Multi-Edit was a commercial

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

created in the 1980s by Todd Johnson. Multi Edit Software obtained ownership rights for the product in October 2002. Multi-Edit contains tools for

programmers A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a program ...

, including macros, configurable

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that is used for programming language, programming, scripting language, scripting, or markup language, markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in differe ...

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text ...

file type A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or open. Some file formats ...

conversions, project management,

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as rational expression, is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

s, three block highlight modes including column, stream and line modes, remote editing of files via

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

and interfaces for

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

s or

command line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

s of choice. The editor uses a

tabbed document interface In interface design, a tab is a graphical user interface object that allows multiple documents or panels to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents. It is an interface s ...

and sessions can be saved. Multi-Edit was originally written in Pascal and was built to run in

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

and has since been ported to Windows. The most recent release is dated from 2008. No compatibility information for Windows versions after

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

is available from the product's website. HTML editing features include: * Integration with

CSE HTML Validator CSS HTML Validator (previously named CSE HTML Validator) is an HTML editor and CSS editor for Microsoft Windows (and Linux and other Unix-like operating systems when used with Wine (software), Wine) that helps web developers create syntactically ...

for offline HTML, XHTML and CSS checking * HTML toolbar preconfigured for popular functions and HTML tags * Customization of languages, templates, menus, toolbars and the UI with its CMac macro language Multi-Edit is a

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

product. It can be evaluated for free for 30 days, after which the user must purchase a license to continue using the software. Note: As of August 2022, the Multi-Edit website, including all of the forums, is off-line and not accessible.

Features

Multi-Edit also has the following features: * Open and edit large files * Column/Stream/Line (block) mode editing * Regular expression find and replace * Find/Replace in Files * Extensible code highlighting, with 'wordfiles' already available for many languages * Code collapsing and hierarchical function listing * Beautify and reformat source code * Smart templates for code completion * Hex viewing * File/data sorting * Project management * Sessions * Bookmarking * Automation via macros and scripts * Integrated file comparison * Includes BCDiffer a built-in File Compare Utility created by Scooter Software

History

Multi-Edit was developed by Todd M. Johnson as a source code editor, at a time when the only other popular source code editor for MS-DOS was Brief. As a DOS editor it offered features such as user-configurable syntax highlighting for language-specific color coding of keywords and symbols. Even after the appearance of

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

s in the mid-1990s, it remained popular for features such as its macro language, easy customization, and multiple language support. As of 2011, it was one of the few surviving editors from the 1990s era when text editors were regarded as indispensable programming tools.

The Ending

On 06/18/21, the following message was posted on the MultiEdit support forum, in response to a user request: "This is from the MESI CEO. As you are well aware, we have not had a new product release in some many years now. This is not due to a lack of desire, but an unfortunate limitation of our product build. When our partner Dan Hughes passed away of a sudden heart attack, he took with him all our product build secrets leaving us with no way to recreate the Multi-Edit 2008 build. As a result, we are unable to provide any patch releases or new features. Our Multi-Edit x build unfortunately has run out of funding to complete that project as a result of lack of sales for Multi-Edit 2008. You can now see there are little options available to us for going forward with the Multi-Edit product builds. For this reason we are merely continuing to keep Multi-Edit on the market and alive with support for our existing user base and anyone who still seeks purchase of the product. Thank you for being a dedicated Multi-Edit user and continuing to use and support our product! " That was the last update that was received from the developers; then in August 2022, the Multi-Edit website, including all of the forums, went off-line and has remained off-line ever since.

Features

History

The Ending

See also

References

Further reading