THE - The Hessling Editor
Basics

• a window which displays the contents of the file being editted. This is the filearea ,
• a command line from which commands may be issued,
• a prefix area which shows line numbers and from which prefix commands can be issued
• an idline which displays the file name, row/col etc. for the current file and
• a status line which indicates global status info like number of files being editted, time etc.

To execute commands from the command line simply type the command and press the ENTER (or RETURN) key.

To determine what keys are bound to what commands, execute the SHOWKEY command from the command line . As you press each key, THE will respond with the name of the key and any commands bound to that key. To exit from the SHOWKEY command, press the spacebar.

Key bindings may be changed for the current session by using the DEFINE command. To keep key bindings between sessions, the DEFINE commands can be placed in a profile file, which is executed each time THE starts. For more information on this, see the next section; PROFILE FILE.

It is possible to make THE look and behave more like either XEDIT or KEDIT. See the SET COMPAT command for further information.

As mentioned before, this document provides little tutorial information. For those users who have a REXX enabled version of THE, a self-running demonstration macro is supplied which will provide a better explanation of the capabilities of THE, than any documentation could. To run this demonstration, start THE as follows:

the -p demo.the demo.txt