From: Jerry Coffin 

At 07:07 PM 11/27/2003, you wrote:
>Hey, Jerry!

Hello,

>  > For anybody who's crazy enough to care, MS continued
>  > to develop this editor long enough that there's a
>  > Win32 version (which may even still be included in the
>  > Platform SDK -- it used to be in the Win32 SDK).
>
>     Can't find it under that name in Visual Studio. There is MSVM which is a
>"visual modeller". Haven't used it or read up on it, but I
suspect it's more
>than just an editor.

Yes -- the visual modeler is basically along the lines of Rational Rose
(IIRC, it's actually supplied by Rational Software).

The M editor was entirely different and separate.  As I said, it used to be
included in the Win32 SDK, but the Win32 version has never been included
with VC++.

>     I do remember PWB which was the IDE for MSC V7.00. Very similar to
> ZWB, and
>quite easy to use. M wasn't too bad, either. You are right - it was almost
>infinitely configurable, but was just as useful as it came straight out of the
>packet.

I can't say I agree with that -- at one time, I used it for editing what I
posted to Fido, and had a rather elaborate macro to reformat quotes, just
for one example.  It wasn't quite perfect (it didn't really know what to do
if somebody else had already re-wrapped a quote, putting '>'s in the
middle of a line) but it saved quite a bit of time and effort nonetheless.

It was capable of quite a few more little tricks as well.  Just for
example, I have it set up with options necessary to build Win32 executables
instead of the DOS executables it's set for out of the box.

>  It came with a whole thick Microsoft printed manual, which was just as
>well because the standard controls were not particularly intuitive. However
>there was almost nothing it couldn't do and it was a vast improvement on
>CP/M's
>Ed.com, or Cromemco's Screen.com or WordStar, or Vi on unix/Cromix/Linux.

Yes, it was quite powerful.  Its biggest problem was that it was really too
ambitious for DOS -- it was simply too big and too slow with the machines
available at the time.  OTOH, a machine that's even pretty out of date now
runs it _quite_ nicely. 

>     IIRC the Win32 SDK is still downloadable from
> www.microsoft.com/downloads,
>BICBW.

The Win32 SDK was replaced with the Platform SDK years ago.  If you want to
download it, you should be able to get it from:

http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/

but be aware that it's a _huge_ download (and IIRC, it'll want to install
an ActiveX control on your machine as well).  I'm not at all sure it
includes the M editor anymore either (but I haven't checked recently, since
I don't use M anyway).


         Later,
         Jerry.

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