World Wide Guide to FS Scenery Design | Utilities | Special Task Utilities

Programmer's File Editor: Great for Scenery Designers

Reviewed by Lee Firth
for the World Wide Guide

Programmer's File Editor is a Windows program that is available in both 16-bit version for Windows 3.1 and 32-bit version for Windows 95. I use the Windows 95 version.

There are a number of features that make this program excellent for scenery designing, especially if you work directly with source code, as I do with the FSASM compiler. I have compiled a list of what I consider the best features of this text editor.

Layout

There is a toolbar across the top of the main window complete with buttons for all the most used features.

Templates

You have the ability to attach a template file to the scenery file. Templates are pre-built sections of text that you can include in your files, saving you from repeatedly typing the same things. For example: It is often advisable to break up larger sections of scenery into smaller sections to save compilation time and then use a program like ScLink to compile them into one file when finished. If you take this approach to scenery design, you must have identical headers on all your files. You could make a template of your header and then it's just a matter of two mouse clicks to insert this at the start of all your files.

Macro Button

There is a macro record button located on the toolbar. One press starts recording all your keystrokes, and a second press stops recording. Pressing F7 will now run this macro until you record a new one.

Launch Application Button

This button will allow you to run any DOS or windows application from within Programmer's File Editor. This is useful for running your scenery compiler. There is a Browse button to help you to locate the file you want to run. The last few programs ran are saved in a drop-down dialogue box.

Execute DOS Command and Capture Output

If you use any auxiliary DOS programs like FSOFFS which, given two Lat Lon coordinates will return north and south offsets in metres, these can be run using this button. The resultant output will be saved to a window. Again there is a Browse button to help you locate the file you want to run and the last few programs run are listed in a drop-down dialogue box. It sure beats having to type in the full command line every time in a DOS window.

[Lee Firth, pictured above, lives in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
His e-mail address is lfirth@ne.com.au,
and his home page is http://www.ne.com.au/~lfirth/MyHomepage.htm.]

PFE0602i.ZIP

from http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/