you slide the buttons up and down once they're in place. (We wish it would, too, but it doesn't.) If you drop one by mistake, just grab it and drop it over in the "source" window and then put it back into the correct location on the "destination" toolbar. (The program will remember how you build the toolbar and the next time you use it, the icons you select will be the icons that appear.)

 A few tips:

When you're building the toolbar the way you want it, the icons will drop into place replacing the icon directly beneath the hand cursor. This will move the existing icon "down" one position (or to the right in their final placement on the toolbar).

You can drop the icon on top of any of the other icons already in place, and you can have as many icons as can fit on the screen (having more than that doesn't make much sense, because you can't use any you can't see).

If you build your toolbar using the teensy Microsoft-like buttons and later on buy an SVGA monitor and run at a higher resolution, relax. Just change the toolbar size radio button and your custom-crafted bar will still be there, only now with the prettier, more detailed SVGA icons. You can toggle back and forth if you like, to see what the bar will look like with each type of icon.

The function of each icon is listed to the right of the icon in the source window. Every significant menu item has a corresponding icon in the toolbar pool. Just like a menu choice, when that function is not available, that toolbar item will be "grayed" or non-functional.

Play with the toolbar builder, and in a few moments you'll see how it works. Remember the building blocks you had when you were a kid? Same thing. Rack 'em and stack 'em, then click on OK to see how it looks. They'll change on the fly and you can alter them any time you like later on.

 Things to remember:

You can have two discrete toolbars and switch between them while you work, without re-starting the program. If you can't fit the tools you want on one bar, edit the second bar to hold the extra tools and flip it on when you want them. You can build a "project-oriented" toolbar with one bar (say text formatting tools). Both bars build exactly the same way, and you edit them exactly the same way.

The bar you see when you close the editor is the one you've got the view menu set to see, not necessarily the bar you were last working on. If you were using bar 1 and edited 2, you'll need to switch to 2 on the view menu before you'll see your changes.

If you can't remember what an icon does while you're editing, hold the mouse over a button and the program and the status line will show you what a button does

The toolbar is a "live" toolbar: icons will gray-out and come back depending on whether or not their functions are applicable to the text you have marked or the location of the cursor. If you watch the toolbar, the buttons will change dynamically appearing when their functions are appropriate and graying out when they are not.


 The status line

The status line provides both information and an alternative way to control the program. There are several "panes" in the status bar, and each one serves a different purpose.  Click the area of the status line bitmap illustrated below to see what each section does.


The first pane always shows you the line and column number of the cursor's location. The format is xxx:yyy. Value xxx is always the line number, and yyy is always the column number. If you double-click this pane (not the illustration) it will bring up the "go to line" dialogue. You can enter a line number if you want to go to a specific line, click on OK and the cursor will be placed on that line.


The second pane shows the staus of Insert/Overtype. If you want to use the mouse to change the staus of Insert/Overtype you can double-click that pane.


The third pane shows the "modified" status of the file. If the file has been altered since you opened it (even by one character) the editor flags it as modified. If the word modified shows in the pane, you can save the file by double-clicking on the word.


The fourth pane shows the total number of lines in the file, or if you are loading a large file and have background loading turned on, the number of lines loaded at that moment (it will change if you watch it as the program loads the file).


The last pane shows descriptions of menu items, and will change as those items are shown in the main menu. In this example, it shows the message when the help menu is dropped down and the cursor is on Help index. It shows the functions of toolbar buttons as the mouse passes over that button, too.


 Right mouse button

Just like our off-line mail reader CMPQwk, we continued using the right mouse button in Gator Edit™. Most rodents have two (or three) buttons. We figure they exist for a reason, so we put that right button to good use.

The right mouse menu is "smart" in that it knows that you can do different things to different types of text. When you have highlighted text and you click on it, it will show some items you don't see when there is no highlighted text.

The items in the menu match various items in the main menu, although different parts of that menu will appear when using the right mouse button menu based on whether or not the text is highlighted. See the main menu item explanation for items of the same name, and the same rules or limitations apply to those items on the mouse menu.

Duplicating that information here is just a waste of space. Pop it up while you're editing a file and take a look at it.


Limitations and bonuses
 Limitations & bonuses

 Limitations?

Just about none, really. Well, no major limitations.

If it's plain text and you have the memory to read the file into, you can load 'er up. You can't edit formatted files like Word for Windows, Ami Pro, or bitmaps or anything like that. Just plain ASCII, UNIX, or MAC text. One limitation is that the size of the file you can edit is capped by the amount of free memory on your system and your ability to tolerate the wait while your system goes to the swapfile if the item is unusually large.

Users of slower 80386 machines with four megabytes of RAM (our suggested minimum, to be honest) will find it hard to load and work with large, megabyte or larger text files. Unless their system configurations are very stripped---with nothing loaded---it might be hard to get a clean one megabyte space in which to load the file. Remember that memory free isn't contiguous memory free. The memory in Windows can get fragmented unless an application issues the CompactMemory call (which really slows things down while the swapfile gets re-shuffled).

Users of machines with plenty of RAM should be able to load multiple large files (one test machine with 16MB of RAM loaded five 1.44 megabyte text files with no problems). Do not have background loading enabled when editing more than one multiple-megabyte file, the file loading process will be slow enough to be intolerable.

 License restrictions:

Once you have registered you have a license to use Gator Edit™ on all of the computers you own, as long as only one copy per registration can be used at a time. We use the book analogy here, you can lend it to a friend if he comes over, but you can't let him take it home and continue to use your copy for yourself.

In fact, we do not allow the transfer of your license when you purchase one. Since it's shareware, make sure you like the application before you purchase it and there will be no need of such a transfer.  Gator Edit is so inexpensive we don't feel license transfer (which makes extra work for us, too) is worthwhile.

Please note that we do not offer refunds, so be sure you are happy with Gator before registering. Since you can use the program for free for 30 days, we do not feel that---in addition to the regular shareware risks---we need to take the additional risk of someone continuing to use Gator Edit after registering and then demanding a refund. Therefore we will not offer refunds under any circumstances.

You may not alter, modify, disassemble, or otherwise hack our program. You'll note in the credits section we have a program security analyst. He tells us whether or not our program is hackable (registerable without paying). I'm sure a good programmer could do it, but it is a violation of copyright law to do so, and we're advising you here not to do that.

Your license is good for all versions of Gator Edit we produce up until the next major upgrade. We define a "major" upgrade as a full number change. So if we come out with a 1.5 version, you'll get that free. But 2.0 will not be a free upgrade for users of 1.0.

Given the amount of work that we've put into the program (and will put into it) that's perfectly fair.

 Bonus? What's this?

What's the bonus?  Well, if you use CMPQwk 1.4x (our mail reader) we've done a nifty thing for you. Set Gator Edit as your external folder viewer (Options, General, Advanced, Folders). Now if you open your folders, then double-click a message to read, Gator Edit will fire up and load the folder message.

Fine, nothing fancy there you say, Notepad has been doing that for months.

But---if you go back to CMPQwk and double-click another message without first closing Gator Edit---you'll find that Gator Edit will not run a duplicate copy of itself, but it will load the next message right on top of the first. You can quickly load four or five (or a dozen) messages to cut and paste into a document, or to clip out to make into a new message (via the clipboard), or to print.

We think Gator Edit and CMPQwk were made for each other. Of course, being that we made Gator Edit and CMPQwk, this makes sense. If you use our mail reader, please try this option.

 Folder viewing:

Not only that, but you can view your Folders right from Gator Edit without running CMPQwk. Many of our users have asked us for a way to do this (they don't have a packet, they just want to peek into the folders to get a telephone number, or print a message). Gator Edit will let you collect dozens of messages in one fell swoop, opening them all in the background behind the "Open CMPQwk Folders" dialogue.

We offer a very inexpensive registration for Gator Edit to registered users of our off-line mail reader (only $15). Remember when we said, "When you're in our family, you're in our family?" And we said we were going to offer very aggressive prices on other products to our CMPQwk users? It sounded like typical come-on shareware author claptrap, didn't it?

Didn't think we meant it, did you?

Considering the power it gives the Folder Tools™, we think it's a steal. We've seen editors with fewer features and much less power (and unable to view your Folders) going for triple that figure.

 Spell checker:

And wait---(yeah, like the knife commercial)---there's another bonus. If you use CMPQwk 1.4x (or later) you don't need to get or make a home on your hard disk for the extra spell-check files for Gator Edit---Gator Edit knows how to use CMPQwk's spelling dictionary. This will save about 600K of your precious disk space. Note that users of CMPQwk 1.42 will not be able to share the spelling dictionary until the next release of Gator Edit---for the moment, the programs are slightly out of sync that way.

 Note: You must have a CMPQWK.INI file in your Windows directory that has, on the first line, a valid pointer to the \CMPQWK directory. It will probably say: CMPQwikPath=C:\CMPQWK. If you are using the special /i: /c: switches to load CMPQwk, and don't have a CMPQWK.INI file in your Windows directory, and would like to share the speller's dictionary, just create a "dummy" CMPQWK.INI file in the Windows directory and put the line: CMPQwikPath=C:\CMPQWK (with the correct paths as they are on your system).

Once that's done, all you need to do is run Gator Edit. It will find the spelling dictionary and enable the text menu spell check item automatically.

So that's three ways they'll work together for you. Maybe we should change the name to Gator Suite when we come out with our next application?


Only users running CMPQwk with multiple configurations will need to load the program with these switches. Ninety-nine percent of our users will not have to worry about this, and you are probably one of those users. Why we have these switches in our other program is too complicated to go into here, so see the CMPQwk help file for further information about it.


Bark! Bark! Bark!


 Got a problem?

If you have a problem with Gator Edit™, you may contact us in several ways.

 Internet: & CompuServe:

You can reach Derek Backus (the programmer) by sending mail to CompuServe at 72233,3255 or via the Internet at 72233,3255@compuserve.com.

In some cases, we do not get mail that users have claimed to have sent us. If you don't get a reply, please call a support board.  We pay buckets of money to keep those BBS systems up and running.

Please don't complain about how hard it is to reach us---it is amazingly simple. See the section about Los Angeles area support systems. If you've got a problem, dial one up. We'd be happy to hear from you.

Please send bug notices to Derek Backus (not Todd Henschell). Derek is the programmer, I'm the guy who writes the documentation and designs the "look" of certain elements of the program. I haven't created any bugs that I know of, and if you forward a message to me regarding a malfunction or other issue you'll just delay getting a response because I'll just forward it to Derek.

Save time. Cut out the middleman and contact Derek directly.

If you have other questions relating to the program or our policies I'll try to help you.

 RIME & U'NI Net:

On RIME please forward questions to me at the Hottips BBS by putting ->487 as the first line of the message. We'd prefer that you use our CMPQwk conference, and not the Windows conference. If you do not have access to our conference, send it routed and private in the Windows conference. We do not monitor the Windows conference for mail other than that sent directly to us.

On U'NI Net leave messages to us in our CMPQwk Support conference, not in the Windows conference. We will be supporting all of our products and U'NI Net users in our own conference. We do not monitor the offline mail or other U'NI Net conferences.

 Mail policies:

I answer 100% of all mail from our users asking honest questions. If you write and do not hear back, please try another avenue, don't go off in a huff thinking we are ignoring you. And please don't send fifteen or twenty, "Are you there?" messages via the Internet. If you didn't get a response after the second one, your mail is not getting through. Therefore, your best bet is to call a support board. So please take a moment to do that.

If you have a question regarding the documentation (the thing you're looking at now) or something other than bug problems, you can reach me via RIME at ->487. My current Internet address is henschel@patchbay.com. Please do not send me bug reports, send them to Derek on CompuServe.

Please understand that if you simply report a problem, you may not get a response. Derek logs all reports and then works on the problem. Given the limited amount of time he has to enhance the software, he gives priority to writing code, not mail.

If you require a response (other than, "Yup, there's a problem all right,") be sure to mention that, and ask specifically what it is you need to know. Things like, "Will this be fixed?" don't fall under this banner, and therefore will not get a response.

Of course we want to fix it. Don't be silly.


Net support sites
 Support sites

 Los Angeles area systems supporting Gator Edit:

The Patchbay BBS (818) 683-0627 is one site where you can leave a request for support. You may post a message there in Conference 14, CMPQwk Support, to Todd Henschell. All of our products will be supported in that conference, so don't be put off if you don't use CMPQwk. The Patchbay's number rolls over between two phone lines, both of which are available to support our users.

If you want to download the latest updates, you may log on to the Patchbay BBS as CMPQWK DOWNLOAD with the password UPDATE. No registration is required to obtain the latest builds of any of our software. If you leave a message for us when you've logged on under that name, be sure you leave your real name in the message. If you want to get the message anywhere except on CompuServe or the Internet, you'll need to call back and register under your real name on your second visit to the system.

If you leave a message to us with a CompuServe or Internet address and request a response, we will attempt to reach you on the service you request. Only Derek can send mail on CompuServe.

We have had many problems with our Internet host, and remember that we answer 100% of all mail that's not hateful or purposefully rude. That's our policy, plain and simple. If you did not get a reply, it is because we didn't get your message, or the reply we wrote out to you was lost in the void that seems to exist somewhere between our Internet host NetCom and the rest of the Internet. Where they are putting all of our mail, we don't know...but it gets lost quite a bit.

So be patient. Or try another method, such as calling a support site.

By the way, you'll be able to get the latest Gator Edit builds via ftp if you have that service.  If you ftp ftp.netcom.com to the directory /pub/ma/markwarn, you'll get a pre-log screen that will tell you what is posted there. You will find the latest CMPQwk files there, too.

 Net support sites:

There are other support sites that have embraced our products or are areas of active support where we monitor mail and have posted our current releases.

 CompuServe - it wouldn't make sense to not have support on what's probably the biggest commercial network of them all. Derek's CIS address is 72233,3255. Feel free to contact him on that service if you have a question or comment. Please do not route mail from the Internet to CIS, though. Send Internet messages to Derek directly via that method. You can register on CIS by typing GO SWREG at the prompt. See the Registration section for more information.

 The Internet - you can reach Derek Backus at 72233,3255@compuserve.com. We encourage Internet users to contact us and share their comments or impressions. You can also get updated of Gator Edit via ftp if you have that service available to you. One of our beta testers, Mark Warnsdorfer, lets us use his personal ftp site. If you want to check it for updates of Gator Edit (and our other programs), ftp ftp.netcom.com. The directory is pub/ma/markwarn. If you have any questions about the site, you can ask Mark at markwarn@netcom.com, although keep in mind he's not a paid employee of ours, and is doing this for us as a favor.

 The Ledge at (818) 896-2007 is a fine BBS run by Joseph Sheppard, one of the founders of U'NI Net. If you leave messages for Derek Backus in the U'NI CMPQwk conference, we will get them. We strongly encourage you to call (and support) this superb BBS. It's a first-class system run by a true professional sysop. There isn't a BBS in the world that's any better or has more loving care lavished on it.

 U'NI CMPQwk conference - Ledge sysop Joseph Sheppard has created a conference for us so we can do direct technical support for Gator Edit, CMPQwk, and our other products. Any board that carries U'NI Net can get this conference. We pick this conference up via The Ledge, so if that system is local to you, you can send questions you may have on conference 0 there, to save a bit on net traffic. If the Ledge is not local to you, please send support message in our conference, not in the Windows or Off-line mail conferences. We audit them, but will reply in our conference when possible.

 RIME CMPQwk conference - you can leave messages to Derek Backus in the RIME CMPQwk conference if your local BBS carries it. If they don't, how about asking the sysop to pick it up? We'll announce all new programs and updates on this conference, so it's a good way to stay abreast of what we're doing (if you're interested). Both Derek and I monitor this conference. Derek reads but doesn't reply to much mail here.

 ASACompucom BBS at (614) 476-4058 is an official support site and the Midwest Home of Gator Edit. You may reach us on this system if you place your message in the Dangerous Cybernetics conference. That conference is netted with our Los Angeles support network.

The absolute best method (guaranteed of success) to reach Derek is a message sent to CompuServe. I am reachable any number of ways.


The sysop of The Patchbay, Daniel Bise, does not have time to answer your queries regarding our programs. Please do not bother him with them, you will only delay getting a response because Dan will have to forward them to us. Join conference 14 (the CMPQwk support conference). Leave your message to Derek Backus in conference 14, please do not leave mail by using the [C]omments to the Sysop menu item in conference 0. You may not get a reply at all if you do this.


 Advanced information

The following sections contain technical information regarding configurations, problem-solving, network usage, and so on. Most users will not need to read these sections, but we like to provide as much information as possible so they may better use our software.

System requirements

Multiple configurations

Network usage

Temporary files

Editing GATOR.INI

Notepad replacement


 System requirements

Gator Edit's system requirements are pretty mild. If you can run Windows 3.1 with acceptable speed, Gator Edit should work fine. Available memory limits the size of any files you might want to open. Some tips for accelerating Gator's performance are at the bottom of this section.

Memory

Gator Edit™ requires Microsoft Windows™ 3.1 and a system with at least four megabytes of RAM. The program itself uses about 200K, except when spell-checking, then it uses up to 200K additional, which it frees up when the speller is finished.

Hard disk space

The program requires about two megabytes of disk space in the largest configuration, which is with its own spelling dictionary and complete complement of help file, text files etc. If you use CMPQwk and let the program use the mail reader's spelling dictionary, you'll save 600K of disk space.

Video & mouse

We suggest as high a resolution as your system can generate. Windows is always best at higher resolutions with larger monitors. Gator Edit was tested at all resolutions from 640 x 480 up to 1280 x 1024. The more desktop space you have, the more icons you can use, the more files you can tile, and so forth.

Rodent? If you don't have one, we suggest you get a mouse. Windows without a mouse is like a day without sunshine.

 Beta testing systems:

Gator Edit was tested under Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups), Windows NT 3.5, Windows 9x Beta.

The program was tested on machines ranging from a 386/25 with four megabytes of RAM up to a Pentium 90 PCI file-server grade system with 40MB of RAM. It ran fine (with no memory problems, even editing large files) on all systems. Obviously, systems with more memory could edit larger files.

 Speed-up tips:

There are a few things you can do that will speed up Gator Edit on slower systems, and there are a few tricks you can use to accelerate how quickly it will load if you've assocatiated the TXT file extension with Gator Edit (which we suggest you do) and want to load a file by double-clicking it. The latter takes a tiny bit of disk space, but the speed inprovements are worth it.

 Slow system speed-up:

If you have a slow system or a sluggish hard disk, turn off Gator Edit's toolbars and status line. Because the toolbar is really just a collection of bitmaps, when Gator loads it has to allocate resources for each button and load each of those bitmaps into memory so you can use them. By disabling the toolbar, you prevent Gator from loading the bitmaps.

This will accelerate loading speed, and you'll see a slight speed-up in the app itself as overhead related to handling the toolbar and mouse position are turned off. It's very slight, but detectable. Since every function on the toolbar is available from the main menu (or a hot key) you can still get Gator's full feature set into play.

Disabling the status line is less-effective, but if you have a very slow system, everything you can do to speed the application is worth considering.

 Speeding-up double-click loading of TXT files:

Perhaps you have a very fast system, but you don't like the time it takes Gator to load (expecially if you've turned on all the bells and whistles). For example, the sound file has to load if you have a start-up sound, the bitmaps for the toolbar need to get loaded, and so on. You like them when you're using Gator to edit something important, but you want to use Gator to view TXT files by quickly double-clicking them in File Manager.

You can significantly speed this process up by taking the steps outlined below.

  First copy GATOR.INI to TEXT.INI (leave it in the Gator Edit directory, of course.

  Next, edit your WIN.INI [Extensions] section so the association for a TXT file looks like this (fill in your correct paths, these are mine): TXT=D:\GATOR\GATOR.EXE /i:TEXT ^.TXT. The /i:[inifile name] is very important, it loads the editor into the "special configuration" mode.

  Now restart Windows. After Windows has reloaded, find a TXT file using File Manager or whatever tool you like to use for this purpose, and double-click it. Gator will load as before, with the toolbar and status line enabled. Open the View menu, disable the status bar and toolbar. Open the options dialogue, click on the Sound tab, and remove the check from the Use Sound box.

  Once you've disabled the toolbar and status line, close Gator Edit, then double-click another text file and compare the time it took for the program to come off of the hard disk and load the file. (The files should be the same size for a fair comparison.) A bit snappier, I think, wasn't it?

  Gator Edit will still load normally from the icon you created in Program Manager or your particular shell with the toolbar and other features enabled. But for quick viewing of a file (what you usually have in mind when you double-click) the special "stripped" configuration is hard to beat.


 Multiple configurations

Gator Edit™ was designed from the beginning to work in complex user environments. It has features that make having multiple configurations quite easy, and as a logical extension of that, using a single copy of the program on a properly set-up network should work fine. Gator Edit was tested on Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and there is no reason why the network and multiple-configuration features should not work on other networks. The principles are the same in each case.

 Multiple configurations:

The program has a loading switch that will allow you to have multiple configurations in the event you have different projects that require different toolbars, screen colors, and so forth. To use this option, first copy the current GATOR.INI (inside the \GATOR directory) to a new file name. In the example, we'll copy it to SCRAZNER.INI. If you've got Gator Edit open, close it, then make another icon in your shell that has a command-line item in it like this on the program line:

GATOR.EXE /i:SCRAZNER

Don't put a path or extension on the command line, it won't work. Run the program using this icon (or a menu item with this command line if you're using another type of shell) and modify the configuration so the program looks and behaves how you'd like it to.

You can't have multiple instances of the program running under different configurations, so you can only use one "setup" at a time. For different uses (or for a younger user, or a user with bad vision who needs a different font or color scheme) this may prove a helpful way of keeping your custom configuration and making a specialized one available to a family member.


 Network usage

Network Administrators: Gator Edit™ can be used on a network using the multiple configuration option /i:[ini file prefix] (see the Multiple configurations section) but all of the [NAME].INI files must reside in the \GATOR directory, so users will need write access to that directory and to the INI file name you have assigned to them. You can protect the other INI files from them (if need be) and if you load Gator Edit with a different work directory specified in the shell, such as a \[USERNAME] directory, all of the data files the user creates will appear in a discrete place apart from the other net user files.

When Gator Edit makes its Temporary Revised Data files (TRD) it will create a directory under the Gator home directory called \[inifilename]. So if you load it with a /i:MARY, using an  INI file called MARY.INI, when that copy of Gator Edit loads, it'll create a directory under the network \GATOR directory called \GATOR\MARY. Users MUST have "directory create" rights in the home Gator directory.

If the network adminstrator sets up the individual copies of Gator Edit using the users' first names, it should be easy to keep track of whose work directory belongs to whom. Of course you cannot use multiple copies at the same time using the same INI file name. Each running copy must have a discrete INI file name. Generally some variation on the user's name is the best method, but the network administrator can choose any procedure he wants as long as he maintains individual INI file names.

 The conditions for proper network use:

  Each user loads with a discrete INI file that must be located in the network Gator home directory. You can use individual work directories to keep data files apart, specify them in your shell statement.

  Each user must have read/write access to the network Gator home directory and his or her INI file.

  Each user must have directory create rights under the network Gator home directory or the network administrator must set up the correct \[inifilename] directories ahead of time and lock off each user's "directory remove" rights in the network Gator home directory to prevent the program from deleting the directory when it exits. Either approach will work.

  Gator will not check when it loads to determine if other copies are running, therefore it is possible to cause temporary filename collisions on a network if you do not load each copy with a discrete /i:[inifilename].

  The spell-checker (unless it resides in the user's own \CMPQWK directory) is not networkable without a little extra effort due to the way is uses the personal dictionary.  Therefore we suggest you delete the spelling dictionary on network copies, or follow the instructions below.

  You can get around this limitation by creating a CMPQWK.INI file in each user's \WINDOWS directory and putting CMPQwikDir=[path] as the first line of this file. Copy GATOR.DIC into the new \PATH directory as CMPQWK.DIC and the speller will put its personal dictionary into this directory, avoiding problems with other running copies.

 Note: this approach will work only if the users have individual copies of Windows 3.1 on their systems, or are not using a common \WINDOWS directory. If they are using a common \WINDOWS directory---something not really desirable in a network installation anyway---this method has the same downfall: file-write collisions to the personal dictionary.


 Temporary files

Gator Edit™ creates some temporary files in its home directory called *.TRD files. They're used so the program can undo block text operations, which may be larger than the Undo buffer will allow. We suggest you do not delete those files unless Gator Edit is closed, or it terminated abnormally. Deleting them (or attempting to do so) while the editor is open is bound to cause a runtime error or a GPF.

You must have sufficient free space on your disk to accomodate multiple copies of the file you are editing if you expect the program to function correctly. When you use a block move Gator Edit first takes a "snapshot" of the current file's state by saving a *.TRD file. Thus, if you are doing block moves on very large files (megabytes), the operation will not be complete until the temporary file is written out.

Gator Edit uses this technique to economize on its use of system RAM, and for crash-protection. If the system terminates abnormally during a large block move or other procedure, you can probably recover your last version by scavenging the *.TRD file.

So leave the *.TRD files alone, they're important!

We'll leave it to you to figure out where we got the idea to call them *.TRD files.


 Editing GATOR.INI

With only a few exceptions, you shouldn't need to edit GATOR.INI. But, unlike some shareware authors, we like to explain the sections of our INI files in the event you want to attempt to diagnose a problem (for example a corrupted INI) or you need to tweak the program a bit.

Something you should remember: if you edit GATOR.INI with Gator Edit™ open (such as using Gator Edit to edit its own INI file) your changes will probably not be saved. If you want to edit Gator Edit's Ini with Gator Edit (we suggest you just use the menu to set options) click on Tip to see how to do it.

There is one section of the INI file that you should never touch unless you want to crash the program, and that's the section that has lines like:

Bmp1=400

Those lines are the toolbar definitions, and they refer to some internal coordinates in the program code. Change those numbers or words and you will cause the program to explode. So leave those sections alone, lest you make problems we can't diagnose later on.

 INI file sections:

I'll go through the sections one by one and explain what function they control. To see the explanation, click on the INI file item about which you are curious. Due to the way help works, the "=" sign has been left out of the pop-up.

UseToolBar

UseStatusBar

LastX, LastY, LastCX, LastCY

StartMaximized

AutoIndent

CreateBackup

WordWrap

WrapColumn

TabType

TabSize

Maximize

DefaultFileMask

RegName, RegKey, RegNum

AutoExecBat

ConfigSys

WinIni

SystemIni

SystemOther1, SystemOther2

ReloadLastOpenFiles

AutoScrollSpeed

Last0, Last1, Last2, etc.

DoBark

BackgroundOpen

CurrentToolbar

LastPath

UseSounds


UseToolbar=

This determines if the toolbar is off or on. The number 1 means the toolbar is enabled, 0 means it is turned off off.


UseStatusBar=

Same thing for the status bar, 0 is off, 1 is on. You can make Gator Edit load faster by turning off the bells and whistles (the toolbar and status bar).


LastX= LastY=

These are saved window positions, you should not need to fiddle with them. Doing so may cause unpredictable results.


StartMaximized=

Do you have the program set to start "maximized" or with it taking over the entire desktop? If so, this will be 1. If not (like me) it will be 0.


AutoIndent=

This enables the auto-indent function (like a programmer's editor). Again, 0 and 1 mean off and on.


CreateBackup=

Want backup files made every time you save? Change this to 1. If you enable this Gator will litter your disk with *.BAK files every time you edit a file. Gator does not clean up BAK files on exit.


WordWrap=

If you have word-wrap enabled, this will be 1. If not, it'll be 0.


WrapColumn=

This defines how "wide" your paragraphs will be. Typically, 80 columns is considered "maximum" due to the fact that most printers can't print any wider. You might want to set it down to 72, or even 60.


TabType=

You can have fixed, real, or "smart," TABS in Gator Edit. Those would be, respectively, 1, 2, or 3.


TabSize=

This specifies the size in spaces of a TAB. You can set this to whatever you want when using Fixed tabs, and that's the size the TAB will be. If you are using Smart TABs, the TAB size is dynamic, and will ignore this setting.


Maximize=

Do you want your edit windows maximized when they load? Set this to 1 if you do, or 0 if not.


DefaultFileMask=

This is the default file mask you've set the program to use. The "default default" is *.TXT. Set it to whatever suffix you'd like to use, the program will remember it and show that file type when you select File, Open.


RegNum= RegKey= RegName=

This section is where Gator Edit puts its registration information. The name and numbers are processed through an internal formula. If you haven't registered and try to "hack" this, good luck. The possible numerical combinations and variations run well into the millions and even beyond, depending on the size of your name.


To be truthful, the name came from Temporary Revised Data. It was only after we said it out loud that we realized how it fit in nicely with the editor's name and character. *.TMP files are too boring, and nobody can tell who created them. If you see little TRDs in the Gator Directory, and Gator Edit is closed, you know it's time to break out the digital scooper.


If you absolutely must edit GATOR.INI, and you didn't keep Notepad, here's how you do it: copy your current GATOR.INI file to GATOR.XXX or GATOR.OLD or whatever you'd like to call it. Open this new file in Gator Edit, make the changes you want to make. Close Gator Edit.  We suggest you keep a backup of of the "clean" GATOR.INI, so rename GATOR.INI to GATOR.ZZZ and then rename GATOR.XXX or GATOR.OLD (or whatever you called it) to GATOR.INI. Then re-start Gator Edit to see the changes you made take effect. You should only need to do this to add special system files to the system file list.


AutoexecBat=

Some people use alternate boot programs, and their AUTOEXEC.BAT file may only call another, more important batch file. You can define for the Load system files function the "real" AUTOEXEC.BAT file you want to load.


ConfigSys=

If you use something other than CONFIG.SYS as your CONFIG.SYS (say you're real good with a hex editor and have hacked MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS) you can specify what you call your CONFIG.SYS file. Used by the Load system files function.


WinIni=

If you're somehow gotten Windows to run using something other than WIN.INI, well, you can put in the name for it here. Used by the Load system files function.


SystemIni=

Same idea for the SYSTEM.INI, if your SYSTEM.INI isn't called SYSTEM.INI (beats us, maybe somebody's trying that) you can tell the program what you call it.. Used by the Load system files function.


SystemOther1= SystemOther2=

If you have other files you'd like to be considered "system" files, you may specify the full path and filename here. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 users might want to load PROTOCOL.INI and users of multi-boot programs such as BOOT.EXE might want to specify BOOT.CFG. Type in what you want or leave them blank if you don't need them. Don't use Gator Edit to set this variable, it will not be changed unless you're editing a "backup" copy of GATOR.INI.


ReloadLastOpenFiles=

Specify 1 if you want to reload the last group of files or last file you edited the next time you start the editor. Specify 0 if you do not wish to do so. If you load Gator Edit by double-clicking on an associated file, the last-loaded files will not be loaded, too. Obviously that would be kind of silly. They'll only be loaded during a "raw" session when you just "run" Gator Edit.


AutoScrollSpeed=

Sets the speed in milliseconds for the auto-scroll function. The time specified is the length of time it spends on each line before moving the cursor down a line. Five hundred milliseconds is one half of a second. About 400 is acceptable for most folks. Set this from the menu, instead, where you can see it change "live" and determine what is to fast or too slow.


Last0= Last1= Last2= (and so on)

There will be ten of these lines, 0 through 9, and they specify the paths and filenames of the last ten files you've edited.


DoBark=

This line controls how Gator barks (or makes him shut up) when you minimize him. He doesn't like to be ignored, and when you minimize him he'll bark at you. If you want him to shut up and never bark, set this value to 0. If you think it's funny, and want to hear him bark once the first time he is minimized in a session (and then be quiet) set this to 1. If you'd like him to bark every time he's minimized, set this to 2.

Or you can throw a shoe at him, but don't send us the bill for your monitor.


BackGroundOpen=

If you've got Gator Edit set to open files "cooperatively" this value will be 1. If you've turned off background file opening, this will be 0.


CurrentToolbar=

This is the value for the current toolbar. It can be either 1 or 2, which means Toolbar 1 or Toolbar 2, logically enough.


LastPath=[filename.ext]

This is the "last path" used to open files. It might contain a filename, too. So for example if you opened c:\text\gator.txt and then closed the program, that path and filename will be on this line.


UseSounds=

This variable, either 0 or 1, determines if Gator Edit will use your sound board to play WAV files for program events (which you set). You can use sounds, but not have any sounds happen until you load the configuration panel and tell the program what WAV files to use for what events.


 Notepad replacement

Gator Edit™ now ships with a handy little program called, oddly enough, NOTEPAD..EXE.This program will perform a neat trick. If you look at Gator Edit and you decide you want to use it instead of the Windows Notepad editor, this utility will come in handy. Many programs (such as software installations) are hard-coded to call Notepad when they want to load a text file.

Usually there's no way around this sort of a problem, but Derek thought of one. Rename the NOTEPAD.EXE that came with Windows (don't throw it away, you may want to keep it to edit GATOR.INI for some reason, that's something Gator can't do itself). Rename it EDITOR.EXE or SILLY.EXE, anything you like. Then copy our NOTEPAD.EXE replacement "hook" program to your \WINDOWS directory.

Once you've done this, using File Manager, double-click our NOTEPAD.EXE. It will load a very plain text window that will ask you for the path and filename to Gator Edit. If you don't know it, press Q to quit so you can go find it (or switch away using ALT+TAB and then locate the path and program). Type in the full path and filename for Gator. On my system, that would be D:\GATOR\GATOR.EXE. Once you've done that, the program will close and then launch Gator Edit (confirming you've entered this information correctly, if Gator Edit did not come up you'll need to enter the correct information). If you move Gator Edit to another drive, or make a mistake when typing, you'll need to fix the section that little NOTEPAD.EXE puts into your WIN.INI file. The section looks like this:

[GatorEdit]

ExePath=d:\gator\gator.exe

By the way, this is an optional program, and therefore our claim about not touching your system files still holds true. We created this utility for those people who wanted to replace Notepad in a wholesale way, and it is optional---you can delete NOTEPAD.EXE without any loss of functionality in Gator Edit as a whole. In fact, if you're not going to replace Notepad, we'd like to suggest that you do delete our NOTEPAD.EXE, so there are no problems down the road such as somebody accidentally copying it over the real Notepad applet.

If you have any file types that are associated in WIN.INI or in your registration database with the stock Windows Notepad (usually TXT and INI files are so associated), double-clicking those files now will load our NOTEPAD.EXE. Our program will vector the double-clicked file to Gator Edit, doing so seamlessly and with no noticeable delay. On some systems, this is easier than changing all the Notepad associations and REG.DAT entries, and of course this quickly fixes the problem with installation programs that demand to use Windows Notepad.

We'll just fool them and use Gator Edit instead. They'll never know the difference, and you'll get to use a fully-functional editor instead of a limp and nearly useless one.

 Note: Due to one of the many dysfunctional qualities of Windows 9x, users of that operating system will find that when you exit Gator, the Notepad vector utility may not "leave" from the silly "Taskbar." Notepad.exe is actually closed, but Win 9x doesn't seem to understand that this is the case. If you click on the "icon" (or mangled-icon, as it the real case) the taskbar should refresh itself. As an aside, Windows 9x users will not get to enjoy Gator's animated icon upon minimizing the program, since the ugly taskbar ruins all minimized icons by squashing them into tiny specks. Can you tell we're annoyed by this stupid change to Windows? We surely are. It ranks right up there with putting the X button on the right of the title bar, so folks close their apps when they meant to maximize them! Somebody at Microsoft's interface design shop is asleep at the switch!


Copyright information
 Copyright information & disclaimers

 Copyright information:

Gator Edit™ is Copyright © 1995 by Dangerous Cybernetics™. All rights are reserved.

Gator Edit is not in the public domain, and all rights to the use of Gator Edit remain the property of Dangerous Cybernetics™. You have a license to use this computer program beyond the 30 day evaluation period only if you register with us. If you do not register, it is illegal for you to use it beyond the 30 day evaluation period.

Shareware vendors who want to distribute Gator Edit for a nominal fee, or bundled in with other files MUST write us for permission to do so. They MUST notify end-users who buy their shareware disks that doing so does not constitute a registration for our software. See the Arcadia address in the registration mailing forms. We will readily grant permission, but we like to track who is doing what, so we can make sure they distribute up-to-date versions. We ask that all such vendors who distribute on CD-ROM please ship two copies of the release to our P.O. box so we can be sure the product is represented in an acceptable way.

No warranty is expressed or implied with regard to this software. It is not guaranteed to do anything other than fill up space on your hard disk, and we are not liable for any problems use of said software may cause for you, including destruction of data, lost time, pain and suffering, and whatever else those attorney fellows think up on their lunch hours.

User agrees that by trying Gator Edit, he or she assumes all liability incurred as a result of use or evaluation. In plain English, folks, if it eats your hard disk, destroys your rare CP/M or Atari 1200 text file, it is your problem, not ours. People come up with all sorts of silly ideas when a program crashes as to how they're going to sue the producers of said program. Well, forget it.

By trying Gator Edit you implicitly agree to these terms.

If you give your friend a copy of this program in any form except as it was originally distributed, with all documentation and registration information, may a pox descend on your computer and mangle your hard disk's FAT and may all your backup disks have bad sectors!

The Gator Dog™ is a trademark. If you try to steal him, he will bite you. Gator is protected under law. This includes distributing him in an icon libary, pirating his bark sounds, stealing him to use in another program, and so forth. Don't do that. He has sharp teeth and loves the taste of pirate flesh. He may or may not have had his shots, we can't seem to remember...

Dangerous Cybernetics™ is a trademark, so no fair trying to steal that, either.

Microsoft Windows™ is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other products that may be mentioned in this documentation are the respective properties of their owners, and as such, have no direct affiliation with us. It would be nice to have Microsoft's cash reserves, though...

Disclaimers

 Operating systems:

We do not support---nor do we test---Gator Edit running under anything except Microsoft Windows™ 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows NT 3.5 or Windows 9x. (The Windows 3.11 "update" posted on CompuServe and other sites is fine, too.) If you run another operating system, Gator Edit may work fine---but then again it may not.

Deciding to run the program under anything but Windows 3.1, 3.11, NT or '9x (currently in beta) is your decision, and your decision alone. We cannot diagnose, attempt to fix, or otherwise remedy any problems you may encounter, nor can we effectively deal with support messages regarding other operating systems, environments, and so forth, since we cannot test potential fixes in a timely fashion.

This caution includes such things as OS/2, WABI under UNIX, Soft Windows on the Macintosh or Power PC, and whatever other flavor-of-the-month Windows wanna-be that might come around.

These aren't "real" Windows, so we don't use them or test them. They all have incompatibilities that real Windows does not have, and this compatibility gap is going to widen as Windows (and Windows NT) advances. For the record, Gator Edit uses only well-documented Windows API calls and it is compiled using Borland Turbo Pascal for Windows running under Windows for Workgroups 3.11. or Windows NT 3.5, depending on what Derek is running that week.

We have two beta testers (who will remain nameless) using Windows 9x Beta and we paid close attention to making sure Gator Edit runs well on it. Derek and I both purchased Windows NT for this purpose, too (and OS/2 Warp which he has since removed in favor of NT). I'm running the product under NT all of the time now.

Anything else we cannot support, and we do not "officially" support OS/2. (Read into that what you want, essentially it means that any difficult problems that may or may not crop up under OS/2 but that don't happen in "real" Windows will probably take a back seat to supporting the genuine article.) We have very limited resources, and we need to concentrate our support where it will do the most good, and for now, with 50 million users and growing, we need to support "real" Windows, and not the "other guys" with most of our efforts.

This doesn't mean we have anything against those operating systems, it means we can't do justtice by them and we'd rather be honest with you than lie and say, "Sure, we'll support them." Honesty is the best policy, we think.

 Warranty:

Gator Edit™ is not warrantied to do anything at all except eat up some hard disk space and waste a bit of your time playing with it. If you register it and later on you find it fails to properly execute its programming code, once you make an effort to notify us about it, we will attempt to fix the problem to the best of our ability but we do not offer refunds, credits, or the like.

We do not warranty that we will be able to provide immediate fixes to every problem, or even fixes (period) to every problem. Doing so may not be possible.

Since Gator Edit is shareware, we suggest you use it for the 30 day period before registering it, that way you will know how well (or not-well) it will work for you.

That's the point behind shareware.

We distribute it at low cost so you can try it at no cost, and if you like it, you register it. Were we to keep a bank account for making refunds, we'd have to charge what Symantec charges for the Norton Editor, about a hundred bucks. We'd rather charge a lot less so more people can afford it.

You may have other rights that vary from state-to-state once you've registered the product.


 Thank you, thank you...

Thanks to all those who helped us. This includes our internal beta test team (who works as hard or harder than anybody's), and some loyal CMPQwk users who joined us in helping to pound Gator Edit™ into shape.

We could not have produced Gator Edit without them, and their contributions have helped to make it what it is.

Biggest thanks of all to Leslie and Colette. It would not be possible to state just how much they mean to us. The word "everything" isn't broad enough to begin.

 Gator Edit?  What the heck is Gator Edit?

I told you I'd explain why the program is called Gator Edit. One day Derek and I were talking about how much we hate the name CMPQwk (the name of our off-line mail reader). It was originally called "Complete QWK" but that's too long for a file name (under DOS, anyway), so it got shortened to what it is now.

Anyway, we hate the name. Blecch.

We were in the process of planning a product to do after the off-line reader's 1.4x version shipped (see, I don't even like typing it any more, and it was the Beta Cycle from Hell, too). Some programming tools Derek needed for building the automated communications module that was supposed to be our next project were held up in beta and eventually dropped from publication.

We were bored, and I was playing with my dog and thinking how it would be nice if software was as faithful and as powerful as my pet. Airedales are like diesel-powered blenders on four legs.

Hmmm... My Airedale's name is Mad Max but everybody calls him "Gator" because of the way he snaps his jaws. He sounds like a bear trap. Anyway...

Microsoft has "Chicago," "Daytona," and, "Cairo." Never being much for geography, I thought we could give the project a "working" title of Gator Edit until something else came up. The bad puns, of course, should be obvious.

Q: What happened to my text when I selected Text, wrap paragraph, it vanished?

A: Gator Edit.

Derek said, "I like Gator Edit let's call it that and just get to work on it." Then I drew the About box picture of Mad Max with the giant pencil in his mouth.

Then the name stuck...so I drew the icon. They say once you name an animal he is forever your responsibility. We named this animal and his name was Gator Edit. And he owned us from then on.

We could hardly abandon him after naming him. He became our pet, and our daily companion during development and testing.

Please consider Gator Edit to be your faithful buddy, always ready to bring you the morning ASCII file while you're still bleary-eyed and in your bedroom slippers, scratching your stubble and wondering how you're going to explain yesterday's purchase of yet another hard drive and 16 megs of RAM to the wife (or parents, or husband and skip the stubble part).

And you don't need a digital pooper-scooper, either. Unless you turn on BAK files...


 Credits

Gator Edit™ was conceived and programmed by Derek Backus. He wanted to do something after producing the fastest-growing Windows off-line mail reader in the world, and this project got elected. It wasn't our first choice at the time, but we're pretty happy with it now. Dangerous Cybernetics is the official entity of ownership now.

This file (the help) and all other written matter accompanying the program was created by Todd Henschell. He drew most of the toolbar icons (and is happiest doing the SVGA toolbar), and he designed directly or oversaw the design of all important elements of the user inferface.

Let's roll some more formal credits.

 The Team:

Our beta test team on this project shares many names with CMPQwk's team, and a few new ones, too.

Lead Programmer:

Derek Backus.

Docs & Graphics & Product Management:

Todd Henschell, Associate Sysop The Patchbay BBS.

Beta Wranglers:

Pye Scrazner, (lost forever in the æther and sorely missed).

Mad Max, the Amazing Wonder Snapper

Front-line Beta Testers:

Mark Warnsdorfer, Mark Whitney, Forrest Rayburn, Sam Cornelius, and Bill Whaley.

Program Security Analyst:

Ben Chiu, Jensen G.V., Inc.

Thanks to:

Daniel Bise, Sysop The Patchbay BBS which is Gator Edit's first dog house.

Thanks to:

Bob Long, a former editor of Stereo Review, who informally proofed the version 1.0 documentation. It's always nice to have a trained eye examining your work. Thanks, Bob.

Thanks to:

JP Bicket, who somehow got tricked into being our RIME CMPQwk conference moderator. Gotcha!

Some notes about the making of this help file follow. Feel free to read them, and if you do on-line help and have found it a horrible task (as I did) you might find them very interesting.

 HelpBreeze

The sheer amount of jumps and graphics used in this help file would be impossible to keep track of without this product. I mention it here because many people are developing help files for various reasons (on-line magazines just to mention one) and HelpBreeze is---in my opinion---the best of the help authoring add-ons for Word 6.

Because the product has saved me so much work, was so well-done, and made things possible for me that I would never have attempted without it, I feel the author deserves some credit, and a mention here was in order. No, not a mention, but a strong recommendation to anybody doing help files.

I've tried many of the other products and none of them matched up to this one. It is easy to use, works well, has a smooth interface, allows you to set jumps to topics that do not exist (very handy, believe me), and handles graphics as good or better than anything out there.

Hey, I don't put shameless plugs in our documentation unless I really feel it will benefit the end-user or developer, believe me. This product is worth every penny of the price Solutionsoft charges for it.

If you generate on-line help for Windows, do yourself a big favor and purchase this product. You will not regret it. To find out more about HelpBreeze, contact:

 Solutionsoft

(408) 736-1431 - voice

(408) 736-4013 - FAX

 Grey Matter Ltd. (U.K.)

0364-654100 - voice

0364-654200 - FAX

 Downsizing Systems GmbH (Germany)

0221-7400986 - voice

0221-747178 - FAX

 Philog AG (Switzerland)

057-343141 - voice

057-343151 - FAX

There is an international version of HelpBreeze, and it's fully compatible with localized versions of Microsoft Word 6.0x. As of this writing it supports French, German, and English. Full support for other languages will appear in the future. These versions contain support for:

  International characters (accents, umlauts, etc.)

  HelpBreeze automatically adjusts to the user's local version of Word. No need for the user to diddle with settings or otherwise waste valuable development time.

  Localized support requires Word 6.x or later. If you're using Word 2.x only English is supported.

  The program's interface and documentation is in English.


 Why should you register?

There are a couple of reasons why you should register. The first reason is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Some folks release programs and call them "freeware." There is a lot of software people distribute that way, and doing that (giving away your work) is certainly admirable. Those programmers must be very well-off, or very bored.

We'd like to be that rich...or that idle...but we aren't.

 Technical support.

Users expect the program to improve, or at bare minimum, to keep up with changes in the operating system and so forth. Since those changes and improvements will be taking hours from our lives, we'd like to think that those hours (and lives) are worth something to the folks using our product. We do not provide detailed technical support to non-registered users. Support takes a lot of time to do it right (and we want to do it right). It's hard work.

Nobody can be really happy working for free unless his or her every need is met and he or she has nothing but free time. Anybody who says otherwise is fibbing.

We have neither of those two conditions satisfied.

 Let's be fair, okay?

So to be fair to our users, we want to keep Gator Edit™ in tip-top shape, do our best to include suggestions in future releases, support our users, and help them get the most out of Gator. We intend to keep up with the changes in Windows just over the horizon.

To be fair to us, we'd like them to pay something for that service (and for the long hours we've worked on it so far). On a per-hour basis the $15 we charge CMPQwk users or the $25 everybody else is asked to pay is so far beneath minimum wage, it's surreal. Only when hundreds of users register does it even begin to approach minimum wage.

We'd like users to think of that when they fire up the program. No, we're not starving, but we have produced something we think is a first-class item. And we think we're selling it for a fire-sale price. We can't do free, but we can do cheap (we're not greedy).

A third reason is that we know that users like to suggest improvements or ideas for new features. If you have something in mind you'd like to share with us, we'll tell you right from the get-go that if you're on our list of folks who've liked our product enough to send us a few bucks, we'll be listening a lot more carefully to your wishes.

This isn't to say we won't listen to you if you don't, but if you do, you've got our attention.

 Track records matter.

If you haven't heard of us before, why not dial up a RIME BBS or get on CompuServe and ask folks about our support for CMPQwk, and how much we've improved our product in the short time it's been around? We'll compare our support against anybody else with the same resources we have: two guys working their butts off to produce good software.

 Last and probably least of which...

So have all of this in mind when you're thinking about "keeping" our editor and not registering it. The program knows how long it's been on your system, and if you fail to register within the 30-day period, it will remind you about it eventually.

Since you could use it in private without telling anybody, we had to protect ourselves and our investment. Because we decided to put a time limit into the program, we left the initial pester-screen out. That gives you a full month to use our editor without any reminders about registering, which is---we feel---the best way to examine a piece of software. The only thing you do not get to see is the spiffy color About box and Easter egg, which is only on registered software.

Gator is not crippled in any way. You can load any size file you have the memory for (unlike some other editors). You can load as many files, print them, whatever you'd like to do. When we say you get to take Gator for a test drive, we mean a real test drive, no hidden limitations.

After a month, though, it will begin reminding you that you have not paid for it. If you keep using it, Gator will make you wait an additional second each day unless you purchase a registration and enter it into the warning that appears. Eventually the wait will be long enough to be intolerable, which is the goal of such a feature.

We wish we didn't have to protect our software that way, but we do.

 Important note: in the event that you're an experimental type (I don't like the word hacker, really) and want to try to get around this time limit (and I understand that, I really do), I'd like to give you a piece of advice. Don't do it by deleting Gator Edit's time stamp data, changing your system date to sometime in the future, running Gator Edit, then re-setting your system date to the "real" figures. That will put Gator Edit into a condition where it won't load at all. Look, the program is very inexpensive, if you consider your time worth anything at all, why not just register it if you like it?


Hey, folks, in the process of learning about computers for the fiction and articles that I write, I've hacked lots of software. Also, the best defense is a good offense, and you should know your enemy. So I know all about the stuff that goes on, and I know that a dedicated hacker will crack any protection scheme (ours won't even be that hard, really, I could crack it in an hour or less). That's not the point of this time limit. The point is that people who would "forget" about registering won't forget now.

Hackers? Anybody so bored as to "steal" a $25 piece of shareware is more pitiful than enviable. So if you hack this and "unprotect" it, enjoy the fruits of your labors. You didn't take one penny away from us (you were never going to pay anyway) and you wasted some of your time. Of course don't call for support, or make feature requests---and keep in mind that the next release will use a completely different scheme, making you spend more time. When I'm working for-hire I get $75 an hour and up. Hacking bargain-priced shareware isn't worth my time. Does your time come that cheaply?

Oh, one last thing. If we find out about a BBS posting a hacked copy, or that you have a hacked copy, we will take legal action. It's a violation of our copyright to use this product after the 30 day evaluation period without registering it. Nothing personal, of course.


 Registration information

 Want to pay by check?

Send a check or money order for $25 payable to Derek Backus (U.S. dollars only, please) to:

Gator Edit

P.O. Box 1017

Arcadia, CA 91077

 FAX orders using VISA? We love 'em.

You may FAX your VISA order to 818-846-1804. To do this, if you own a FAX machine, print the applicable registration form, fill it out, printing very plainly with black ink (medium point is best), and sign the form. Then FAX it to the number above (and on the form). Gator Edit™ is $30 when registered using your VISA or Mastercard.

If you use something like WinFAX (no "real" FAX machine) you can go to the section of the help where the form is, select Edit/Copy from the menu, highlight the complete form, then open Windows Write (or WordPad, or whatever you like). Fill in the form there, deleting the underlined portions and typing the information as required.

Save the file (in case the FAX doesn't go through). Print to your FAX driver, and FAX the file to the number above. You may FAX this number 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We will not FAX your numbers back to you, but this will speed up processing your order if you do not wish to talk on the phone, or cannot do so for other reasons such as a handicap. It is a very secure method of transmitting credit card information. International users who want to purchase Gator Edit should do it this way, if possible.

All users who want to order using a VISA or other credit card, and have a FAX machine or FAX modem will find this method to be very reliable and much faster than Snail Mail.

 Note: If you put a valid Internet or CompuServe address on your form we will E-Mail your numbers back to you in our very next mail run. Charges for FAX orders will appear as Dangerous Cybernetics. Gator Edit is $30 (not $25) when registered in this fashion. All prices are subject to change without notice. If you're not sure how much to send, contact us by E-mail first. Write tech.support@patchbay.com for further information and current prices if this file is older than 6 months.

 On the West Coast and want to use your modem and your VISA MasterCard or American Express?

Registering by VISA on The Patchbay - the home of Dangerous Cybernetics™

Call The Patchbay BBS at (818) 683-0627. Once you've logged on (using your real name) join the CMPQwk conference. (Press J and then type 14.) There will be a menu item there for registering various products, we're using the CatCharge door. You'll enter the credit card door by pressing the $ key. Select the menu item representing the product you want and follow the prompts. You can order multiple products if you would like to do so. The system will take down the information it needs from you and it will process your order. You will receive your registration numbers during the call in a message sent to you.

After you've finished with the door, exit to the main menu, then go to the message menu and Check personal mail. You'll see a message (or messages) there from CatCharge to you. You can read those messages by selecting Read and then Unread personal mail. Be sure to turn on your communications program's "capture" function prior to doing this so you'll have a copy of pertinent information (like your numbers).

Write your numbers down or capture the terminal screen and print it. But do not lose those numbers. VISA or other credit card orders do NOT receive a mailed sales receipt (since you have your VISA statement to prove ownership). So have pen and paper (or printer) handy before you log on to register. Your best bet is to turn on the "capture" function of your communications program and save the whole session.

New Gator Edit registrations are $30, upgrades are $19 when you register on-line using the Patchbay BBS. The difference in price from the mail-in transaction is not an additional fee for using your card, it's a fee charged by the BBS and passed on to you by us. The price you are charged for the product (and we receive) is the same in both VISA and check transactions. Prices are subject to change without notice. You'll be informed of the current price at the time of the call while in the door. You can cancel at any time prior to the final OK request for the order.

Applicable California sales tax will be added to your order if you are a California resident.

Charges will appear on your credit card statement as Dangerous Cybernetics, not The Patchbay.

 Want to call our voice order number?

You can now register Gator Edit™ (or any of our other products) using your VISA, Mastercard, or American Express by calling our new voice order number. Please have your card (and the name of the product you want to register) ready. This number is for placing orders only. Call between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Pacific time Monday through Friday. If you call any other time you will not be able to complete your transaction. The operator on this system may not always be available during the listed hours, that person has other duties they perform for us, too. If you are worried about the phone bill, we suggest you FAX instead---that is 100% reliable and nearly as fast if you have an E-mail address we can reach by CIS or Internet.

If you register via voice you will receive your registration numbers at the conclusion of the call, after your transaction has been processed. Please do not call this number to ask questions, get technical support, and so forth. This number is only for orders. The operator cannot help you with other questions, or route your call, or provide other help.

We'd like to suggest that you be at your computer with Gator Edit running so you can enter the registration numbers into the program (select Help, then About to see the button for registering) as soon as the operator gives them to you.

The operator knows the current prices. If he or she tells you the price of the product you want and it is different in this file, than what the operator says is correct. If this happens, then this file is either out of date or in error, or we've changed the price for some reason. Note that prices when registering on the voice line are the the same as the "on-line" prices when you register via ASACompucom BBS, so refer to that list for amounts accurate at the time this file was prepared.

 Note: prices are subject to change without notice.

Charges will appear as "The Labyrinth," and the operator will answer the phone as, "The Labyrinth," since this is the voice line for Derek's BBS.

To order Gator Edit using your Mastercard, VISA, or American Express call:

818-398-9459

Registering by VISA on The Labyrinth BBS

Call the Labyrinth BBS at (818) 792-2523. You'll see prompts that will explain how to register on the system. At this writing the system is changing over to the Major BBS, and it will probably have an on-line shopping mall of some type. Charges will appear on your card statement as The Labyrinth and not Gator Edit or Dangerous Cybernetics.

You may register in several other ways, too. Read the rest of this section (and the jump sections) for complete information.

 Want to register on CompuServe?

Derek's CIS address is 72233,3255. You can register Gator Edit on CompuServe by typing GO SWREG at the prompt. CompuServe registration is $30. The registration ID is 2925. There are no upgrades or sysop deals via CompuServe, sorry. You will receive your registration numbers very quickly if you register via CompuServe, Derek checks for mail there daily and processes registration mail promptly.

 Are you a CMPQwk user or a BBS sysop?

Click the bone below to see CMPQwk user and sysop deal upgrade information. Click "back" on the toolbar once you've read this information to return to this section and print forms or view other registration information. Please note that we don't offer upgrades from other editor products at this writing due to the low initial price we are asking for Gator Edit.

  View upgrade registration information.

 On the East Coast and want to use your VISA M/C or Amex?

East Coast users should click the bone below to see how to register using your VISA, Mastercard, or American Express card on ASACompucom BBS in Ohio. West Coast users (or Pacific Rim) should register via credit card on The Patchbay BBS, listed at the beginning of this page.

  VISA on ASACompucom BBS

 Registration Forms

If you want to print registration or upgrade forms, click the appropriate bone below to view a form, then select "Print" from the Windows Help button bar above. Select "Back" from the button bar to return to this section and continue reading the help file once you've printed (or read) the form.

  Click this bone for a regular registration form..

  Click this bone for a CMPQwk upgrade registration form..

  Click this bone for a VISA mail-in form..

Please allow four to six weeks for your order to be processed and your invoice with registration numbers to be shipped. Foreign orders may take longer due to the vagaries of international mail and so on. Your order will not include a disk with the program or a manual, just your registration numbers. We believe on-line distribution is the most effective way to circulate our product, and in order to keep our prices low (and our overhead costs low) we don't mail out floppies.

 Note: We do not issue refunds under any circumstances. You have 30 days to evaluate our software, please use that time to make sure you like it. If you register it, the sale should be considered "final." By ordering Gator Edit you acknowledge and accept this limatation on your right to request a refund.


Please make sure your checks or money orders are payable to Derek Backus, not Gator Edit, or CMPQwk Software, or Gator Edit Software, or anything other than Derek Backus. Please be sure to sign your check (we get a fair amount of unsigned checks for CMPQwk) and you must include a registration form with your check so we know what it is you are registering. If you don't send a form, we'll assume you like us so much you want to send us free money! (This is okay, too, we can always use free money.) Please print clearly on your form, okay? Typing it is even better. If we can't read your address, how can we get in touch with you to tell you we can't read your address?

Most of the delays people experience with getting their numbers are caused by:

1.) Unreadable names, addresses, or E-Mail routing addresses.

2.) Unsigned checks.

3.) No registration forms or incorrectly filled-out forms missing vital information.


Bet you thought this was going to say, "Bark! Bark! Bark," eh?  Gotcha.  Enjoy using Gator Edit, and let us know what you think about it.


 CMPQwk user upgrade registrations

You'll find that Gator Edit™ has special hooks so it can be used as CMPQwk's folder viewer. See the section Limitations and bonuses. If you want to upgrade as a CMPQwk user, just fill out this form and mail it in with your check or money order for $15 plus applicable tax.

 Sysop bulk orders:

There is also a sysop order plan. If you order ten or more copies of Gator Edit, they're $15 each plus the sysop (or the person who organized the order) gets a free copy for their troubles. You must submit payment on one check and at one time to receive the sysop order discount. See the order forms for a way of printing a sysop extension order form if you need one.

Please don't ask us for a "discount" price for less than ten copies, or because you are poor, or because you are a starving student, or because you're from the planet Krypton and are new in this part of the galaxy, or anything else like that. Gator Edit's price is already a discount price, and the fifteen bucks we want when you buy ten copies is practically free compared to our competitors' pricing schemes.

You don't have to be a sysop, but you do have to order ten at once and pay for them all in one check and want the registration numbers sent to one address. If you can satisfy that (and you must give us all ten user names when you make this order) then we'll sell you ten copies at fifteen bucks per copy plus applicable sales tax, no other questions asked.

We'll give you an eleventh copy free for acting as our agent---so to speak---because we think you should get something for rounding up ten folks and writing the check.

Press the "back" button on the toolbar above to return to the main Registration section.


ASACompucom BBS
 VISA registration on ASACompucom

Users wishing to register via credit card can contact ASACompucom BBS. This system is located in Ohio, U.S.A.. You may register via VISA by mail, voice, or modem. The procedures, for those of you interested in registering via VISA/MC Amex, etc. on ASACompucom follow:

 Mail:

Print the registration forms in this help file (then fill in all the information) and include your VISA/MC or other accepted card numbers. Mail the completed form to ASACompucom BBS at the address below.  You will receive a receipt with your registration numbers via mail once it's been processed.

If you want to print a VISA-only registration form, click the button below and then click on the "Print" button on the Windows Help button bar. That'll create a nicely-formatted form that you can fill in and mail. Select "Back" from the button bar to return to this section when you're through.

  Click this bone for a VISA mail-in form.

Print Gator Edit Registration in the lower-left corner of the front of the envelope. Mail it to:

ASACompucom, Inc.

12 Westerville Square Suite 359

Westerville, OH 43081

 Via modem:

call ASACompucom BBS at (614) 476-4058

Log on under your REAL NAME then join conference 10, the Gator Edit Support conference. From there you'll see a menu option for registering Gator Edit. Select that option and follow the prompts. It is similar to any on-line registration service, and will request information such as your name, address, etc. Fill out all the required information until you are back at the main screen.

Due to increased costs, registering via ASACompucom BBS is slightly more expensive than registering directly with the author. This is not because it is a VISA/MC transaction, it is because of costs passed directly back to us by the BBS.

Upgrades are $19.00. New registrations are $30. Please note that the charges on your VISA/MC will appear as, "ASACompucom, Inc." and not Gator Edit.

Prices may change without notice. You'll be informed of the current price at the time you place your order. You will receive your key and registration numbers immediately.

Press the "back" button on the toolbar to return to the prior section.


Regular registration form
Gator Edit registration form

Don't use this form if you're upgrading. Go back and click the upgrade button! If this is a sysop order, you'll need to print an additional form mentioned at the bottom of this one. Complete all required sections to prevent a delay in processing your order. Allow four to six weeks to receive your numbers. Please print clearly!

Name __________________________________________________________

Address 1 ______________________________________________________

Address 2 ____________________________________Country___________

City____________________________ State________ZIP/ Postal__________

Daytime Phone (_____)_______________________

Qty:_______ Gator Edit Regular $         25.00

Qty:_______ Gator Edit disk set (1.44 only) $           6.00

Qty:_______  Gator Edit Sysop deal         150.00

If a Sysop order of more then 10 copies specify no. at $15 @_______

total number_______ subtotal price $___________

Sales Tax $___________

(California only)

Total Amount Enclosed $ __________

If you're making a Sysop order, click the word SYSOP to see an extended list you can print with information regarding that type of order. Print that page, fill it out, and attach it to this page.  If you're ordering more than ten copies, print that page as many times as you need to fill in all of your user names. Click the "Back" button to return to this form, or "Back" again to return to Registration information.

Mail the completed form(s) to:

Derek Backus

Gator Edit

P.O. Box 1017

Arcadia, CA 91077


Upgrade registration form
Gator Edit upgrade only form

Don't use this form if you're registering from scratch. Go back and click the regular order form button. Allow four to six weeks to receive your numbers. Complete all required sections to prevent a delay in processing your order. Please print clearly!

Name __________________________________________________________

Address 1 ______________________________________________________

Address 2 ____________________________________Country___________

City____________________________ State________ZIP/ Postal__________

Daytime Phone (_____)_______________________

CMPQwk registration number Reg:______________(from About box)

Qty:_______ Gator Edit upgrade   $ 15.00

Qty:_______ Gator Edit disk set (1.44 only) $           6.00

subtotal price $___________

Sales Tax ___________

(California only)

Total Billing Amount $ ___________

Mail the completed form(s) to:

Derek Backus

Gator Edit

P.O. Box 1017

Arcadia, CA 91077


VISA registration form
Visa/MC registration form

This form is only for mailing a VISA registration to ASACompucom BBS or FAXing a VISA order. Do not mail this form to Dangerous Cybernetics, mail it to ASA Compucom. You can make any type of VISA/MC order with this form.

For every upgrade you order, you must fill in a name and product serial number of a competing product from which you want to upgrade. If you don't have sufficient space in which to do this below, attach another piece of paper. Prices may change without notice! Please print clearly!

Name __________________________________________________________

Address 1 ______________________________________________________

Address 2 ____________________________________Country___________

City____________________________ State________ZIP/ Postal__________

Daytime Phone (_____)________________E-mail address:_______________________

Qty:_______ Gator Edit Regular   $ 30.00

Qty:_______ Gator Edit disk set (1.44 only) $           6.00

Qty:_______ Gator Edit CMPQwk User  Upgrade     19.00

Qty:_______ Gator Edit Sysop order (minimum)    190.00

If this is a sysop order of more than ten copies specify no.at $19 @

sysop total number_______ subtotal price $___________

Sales Tax (8.25% in CA) ___________

(Ohio tax if mailed or California if FAXed)

(Circle card type below)	Total Billing Amount $ ___________

VISA-M/C-AMEX Number ___________________________________EXP _____/_____

Signature___________________________________________

CMPQwk registration numbers Reg:______________(from About box)

VISA/MC  credit card numbers should only to be sent to the mailing address for ASACompucom BBS or FAXed to (818) 846-1804.

ASACompucom BBS, Inc.

12 Westerville Square Suite 359

Westerville, OH 43081

If you're making a sysop order, click the word SYSOP to see an extended list you should print so you can provide the information we need for that type of order. Complete that page and attach it to this page. Print as many copies of that page as you require. Click the "Back" button to return to this form, or "Back" again to return to the prior section.


Sysop Order form extension

Print this form to give us the extended information we need for this type of order. You do not need to print this unless you are ordering a single-check sysop-level order! Please print clearly!

Give us the name of the user who gets the "free" registration below.

Sysop order freebie:____________________________________________

Enter your ten user names below. Print additional sheets if you need more space or have ordered more than ten copies.

.

Name 1_______________________________________________________

Name 2_______________________________________________________

Name 3_______________________________________________________

Name 4_______________________________________________________

Name 5_______________________________________________________

Name 6_______________________________________________________

Name 7_______________________________________________________

Name 8_______________________________________________________

Name 9_______________________________________________________

Name 10______________________________________________________


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 Use this navigator to control the main window.

 Basic information

What is Gator Edit?

How to install the program

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Thank you, thank you

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Registration information


Welcome to Gator Edit 1.2

Programmed by

Derek Backus

Docs & Interface Graphics by

Todd Henschell