Newsgroups are my last ditch resource for bugs with old software. I know Codewright is old and no longer supported. But I have it and I'm not ready to switch. Meanwhile, something happend while I was running in safe mode and now Codewright is messed up when running in standard windows mode.
I can open files, but I can't select anything in them or do any edits. I can't even position the cursor with the mouse. All the great chroma formatting is gone.
Any ideas? Is it finally time to bail on Codewright and switch to Emacs? I tried that once and the initial Emacs screen scared me! It was totally non-intuitive.
I'm a CW user too. My version is 4.0e from 1996 (Win95 days). Over the past year, I've seen my version having problems starting in 64-bit windows. Occasionally it will self corrupt some of its binaries. I keep a zip file of my entire CW32 tree, basically a known good restore archive. When I suspect a corruption problem, I save the cwright.ini file somewhere else. Then I delete the CW32 directory tree (safer to rename and delete later). Then I unzip my restore archive and copy in the saved cwright.ini file only after I've verified that it's not corrupted too (which hasn't happened yet). Then things always work.
Of course, you might be experiencing a different set of problems. I hope I was able to help.
Now I digress:
My CW seems to have some problem starting with 64 bit windows. It will just freeze on the splash screen. I'd love to know why that happens. Experimenting with various compatibility modes doesn't solve the problem.
CW hates long directory paths and very long file names. I am certain that long names cause internal memory corruption. When it happens, CW reports an out-of-memory error and then disappears. Sometimes after the same stressing, the edit windows show garbage and I need to restart it. I find I need to treat her gently occasionally.
I have a bunch of custom DLLs that I use that makes it hard to switch editors. I haven't found an editor yet that gives me the same productivity I get with CW. A 20 year relationship with an editor is hard to walk away from.
I acknowledge that there are many great editors with many advanced features. But my productivity in keyboard-to-code is always way better with CW.
I've got the latest, 7.5. You used to be able to find it on the web because it was orphaned. But it seems someone bought the rights and is selling it for $300+. Not sure who would be buying it, but it was popular with mainframe support people (meaning it was sold with their other tools so they just bought it too) and maybe there are still those who just buy the package in order to support some ancient systems (meaning 20 years old).
If you'd like to update to 7.5, contact me offline. snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com. I'm in the middle of a web site port... a terrible time for my editor to be down. I may need to dig out my backups.
I still have my CW CD. Memories... I switched to Eclipse CDT a few years back. Works the same on Linux/Windows/Mac. Good enough. Slick Edit is more like CW if you want to pay for it.
Things aren't looking so good for Codewright. I figured my issue was file corruption, so I finally dug up my old laptop disk. I copied the CW directory over to the new laptop and it runs the same. So I guess the problem is in the registry maybe? Anyone know how to figure that out?
Then what else could it be? I found a number of web pages telling you how to uninstall CW including deleting registry entries. But then when I bring up Programs and Features I don't see it at all. Maybe my problem is it has been removed from the registry?
I don't think it is an .ini file problem as it still opens all the files it had open before the problem started.
I would like to work with Emacs, but it seems so hard to learn. I'll give it another go today.
But be aware that doing so lessens overall system security and could cause kittens to be harmed.
The latest CW I had was 5.0d. I haven't used it since switching to Win7, but AFAI recall, by default the only use of the registry is for file associations.
I also recall there being an option to put INI settings into the registry rather than a file - but if you didn't do that the CW key was empty (or nearly so - some useless empty subkey).
SlickEdit is [intentionally] very like CW and even has tools to convert CW projects.
formatting link
UltraEdit also is quite similar to CW functionally, though its keyboard bindings are different.
formatting link
If you are willing to go to Emacs - that is learn a new IDE:
Microsoft has released the Visual Studio editor as a stand-alone product. It's cross platform too: available for Windows, Mac or Linux.
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IMHO, it's much more usable than Eclipse - but take with salt because I often use VisualStudio on Windows anyway.
I'm not big on lessening system security, I would *never* do anything to harm a kitten and I'm not sure what "turning it off" would mean exactly.
I want to work with Linux, even if only on the Raspberry Pi. So I really should get a new editor that runs on both platforms. It's just such a painful thing to do though. It's almost like having body parts replaced (and I did that last summer).
Address space layout randomization (ASLR) is a guard against some types of memory based exploits - particularly certain types of buffer overruns.
When a process is executed under ASLR, the various segments of the executable - code, data, stack, etc. - are placed at randomly selected locations within the virtual address space of the process. [i.e. 2 (or 3) GB for 32-bit, 2**52 bytes for 64-bit].
Note that ASLR affects only the *virtual* addresses used by program code - physical addresses used by the CPU still are at the whim of VMM page mapping.
If you disable ALSR globally, or an executable doesn't support it (more below), then the OS falls back on contiguous placement of the load segments. [On Windows, ASLR requires that all the program's load segments must be placed dynamically. If any segment needs an absolute address, the program can't use ASLR. If you require ASLR globally (as a policy) then such programs can't be run.]
ASLR makes it unlikely that any two runs of a program will use the same addresses, so the locations of exploitable code (if any) with respect to something a hacker can access - like an I/O buffer - will be different every time the program executes.
On Windows, unless you enable ASLR globally, it affects only those executables that were specifically compiled for it. However, it is the default for 64-bit compilers, and has been available as an option for 32-bit compilers for a long time [since 2002, IIRC]. Most commercial 32-bit software uses it.
The problem with ASLR is that a program may depend on assumptions such as "all heap addresses will be lower than any stack addresses". Under ASLR, these assumptions may be violated: program segments may be located anywhere in the address space.
Or a program may have a bug that is normally hidden, but if by chance ASLR reorders its load segments in a particular way, the seemingly innocuous bug turns into something fatal.
For 32-bit programs, ASLR also can impact sharing memory among multiple processes because a particular needed address range may not always be available. This can affect 64-bit programs too, but the vastly larger address space makes it much more likely that a reasonably sized block can be placed wherever you need it.
On the whole, ASLR is a good thing - but it isn't without warts.
If you want to work directly with a Pi, get a Pi 3 - the earlier ones are a bit too slow for using as a desktop. (They are great for running specific programs, but it gets painful when it takes a few seconds to open a new large program.) I find it is easier to do most stuff from a PC, and only occasionally edit things directly on a Pi. But that is easier if the desktop is Linux, since it gives you several convenient ways to swap files and work together with the Pi.
So for an editor that works on the Pi, I usually use nano. It is a simple command-line editor - fine for making small fixes, and works well over ssh even on very limited connections. Unlike other popular command-line editors such as vi and emacs, it works as you would expect it to.
As for an editor for Linux and/or Windows, I am afraid you are in trouble - there are vast numbers of them, with a broad range from light and simple to large and complex. They are all somewhat different from Codewright - and it is always hard for a "power user" to switch editors. No matter which editor you pick, you will go through a period where you feel there are missing features, bad layouts, counter-intuitive interfaces, etc., simply because it is not the editor you are so familiar with.
Personally, I use eclipse as my main editor these days, on Linux and Windows. It works well for what I need, I am used to it, and it is by far the most common IDE delivered with microcontroller toolchains. But I would not run it on a Pi, and I fully understand how some people don't like it.
Hardcore unix people are divided into three camps here. Those who live entirely within emacs (including for email, and as their Usenet reader), those who think emacs is the work of the devil and the only real editor is vim, and those who believe there were perfectly usable gui desktops for *nix by the late 1980's, and believe they can give you more productive editors than a 80x40 terminal screen.
I'm sorry I can't contribute to helping with this specific problem, but let me add my name to the list of loyal and satisfied CW users -- 28 years and still going strong with V7.0c. Let me say on occasion I've had trouble installing on a 64-bit machine, but after monkeying with it I always manage to get it installed and then, after copying the relevant system files that contain customization (cwright.ini,cwright.mac and cwright.pst, as well as lexer.ini), I have had consistently excellent results over the years. I will say I can no longer access any of the help files, and the keystroke macro feature seems to have broken (which is a drag). But everything else is great. I've considered buying SlickEdit and using their CW emulator (I use CW in Brief (!!) mode but SE supports that), but while SE has one cool feature I wish I had on CW (the ability to stick colors on specific text), the trial versions I've used just don't treat multiple documents with the speed and simplicity that CW has.
Roricka
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I've tried finding a source of a new install, but the Embarcadero web site doesn't have any mention of it and no support. It is still listed on third party web sites as being in stock, but I'm worried if I buy it and have tr ouble with the installation I'll be stuck.
Any chance you could share your installation? I would appreciate that.
--
Rick C.
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I'm also a long time user of Codewright (version 4.0e from 1996). No other editor has satisfied me in terms of getting the code written quickly. I've carried it forward on all the windows versions since 1996. Each version of windows made CW work a little worst but MS seemed to fix the little oddities as windows did incremental updates. It works real nicely with windows 10.
You don't need the installer if you have a prior installation. All you need to do is copy the directory tree verbatim TO THE SAME DRIVE AS the ORIGINAL. If you can't keep the same drive, you'll need to hand edit the .ini files that refer to the drive letter before you run it on the new computer.
Problems I've observed with the different windows versions are:
- It stalls loading during the splash screen. Sometimes it eventually continues after 10 minutes or so, sometimes never. Killing it and restarting it usually fixes that problem. I use Notepad++ as a backup in case I can't get CW to load.
- It screws up key repeat timing sometimes when it loads. I have not found a permanent fix to that but I think if you allow loading to happen on a mostly inactive computer (very low CPU load), the timing will be right. This problem is the most annoying because it's not always easy to make it work right.
- The help system is dead. It relies on .hlp files which are now gone forever. I never missed it.
Just to throw my hat in the ring too, but I am also a 4.0e user from 1996. It looks like you can't get 7.5 any more either now (not listed on Embarcad ero, anyway). I was looking since I haven't been able to get it running on Windows 10 reliably (although the situation has improved since I first trie d). I have decided that I will never be updating the Windows 7 machine I am using now specifically so I can continue to use CodeWright.
I've noticed corruption at times when syncing files with other applications such as Visual Studio. I've noticed that if I get the gray File Modified d ialog, it's fine, but if I get the white background one, I need to close wi thout saving and restart since something in memory has been corrupted. As l ong as I follow my habit to always save before switching applications I'm g ood.
To the person who was looking for an editor for the Raspberry Pi, I have us ed CodeWright on Windows and WinSCP to sync files between the two. vi and n ano are ok, but...
It has been hard to rationalize $300 for an unsupported application after a ll these years, but of course, when I'm finally about to bite the bullet, i t seems to be gone.
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