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Brief (text editor)
Encyclopedia
BRIEF was a very popular programmer's text editor
in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was designed and developed by UnderWare Inc, a company founded in Providence, Rhode Island
by David Nanian and Michael Strickman, and was published by Solution Systems. UnderWare moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1985. In 1990, UnderWare sold BRIEF to Solution Systems which released version 3.1, but a year later sold BRIEF to Borland
. BRIEF was available for DOS
and OS/2
, and could run in a DOS console window under early versions of Microsoft Windows
.
BRIEF is more accurately listed as B.R.I.E.F. - an acronym for Basic Reconfigurable Interactive Editing Facility. It is no longer sold by Borland.
and Emacs
packages provide Brief functionality. There was more than one program written to provide Brief-like functionality:
Text editor
A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was designed and developed by UnderWare Inc, a company founded in Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
by David Nanian and Michael Strickman, and was published by Solution Systems. UnderWare moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1985. In 1990, UnderWare sold BRIEF to Solution Systems which released version 3.1, but a year later sold BRIEF to Borland
Borland
Borland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:...
. BRIEF was available for DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
and OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
, and could run in a DOS console window under early versions of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
BRIEF is more accurately listed as B.R.I.E.F. - an acronym for Basic Reconfigurable Interactive Editing Facility. It is no longer sold by Borland.
Features
The original product features contain:- A Lisp-like macro language; later, a CC (programming language)C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
-like macro language was added - Completely configurable keyboard
- Template editing and smart indenting for all major micro-compilerCompilerA compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
s - Multiple undo/redo
- Unlimited file size (restricted only by disk space)
- Program compiling from within BRIEF, with "go to the next error line" service
- Support for all major popular compilers
- User configurations to support any other compiler with menu-driven setup
- EMS caching for all files and macros
- Mouse support
- Complete edit operations
- Regular expressionRegular expressionIn computing, a regular expression provides a concise and flexible means for "matching" strings of text, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of characters. Abbreviations for "regular expression" include "regex" and "regexp"...
search and replace - Multiple windows, including multiple windows on the same source file
Clones
Some VimVim (text editor)
Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface...
and Emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
packages provide Brief functionality. There was more than one program written to provide Brief-like functionality:
- Brief Basic
- Boxer
- Short
- Terse
- CRiSP Editor from Vital
- Visual SlickEditSlickEditSlickEdit, previously known as Visual SlickEdit, is a cross-platform commercial source code editor by SlickEdit, Inc. SlickEdit provides syntax highlighting, code navigation and customizable keyboard shortcuts. Versions from 2007 and later also support programmable code...
- Zeus
Emulators
The Brief keyboard layout became popular and was implemented in or emulated by other editors by providing a remapping of the keyboard shortcuts and editor behaviour.- Borland C++Borland C++Borland C++ is a C and C++ programming environment for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was the successor to Turbo C++, and included a better debugger, the Turbo Debugger, which was written in protected mode DOS....
5.0 - Borland DelphiBorland DelphiEmbarcadero Delphi is an integrated development environment for console, desktop graphical, web, and mobile applications.Delphi's compilers use its own Object Pascal dialect of Pascal and generate native code for 32- and 64-bit Windows operating systems, as well as 32-bit Mac OS X and iOS...
- CodeWrightCodeWrightCodeWright is a Windows Programmers Editing System for software developers originally marketed by Premia Corp. and developed by Premia co-founders Eric Johnson and Don Kinzer, initially released in 1991. Premia was acquired in April 2000 by Starbase Corp...
- Borland JBuilderJBuilderJBuilder is an integrated development environment for the programming language Java, from Borland, and then CodeGear. Codegear was purchased by Embarcadero Technologies in 2008....
- JEDJED (text editor)JED is a text editor that makes extensive use of the S-Lang library. It is highly cross-platform compatible; JED runs on Windows and all flavors on Linux and Unix. Older versions are available for DOS. It is also very lightweight , which makes it an ideal editor for older systems, embedded systems,...
- by John E. Davis - Microsoft Visual StudioMicrosoft Visual StudioMicrosoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all...
6, 2003, 2005, 2008 - Platform Builder for Microsoft Windows CE 5.0
- RimStar
- TextPadTextPadTextPad is a text editor for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems.First released in 1992, this software is currently in its fifth major version...
- The SemWare EditorThe SemWare EditorThe SemWare Editor is a text editor computer program for MSDOS, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2.Starting in November 1985 as a shareware program called "Qedit" , Qedit was eventually modified to run as a Terminate and Stay Resident program, and ported to OS/2 and eventually evolved to TSE...
- VEDITVEDITVedit is a commercial text editor for Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS from Greenview Data, Inc.Vedit was one of the pioneers in visual editing. Today, it is a powerful and feature-rich general-purpose text editor....