Jed on Windows

After a lot of time I did an updated package for Jes on Windows. As an experiment, instead of modifing this static page, I decided to go web 2.0 and use blogger for my new messages about Jed, and hopefully something more. So go to my shiny new blog.
as you can't add files to blogger, the installer will still be hosted here.

Here you can find patches for Jed on Windows, and Windows installer for WJed.
Or if you want, you can get the installer going to WJed installer History.

Patches for Jed

Saldy, some years ago the company where I work decided to dump the old SCO 3.2.4 (circa 1992), and use Windows instead. So I'm payed to port a lot of C code from Unix to Windows, and the new programs are written directly for this platform.

I was so used to Jed and so happy with it, that I started to use WJed for almost every editing need. And while we use Visual Studio for development, I often switch to Jed when I write C code.

But Windows and Unix are very different beasts. A Windows program should do a lot of things to be useable. Even Installation on Windows is a mess, from a Linux user point of view (the funny thing is this is also true backwards: for a Windows user handling installations on Unix is a nightmare).

Lately I decided to make WJed a bit more "well behaved" Windows applications. So I have a couple of small patches. There used to be a list of patches, but prereleases of SLang and Jed come out very fast, making most of these obsolete quickly. You can get my current list of patches grabbing the last installer, installing it and looking in patches directory.

UPDATE!I found some time to update the archive with patches below, up to the jed-b0.99-17.111-s2.0.4-i125.exe Installer.

You can get the patches from jed-patches.tar.gz

WJed Installer

One of my coworkers prepares the packages for our programs using the beautiful Inno Setup, a tool to create installers for Windows. He was very kind and showed me how to build one, so I did installers for WJed.

To get the package, go to the Installer history section, or simply scroll down a bit, and pick the most recent version, choosing either the stable release or experimental.
I keep there also the old releases, mainly for regression testing.

The installation gives you jed.exe (console version), wjed.exe (gui version) and slsh.exe (slang shell).

Marco Mahnič contributed a set of icons for jed, slsh and slang documents (and told me how to do a lot of things). So, thanks to him, we have some cool icons!

In the installation directory you will find all the patches applied, and also the setup file for Inno Setup, so you should be able to recreate the packages.

These binaries are compiled with Visual Studio 6 sp6, and tested on Windows 2003, Windows 2000, and Windows 98 (2nd edition). It should work also on Windows 95, and other variants. Reports welcome.

WJed binaries history

There I keep the history of lastest updates. Lately a lot of work was done to prepare SLang 2, a new SLang version with a lot of interesting features. This is not the right place to look at this, news will be available at SLang Homepage. The most interesting features are UTF-8 support everywhere, and a lot of enhancements to scripting language.

Most SLang changes are tested using an updated version of Jed (even if not so many application changes are needed, and mostly for UTF-8 support), and this version will become jed 0.99-17.

Stable releases

• Updated Wed Jun 7 21:03:08 CEST 2006

  Oops! I forgot to remove some debugging code, so utf-8 mode was always enabled... this makes almost impossible to edit files in other encodings... This version removes the offending line.
  Now WJed should use the Windows charset, unless you set the environment variable JED_UTF8=FORCE.
  Get jed_0.99.18-s2.0.6-i154.exe. This is the new recommended stable release.

• Updated Mon May 8 23:22:26 CEST 2006

  Well, John released jed 0.99.18 some time ago.... but I was too busy to update my installer... Now I got some free time to build it, so there is! This is almost a plain jed 0.99.18 compiled with SLang 2.0.6, as John merged almost all of my patches.
  The only changes are the iconv support for slang, the charset support for jed, icons for wjed, and some typo fixes. Get jed_0.99.18-s2.0.6-i152.exe. This is the new recommended stable release.

• Updated Tue Mar 15 20:35:41 2005

  After a long long time, I have an updated installer for the stable version of JED! The executables are mostly the same version of last release (I backported some minor fixes). There are some changes to the installer to sync with development version. This means fixes for the "Open with JED" entry on explorer context menu, wrappers to run jed/wjed/slsh from command line, and other minor changes. This also features the new Jed icons by Marko Mahnič!
  Get jed_0.99.16-i68.exe. This is the recommended stable release (the 68 in the file name is the latest revision number on my subversion repository, I use it to avoid duplicated names).

• Updated Fri Feb 18 12:41:44 CET 2005

  Here is an installer featuring Jed 0.99-16 (the latest stable release), linked with SLang 1.4.9 (also the last stable release).

Experimental releases

• Updated Tue Oct 25 19:33:16 CEST 2005

  John released a new version of SLang (2.0.5): it has mostly small fixes and some new intrinsics.
  He built also a new jed snapshot (B0.99-17.135): this is very interesting for me, as John merged my patches for UTF-8 support in wjed and xjed! As those where big and complex, is a good thing that now can be tested by anyone brave enough to try jed snapshots.
  On my side only small things remain:

  • WJed icons patch. Remember that the icons are by Marko Mahnič, I did only the easy part of convincing wjed to use those.
  • LRU Minibuffer patch, again by Marko.
  • the installer now uses the registry key HKCR/* instead of HKCR/AllFileSystemObjects to register the context menu "Open with Jed". This hopefully will reduce some problems with files being associated to WJed.
  • iconv module support for SLang and charset convertion support for jed
  • Other things I can't remember now. All the patches as always are installed in the jed-patches subdirectory.

  Remember: to enable UTF-8 support in WJed you must set the environment variable JED_UTF8=FORCE. For a detailed explanation see the notes for old versions below.
  Now hurry up and grab jed_B0.99.17-135-s2.0.5-i134-dll.exe while is hot!

• Updated Mon Aug 1 19:37:38 CEST 2005

  Well, a nice guy reported that the previous installer was completely broken, because of two separate bugs: failing to update the module-search path, so Jed was unable to find iconv-module, and failing to provide needed functions if importing iconv failed.
  I neved hit this bug because I was setting the module-search path in my jed.rc!
  This update fixes both problems, and should be used instead of previous version.
  I have also merged a Marko Mahnič patch to enable LRU (least recently used) handling to minibuffer history. This is a feature that I always wanted, but never found a bit of time to implement it. To enable it, add

  Mini_Store_Duplicates = -2;

  to your jed.rc.

  As the lastest bugs demostrate, this is still experimental... go grab it here: jed_B0.99.17-111-s2.0.4-i125-dll.exe.

• Updated Wed Jul 25 19:54:27 2005

  This is the first update in nearly two months: I was very busy at work, so I had little time to play with Jed. But as John released a new prerelease of Jed (fixing some thinks that broke with slang 2.0.4), I took some time to build a new package. This has jed-B0.99-17.111 + SLang 2.0.4. On my side I did very little: The slang version is almost the stock version: only my iconv module was added, as is needed for character set support. Jed has the usual set of patches: text-mode menus (uglier but much more functional), 'import' suppport, etc.

  The only interesting changes are in character set support: I worked a bit to make utf-16 support more general, and now you can open files in different encodings. To enable it you need:

  • Set the environment variable JED_UTF8=FORCE (this is right now the only way to enable UTF-8 support on jed for Windows).
  • add

    () = evalfile("charset");

    to your jed.rc file (in your %USERPROFILE% directory). Note that the script name changed to reflect the new functionality.
  • Run JED: you should see in the Buffers menu a new entry: 'Change Charset': You can use it to set the charset used to write the buffer to disk.
  • Jed also has a simple charset guessing system: if you open an UTF-16 with BOM mark (as written by most windows tools), Jed will notice it and recode data to UTF-8. When saving text to disk it will be converted back to UTF-16.
    for other encodings, you can use 'Change Charset' after loading a file, as described abobe, or write somewhere near the top of file something like:

    -*- coding: iso-8859-15 -*-

    Obviously you can freely choose every charset supported by iconv.
    [ Kudos for this feature goes to Marko Mahnič, him told me how to link the standard mode-modifiers with charsets ]

  I was havily using this version for almost two months without a glitch, so this is now the recommended version (while still experimental...) Grab it here: jed_B0.99.17-111-s2.0.4-i122-dll.exe.

• Updated Wed Apr 27 20:51:27 2005

  Ok, on one side, this is only half-experimental: John released SLang 2.0.0, and this is the first Wjed version compiled with it! This release is based on jed-B0.99-17.95, where John merged most of my previous changes. So I can concentrate on new features, this has:

  • iconv.dll (GNU iconv compiled by me) is distributed with jed (this account for the package size increase).
  • iconv-module: a SLang module to access iconv interface.
  • Finally WJed is import-enabled!: import support was not enabled because of a simple bug. Now it's fixed, so I can use iconv-module to implement...
  • utf16 file encoding support! you should add to your jed.rc (in your %USERPROFILE% directory) a line like:

    () = evalfile("utf16");

    then you can open UTF-16 encoded file (e.g. .reg files), and it will be recoded when saved.

  • UTF-8 internal support! this means editing files using (almost) full unicode characters range! See WJed Unicode for some screenshots.
  Mostly because of unicode changes, this version have some deep changes, so beware! There is jed_B0.99.17-95-s2.0.0-i112-dll.exe.

• Updated Thu Mar 24 20:00:07 2005

  Well, I had some hard days at work, so I got little time to go enhance Jed. But others kept working hard:
  Marko Mahnič did it again: he sent me icons for .sl files and for slsh. He also told me how to register icons for .sl files and for automatic editing with Jed.
  Also John did a lot of work: he released a new prerelease of SLang (version pre2-r7) and Jed (B0.99-17.82).
  So, today I took some time to merge all the things together, and there is jed_B0.99.17-82-s2.r5-i98-dll.exe. It features:

  • Based on SLang-pre2-r7 and Jed-B0.99-17.82.
  • Marko's icons for jed, slsh and .sl.
  • Automatic register icons and editing with wjed for .sl files.
  • SLang as DLL.
  • SLang with modules support.
  • slsmg module ported to Windows.

  Grab it now!
  And oh, by the way: I managed to miswrite Marko's surname... I fixed it now, hoping it's right this time!

• Updated Tue Mar 15 20:47:49 2005

  Ok, thanks to a useful hint from Marko Mahnič (yes, him again), now Jed shows the icon also on the Alt-Tab menu and on taskbar. Now the wrappers installed on windows directory (wjed.bat, jed.bat and slsh.bat) should work on win95/98/me and on win2000/2003. The problem is that some genius at Microsoft broke command line compatibility of 'start' command, adding a completely useless 'window title' parameter. Now the script tries to guess the operating system (and as I missed some quotes, in win95/98 gives an error, but still does the right thing. The error will go away on the next release).
  Oh, and this is again compiled with a dll version of SLang.
  Get it: jed_B0.99.17-70-s2.r5-i68-dll.exe.

• Updated Tue Mar 8 18:50:15 2005

  Ok, Marko Mahni&269; did two new set of icons for WJed! So there is a new release, featuring Marko Icons (I choose more or less randomly a set, but the other is still stored inside wjed.exe, so you can change link icons). If you want to look at the new icons, go to New Jed icons (UPDATE:I have finally updated this link!.)
  This release uses again a dll version of slang, so it is still experimental, but I choose to use new icons with this version for some reasons:

  • I was in a hurry, this was the last version I compiled, and switching to and from dll to non-dll version right know requires some changes to the sources, so it was a lot easier this way
  • I used this version of WJed all the day, without a problem, so now I'm a bit more confident on it's usability.
  • People testing this version are awarded by not be forced anymore to look at my ugly icons :-)
  This version is jed_B0.99.17-70-s2.r5-i61-dll.exe.

• Updated Mon Mar 7 20:27:04 CET 2005

  Warning: This is a higly experimental version!
  Lately I was trying to create a dll version of slang. It is needed for SLang modules support (another thing I'm working on) to be useful on Win32. For now the advantages are an installer 44 Kb smaller, and an installation 400 Kb smaller.
  I have changed the naming of binaries again: now this pattern is used: jed_{JVER}-s{SVER}-i{IVER}[-{KIND}].exe where {KIND} is an optional flag indicates a special version (like the version linked with SLang as dll :-) )
  So this version is called jed_B0.99.17-70-s2.r5-i2-dll.exe The 'recommended' experimental version is still the version released Tue Mar 1 20:22:13 CET 2005, but I'm using this one, with no problems so far.

• Updated Tue Mar 1 20:22:13 CET 2005

  Ok, this one have the same binaries of last one, but a lot of changes on the installer.

  • The "Open with JED" Explorer menu entry now is registered with lot of quotes everywhere: this should allow to open files with long names and files with spaces in name. (Tested on Win2003, Win2000 and Win98).
  • Option to install .bat wrappers in windows directory. This way you can run wjed, jed and slsh from command line.
  • Dropped .tm files from installation.
  • SLang version is retrieved and printed during installation.

  I have also changed the naming of binaries: now this pattern is used: jed_{JVER}-s{SVER}-i{IVER}[-{KIND}].exe where:

  • {JVER}: Jed version (taken from version.h).
  • {SVER}: SLang version (Hand written).
  • {IVER}: Installer version (jed.iss revision on SVN repository).
  • {KIND}: This optional flag indicates special version (like the version linked with SLang as dll

  So this version is called jed_B0.99.17-70-s2.r5-i1.exe Grab it now!

• Updated Mon Feb 28 19:14:32 CET 2005

  John has released an updated prerelease for Jed, and him merged most of my patches! So this version has a lot fewer patches applied. After installing it, you can look in 'patches' directory to see which ones.
  This is the 'recomended' experimental version. get Jed B0.99.17-70 compiled with SLang 2 prerelease 5.

• Updated Tue Feb 22 17:03:34 CET 2005

  SLang 2 prerelease 5 was released! There is an installer for Jed B0.99.17-56-r5 compiled with this new SLang release.

• Updated Fri Feb 18 12:44:22 CET 2005

  This is the first release of Jed installer. Jed B0.99.17-56 is the lastest Jed prerelease, compiled with SLang 2 prerelease 3. Enjoy!

WJed Installer future

I will follow future Jed and SLang development, trying to build installers as soon as a new version comes out.
On the installer side, it now can install a set of .bat 'helpers' to allow running Jed from command line without adding the jed installation path to PATH. I'm also working to make slsh useful on Windows. From jed-B0.99-17.82 it can be used, the ability to build slang as DLL is working, and I also compiled a module (slsmg).

Back to home page.

Last Updated : Wed Jun  7 21:03:08 CEST 2006