NLED "Neat Little EDitor" Programmer's Text Editor
Copyright 1987-2003 Evan Alexander Weaver

************************************************
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under 
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later 
version.

As a courtesy to the original author, it would be appreciated that if you 
release modified versions of NLED, then you would call it something different
(such as NLED2 or GWNLED).

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY 
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A 
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with 
this program (see the end of this file); if not, write to the Free Software 
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
************************************************

INTRODUCTION

Hello. My name is Evan Weaver, and I pronounce NLED as "EN-led".

NLED is a programmer's text editor that I initially wrote for the IBM PC in the 
late 1980s, just before MSDOS started coming with a full-screen editor. At the
time, I had a C compiler (Datalight C) but no editor. I actually used the Turbo 
Pascal environment to do the initial source code writing for NLED, saving the 
files (with extensions ".c" and ".h" of course) and exiting Turbo Pascal in 
order to compile and test the result. Soon I had NLED working well enough that 
I switched to using it to continue its own development.

I tried to market NLED at some local shops, but found that marketing was not 
one of my interests. I sold a few copies but still have some of the original
100 manuals I had printed up. Soon, Norton came out with a similar product, 
and shortly thereafter Microsoft added the EDIT command to MSDOS. No matter -
I liked NLED and kept using it myself.

A few years later, while teaching computer programming at Seneca College, we
made a move from a VAX to a Unix box for our introductory programming course,
and all the teachers and students alike kept swearing at vi's dual use of the
keys on the keyboard. This was in the days before the World Wide Web (although, 
being part of academia, there was an Internet, such as it was, for us), and I
figured it would take me less time to port NLED to AIX (IBM's Unix) than to
find something else that would work as well for no money. So I ported NLED to 
AIX, and many of our students (and a few teachers) became fans.

Eventually I gave up on trying to make any money out of NLED, and started
giving it away for free. Finally, in 2003, I have relented and decided to
release NLED to the open source community.

While NLED is pretty basic, it does have a somewhat unique combination of
features:

  - it is simpler to use than most editors, having the important features but
    not being too fancy to be able to use properly

  - you can edit large files (limited to available memory, however) with no 
    limit on line length

  - you can easily see/enter binary values for each byte of the file; it is
    even possible to load and patch executables or database files, if you 
    really know what you are doing

  - a very simple function-key programming mechanism lets you easily automate
    repetitive tasks

  - all commands are summarized on a single screen, and the only key you really
    need to remember is the Escape key - when you want to do something other
    than edit, press Escape and read the prompt

APOLOGY

Since you are reading this, you've downloaded the source code, so let me
apologize in advance for that. One of the main reasons I have delayed releasing
the NLED source code for so long is that I have concerns about student 
programmers copying my style. While the code is generally neat and tidy, my
ideas of good programming style have changed quite a bit over the last 15 
years, as I have changed from a programmer to a teacher of programming. In 
particular, there are a few programming style "issues" I have with the NLED 
source code: 

  - I rely far too much on global variables. At the time, I felt that I 
    restricted global variables to things that were indeed "global", such as 
    the size of the physical screen. But in hindsight, I now see how 
    short-sighted that view was: it has made it virtually impossible to
    implement such features as a split screen without a major reworking. My
    current advice is always to avoid global variables as much as possible

  - I have multiple exit points from many functions. My current style is to
    avoid returning prematurely out of a function; I now believe that the
    indentation that is avoided with a mid-function return hides useful
    information and increases debugging effort, although 15 years ago I valued
    not having to indent as being more worthwhile.

  - I don't like the way I used header files. Now I prefer to have one header 
    file declaring the functions in one source file, rather than having all the 
    project's functions declared in one header file. This is probably a sign 
    that the split between the various source files was somewhat arbitrary - I 
    was trying to keep the source files under 30KB or so, so the compiler 
    wouldn't get too bogged down (I believe I had 64KB, maybe 128KB, of memory 
    on that old PC, if I remember correctly).

  - I, um, have a few gotos in there. I thought I was making things more
    efficient. After all, I was working on a 4.77 MHz 8088, and every machine 
    cycle was important, right? I was younger then and saying that "goto is 
    bad" was all the more reason to use it. Now that I am old and tired, I no
    longer value trivial efficiency benefits over readability and 
    maintainability.

I have no intention of rewriting NLED to cure these stylistic issues. It is
just a text editor, after all, and it has been working for 16 years and proved
to be quite easy to port between platforms even though portability was not one
of the original design goals. So please accept the shortcomings of the source
with my apologies, and enjoy the good parts about it.

COMPILING/PORTING GUIDE

NLED has been compiled in a variety of environments. Platform specific sections
in the code are controlled (using #if, etc.) by #define names set up in two
places in the code: at the beginning of nled.h and at the beginning of qkdisp.c
(qkdisp.c replaces an assembly language source file from the original version
of nled, and allows a bit more variation than the rest of the source code 
needs, which is why it is controlled separately). So the first step is to edit
both nled.h and qkdisp.c, changing the #defines that appear at the beginning -
hopefully the comments and names will be clear enough for you to be able to
figure it out.

The environments in the code at the time this is written are Windows (either 
using Visual C++ or Borland C++, but the Visual C++ implementation works much
better), OS/2, Linux and AIX. Essentially, all you need to do is compile all 
the pieces together, but "makefiles" are included: Makefile (for Linux/AIX,
with some editing required to switch), nled.mak (Borland C++ for use with make)
and nled.nmak (Visual C++ for use with nmake).

If you wish to port to a different system, even if it is a different Unix 
variant, you will need to customize the key codes in nledkeys.h, most of the
functions in qkdisp.c, and a smattering of code throughout - look for #if
directives - they indicate sections you may need to customize.

CONTACT INFORMATION

At the time this is written (May 2003), the best way to reach me is via email
at evan.weaver@senecac.on.ca (note that our email server rejects messages with
no subject line, so be sure to include one). I've been working at Seneca 
College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for 16 years now, and hopefully it will 
continue to be the best way to contact me for many years to come.

************************************************
GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License (GPL)
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share 
and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to 
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software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most 
of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose 
authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is 
covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to 
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When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our 
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To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny 
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For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for 
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We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) 
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The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification 
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TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice 
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of 
this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program 
or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any 
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translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without 
limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by 
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restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents 
constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by 
running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as 
you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and 
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and 
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License 
and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the 
Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may 
at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus 
forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications 
or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of 
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a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that 
you changed the files and the date of any change.

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in 
part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be 
licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this 
License.

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you 
must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most 
ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate 
copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that 
you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these 
conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. 
(Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print 
such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print 
an announcement.)

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable 
sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably 
considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and 
its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate 
works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a 
work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms 
of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire 
whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your 
rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the 
right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on 
the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the 
Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or 
distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this 
License.

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under 
Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 
2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, 
which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium 
customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give 
any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing 
source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding 
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medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute 
corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial 
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The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making 
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If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy 
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code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though 
third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as 
expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, 
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your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or 
rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so 
long as such parties remain in full compliance.

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However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program 
or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not 
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do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying 
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the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to 
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You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the 
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contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the 
conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy 
simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent 
obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. 
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution 
of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through 
you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to 
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any 
particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and 
the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or 
other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this 
section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software 
distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many 
people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software 
distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that 
system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to 
distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that 
choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a 
consequence of the rest of this License.

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain 
countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original 
copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit 
geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that 
distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such 
case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of 
this License.

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the 
General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in 
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or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies 
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you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that 
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the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose 
any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

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permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, 
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Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of 
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NO WARRANTY

11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR 
THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE 
STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE 
PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, 
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND 
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND 
PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU 
ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL 
ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE 
PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY 
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR 
INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA 
BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A 
FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER 
OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible 
use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software 
which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach 
them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion 
of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a 
pointer to where the full notice is found.

one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under 
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later 
version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY 
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A 
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with 
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple 
Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it 
starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author Gnomovision comes 
with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, 
and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' 
for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate 
parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be 
called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-
clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, 
if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is 
a sample; alter the names:

Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest
in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers)
written by James Hacker.

signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into 
proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider 
it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If 
this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead 
of this License.
