From: yogi@cs.ubc.ca (Yossi Gil)
Subject: Bidirectional editing for Hebrew/TeX-XeT on the PC? Yes!
Summary: Anouncing beta release
Keywords: TeX-XeT TeXXeT Slim Terse editor bidirectional hebrew arabic
  persian
Organization: Computer Science, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 92 17:09:10 GMT

Slim is a small (~5K) but very powerful full-screen editor for the
IBM-PC and comptaibles. Some hype about SLIM is included at the bottom
of this message.  I have just released a beta version of SLIM (unnamed
as of yet) which can do bi-directional editing. Switching between
left to right and right to left is done by hitting scroll-lock.

Bi-directional editing is useful for mixed mode editing: English
text together with text in right to left languages (Hebrew, Arabic,
Persian etc.) This editor, together with a language dependent keyboard
remapper, screen font and font loader are all that is required to
prepare input for TeX-XeT.

Hebrew keyboard remapper, Hebrew font and a general purpose font
loader are released as well. If you wish to enter texts in Arabic
or in Persian and you know the standard keyboard layout for these
langugages please contact me and we may be able to work something
together.

The whole package is available for anonymous ftp download as 

	cs.ubc.ca:/ftp/pickup/terse/hebkb110.zip

here is the archive file contents:

FILE NAME        SIZE   DESCRIPTION
----------------------------------------------------------------
00-files.lst      988   List of files in the HEBKB110 distrib.  
hebed.bat         565   Example batch file for Hebrew editing   
hebkeys.com      5142   Run any cmd with Hebrew Keyboard mapping
hebkeys.hlp      1076   Help screen extracted from HEBKEYS.COM  
~.com            5350   
withfont.com     9480   Run cmd using given E/VGA text mode font
charset.com      3298   
loadfont.com    11106   Load text mode font to EGA/VGA adapter  
cp862.f08        2048   Hebrew code page at height 8            
cp862.f14        3584   Hebrew code page at height 14           
cp862.f16        4096   Hebrew code page at height 16           
yogiprog.inf     7127   List of PD & Other programs by Yossi Gil
_desc.btm         803   Create 4DOS desc. for HEBKB110 distrib. 
================================================================
Total:          54663 bytes in 13 files


Here is the promised hype on SLIM and its younger brother TERSE:

TERSE is a tiny (only 4096 bytes) but amazingly powerful full-screen
editor for files of up to 64K in length.  TERSE runs on all PC compatible
machines.  Its command keys are very similar to those of the famous
BRIEF editor (by UnderWare Inc.).  TERSE can edit both UNIX and MS-DOS
style text files as well as binary files.  No hacker's disk is complete
without it.  No disk, be it hard or floppy, is too full to include it.

TERSE is free (but copyrighted) to private users.  If you are a private
user who uses TERSE "for pleasure", you are not required to register.
However, if you use TERSE for any commercial application, i.e., in
your company, at work, etc., or make money from selling software or
distributing shareware, you are *required* to register your copy of TERSE.
Registration cost is only $15 and buys you a personalized version, and
grant your institution a site license.  For an additional payment of 
only $5, you get the source code of TERSE.

Highlights
==========
 o  Very small: fits in 4096 bytes = 4 clusters on 5.25"/3.5" floppies.
 o  Minimal free memory requirements: 137KB.
 o  Uses current screen size, including the most common 80x25 screen
    dimensions but also unusual sizes such as 40x16, 40x25, 40x40,
    40x50, 132x25, 132x43, 96x33, 80x30, 80x33, etc.
 o  Fully DESQview (version 2.0 and above) aware.
 o  Edit binary files. TERSE is ideal for a quick and dirty job
    of editing and patching strings in small programs. 
 o  Supports editing of UNIX style files (lines terminated with '\n').
 o  Supports both '/' and '\' as directory separator.
 o  Edit lines of unlimited length (limited only by file size).
 o  Automatic unlimited horizontal scrolling.
 o  BRIEF-like keyboard configuration.
 o  Support for TABS, and configurable tab positions.
 o  Prevents snow when run on a CGA screen.
 o  CUT, COPY and PASTE
 o  SEARCH, SEARCH again, and TRANSLATE commands.
 o  Safe: confirm exits when text is not saved.
 o  Edit files whose name contains spaces and other weird names.
 o  Extended version (the SLIM editor) of size ~5k with many more
    features, including support (via external filters) for word count, 
    sorting, charcter codes translations, quoting, tab expansion and
    unexapnsion, and other complex editing tasks.
 o  Status line indicating: current column, current line, horizontal
    scrolling, total number of lines, file name, modified status,
    insert/overwrite status, the current offset in file and total file size 
    in bytes are dispalyed in the status line. The extended version 
    also displays the HeX value of the current char.

Requirements
=============
 o  PC-DOS/MS-DOS version 2.0 or higher
 o  137KB free memory
 o  64KB free disk space

SLIM can do every thing TERSE can, and has the following additional 
features:

   o  "read file into buffer" command <Alt-R>
   o  "switch to another file" command <Alt-E>, 
   o  "go to line number" command <Alt-G>, 
   o  "set right margin" command <Alt-M>,
   o  "swap cursor and mark" command <Shift-Tab>, 
   o  "pump block thru external filter" command <Alt-F>, 
   o  "exchange marked block with paste buffer"  command <Keypad*>, and 
   o   display of the hexadecimal value of the current char in the 
       status line. 

   The current char display uses a special notation for the TAB, EOF
   and CR characters as well as for the CRLF combination.

   My favourite new command is "pump block thru external filter"
   (<Alt-F> key), which can be undone (and then redone) by the
   "exchange block with paste buffer"  command (<Keypad*> key).
   Think of the possibilities: formatting, spelling, word counting,
   sorting, sed and awk, DOS and 4DOS commands etc.
-------------------------------------------------------------

--
Joseph (Yossi) Gil                 {alberta,uw-beaver,uunet}!ubc-cs!yogi
Dept. of Computer Science          yogi@cs.ubc.ca (cs.ubc.ca=137.82.8.5)
6356 Agricultural Road., Univ. of B.C.,             Tel: +1-604-822-8175
Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z2, Canada.       Fax: +1-604-822-5485