Poplog contains a powerful screen editor VED, similar in some respects to EMACS, an editor developed at MIT. Compared with most editors VED considerably reduces the effort involved in developing and testing programs, mainly because it is so closely linked in to the Poplog system and its online documentation files. Emacs can be set up to be almost as useful, though it is not so closely integrated with Poplog.
Besides being useful for developing and testing software, VED can also be used for writing documentation. It includes special facilities for producing online documentation (like the online version of this file). Moreover, it can easily be used for text manipulation. I wrote a fairly simple VED program to transform the ascii version of this file into Latex, to facilitate production of a more readable printed version.
(For more details on online documentation in VED, see HELP DOCUMENTATION)
Details of the use of VED vary according to which terminals are available, so this document will not include information about the editor. If you have access to a computer running Poplog you should ask for advice. There should be a `TEACH file' available which will show you how to use the editor on the terminals which are in use at your site. You will almost certainly need a chart showing how VED's operations are mapped onto function keys available on your keyboard. At the University of Birmingham we also use the Pop-11 interface to the X window system to provide an extendable menu-driven interface to VED, available freely to Poplog users on request.
XVED is a version of VED that supports multiple windows, one for each file in the editor, and additional facilities for driving the editor using menus and the mouse. (See HELP XVED)
Early versions of VED were often criticised for not including a regular expression matcher, available in most other Unix editors (ed, vi, emacs). This has been remedied since Poplog Version 14.5