Yesterday

Let's begin with a little history, starting around 1980. Did you know that ED started life written in Assembler for a Signetics 2650 CPU with 16K RAM? I'd be very surprised if you did! From there it moved to an 8080 with 64K RAM running CPM, still in Assembler of course. Then the big move to the IBM PC: 640K RAM, DOS and the C language. In the mid 1980's "ED for DOS" was released as a commercial product and over time became moderately successful. Then Microsoft came out with Windows and it was time to move forward again. ED for DOS development continued for some time, but ED for Windows quickly became the focus of our efforts. ED for Windows was released in 1992 and was amongst the first programmer's editors available for Windows. 

As of Version 3.80 ED continues to be written in C and uses a mix of 16 and 32 bit code, enabling a single version to support all Windows platforms - Win 3.x, 95/98, NT3.5, 4 and 5.

We've now had seven major releases and ED's popularity continues to grow. We are fortunate that ED has been so successful and we are able to keep developing a product we love.

Today (and the recent past)

ED has come a long way since its inception in the very early days of personal computers, and now it's time to take the next big step. We spent the first half of 1998 researching how best to develop ED to meet and exceed our customers' expectations. For a while Java seemed like an ideal choice of language, and one which would open up new opportunities for ED. However, for various technical and commercial reasons we concluded that Java wasn't appropriate. Instead we've moved from C to C++, to object oriented design, and to a full 32-bit code base. And we've grasped the opportunity to once again redevelop and rewrite ED for Windows from the ground up to ensure we can leverage the latest user interface and operating system features. This move to a full 32-bit architecture also enables us to resolve some problems with foreign file systems, like Unix, and to remove various limits imposed by the current 16-bit system. It also means development for Windows 3.x will end with Version 3.80

Like most (all?) software projects, ED for Windows Version 4 took longer to develop than we would like. Having said that the comments and feedback we have received from you, our customers clearly indicate it was worth the wait. 

Tomorrow

Now that Version 4 has been released we can reassess the development we've undertaken these past four years and with your assistance make decisions on where we go from here. We have many interesting and exciting things on the drawing board and as always we welcome your comments and suggestions.

Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows.