The Hessling Editor
The Hessling Editor (THE) is an open source text editor first released in August 1992. For more than ten years it has been written and maintained by Mark Hessling, who along with being the original author of THE is also a maintainer of Regina, an open source REXX interpreter that has been ported to most Unix platforms. At the 1993 REXX conference in La Jolla, California, Hessling discussed why he created a new text editor.[1]
 | |
 Twin session | |
| Original author(s) | Mark Hessling |
|---|---|
| Initial release | August 1992 |
| Stable release | 3.2
/ January 2006 |
| Preview release | 3.3RC7
/ September 2019 |
| Written in | C, REXX |
| Operating system | Unix, Windows, OS/2 |
| Type | Text editor |
| License | GPL v2 |
| Website | hessling-editor |
According to its developers, THE is a text editor modeled on the VM/CMS editor XEDIT, adding the "best features of Mansfield Software's Kedit."[2][3]
Features
- Provision of both a GUI interface along with a command line interface, and the ability to edit a text file using either one or both
- Availability of folding which can be controlled in various sophisticated ways (keyword based, indent based, etc.)
- The use of REXX as macro language
Folding is controlled by the "all" command. It permits one to display and work on only those lines in a file that contain a given pattern. For example, the command: all /string/ will display only the lines that include "string"; any global changes one makes on this slice (for example replace string command) will be reflected in the file. (In most cases this is a more convenient way to make global changes in the file.) In order to restore visibility of all lines one needs to enter: all (without a target string).[4]
Similar to XEDIT, THE uses IBMs REXX as its macro language, which makes THE highly configurable and versatile. This provides the ability to create powerful extensions to the editor and/or customize it to specialized needs. For example, one can create edit commands that would allows one to manipulate columns of text (e.g. copy/move or insert/delete a column of text within a file). With REXX, one can also integrate OS commands or external functions into an edit session. Since version 3.0, THE also has user-configurable syntax highlighting.
While THE and XEDIT are not GUI editors, THE has its own syntax highlighting language definition .tld file format comparable with KEDIT's .kld format.[5]
THE is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It is available for many operating systems: most or all POSIX Unix platforms (as a program for text-mode or native X11); QNX, OS/2, DOS, BeOS, Amiga, Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP.
See also
References
- Mark Hessling (May 18, 1993). "Announcement of THE - The Hessling Editor" (PDF). Stanford University: 94. Retrieved October 30, 2020. Cite journal requires
|journal=(help) - Stutz, Michael (2004). The Linux cookbook : tips and techniques for everyday use. San Francisco: No Starch Press. p. 270. ISBN 1593270313.
- "The Hessling Editor". Retrieved 2014-06-29.
- Nikolai Bezroukov (March 2019). "Eastern Orthodox Editors (XEDIT/KEDIT/THE, etc.)". Softpanorama. Softpanorama Society. Retrieved November 1, 2020.
- "THE Language Definition for ANSI Rexx". kedit.the. Budapest University of Technology and Economics - Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics. 2004-04-18. Retrieved 2015-02-27.