The CRT Text Editor NED - Introduction and Reference Manual

Abstract

A critical element in the use of computers to support document preparation, software development, and word processing is the interface between man and machine for the entry and modification of textual data files. In recent years, the cathode ray tube (CRT) terminal has grown more popular as an interface as it has become more sophisticated and less expensive. In most applications, the CRT terminal is used only to simulate line-at-a-time devices such as teletypes. However, this device is also capable of displaying textual documents in page form, and can alter its display rapidly enough to allow interactive text editing. Over the past few years Ned, a text editor utilizing the full capabilities of the CRT display, has been under development and in use at The Rand Corporation. The Ned editor runs on the PDP-11 series of computers under the UNIX operating system. It uses a CRT display to provide a two- dimensional window into a text file. The file may be altered by typing new material over the old. Lines, characters, and rectangular portions of text may be opened, deleted, and moved about, much as documents are edited with scissors and paste. Interactive text processing operations are provided, including paragraph fill, right-margin justification, and hyphenation. The set of operations may be expanded by user-provided or system-provided text-processing programs which are invoked interactively from within the Editor. The screen may be divided into several editing windows to simultaneously edit more than one file, or different portions of a file.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1977
Accession Number
ADA049314

Entities

People

  • Walter Bilofsky

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundaries
  • Cathode Ray Tubes
  • Computers
  • Corporations
  • Debugging
  • Digital Information
  • Directories
  • Information Processing
  • Information Science
  • Keyboards
  • Language
  • Operating Systems
  • Software Development
  • Standards
  • System Software
  • Text Processing
  • Two Dimensional

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computer Science.
  • Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Data Science/Digital Signal Processing.