BOXER

Description

A fairly powerful text-mode editor introduced in 1991 for DOS as a sort of an low budget shareware alternative to BRIEF, initially modelling most if not all functions on that editor and came in a standard DOS edition known simply as BOXER, the name is a bit of a in-joke, BRIEF was made by a company called UnderWare, and Boxer is another style of men's underwear, as far as we known there is no text editor out there called Y-Front.

One of the main problems with the early versions of BOXER was that had no support for virtual memory and could thus only open up files that were small enough to fit in available conventional memory otherwise Boxer would just exit. As you edited the file the buffers and macrospaces grew bigger which meant that the available memory became less and less, in extreme cases making the application crash. The company promised a fix for this and supplied a utility that split the larger files into smaller parts but the company never developed a virtual memory capable version of boxer. With version 6 of the application they started to offer two new higher pried versions that fixer this by allowing you to use larger memory, The BOXER/TKO came with a memory extender that worked on 286 and newer machines and BOXER/OS2 a port of Boxter to OS/2 2.0 or higher that used the 386 flat memory model.

As a straight DOS port the BOXER/OS2 product was never really a good OS/2 citizen, it prints to a LPT port like a DOS program rather than through the OS/2 print mechanisms so each printer has to have a driver, clipboards are not supported, long file names and cases are only correctly supported in the very last release of the program (7.5c). It is not windowed unlike the original DOS versions, all open files are displayed in the same window so you will have to open multiple instances to view multiple files and so on.

In many ways the BOXER/TKO was a better fit for running under OS/2 than the OS/2 version itself since it supported windowed operation and extended screens that the OS/2 version did not, and even had automatic sensing of replacement ANSI.SYS programs like UltraVison, which allowed you to use huge column widths in OS/2. The company released an MS Windows version called Boxer 99 in 1999 and stopped all development of the OS/2 and DOS versions that same year although they remained for sale for a few years after.

Version

• Latest OS/2 version: 7.5c

Note that OS/2 versions prior to this one are not fully compatible with long filenames and cases under OS/2, i.e. only upper case 8.3 file names are written by the editor in some cases.

• Latest BOXER/TKO and BOXER/DOS versions: 7.5a

Language Support

• English - Built in.
• German - Separate download.

Syntax highlighting

Screenshot from Boxer 7.5c

Built in

Ada, Assembly language for: 80x86, ; AutoCad DCL, Basic, Batch files for: DOS, 4DOS and 4OS2; BRexx, C, C++, Clipper, Cobol, dBase, EIFFEL, FORTRAN, FoxPro, HTML, INI Files, Java, LISP, Make files, Modula-2, Pascal, QBasic, REXX, Visual Basic and xBase FOXPRO, PROGRESS, Paradox PAL, PAL-Edit, Resource Files, DOS CONFIG.SYS, IPF documents (GML), LaTex, PERL, PSION 3a OPL, Script Application Language for Telix (SALT), SALT Implementation Language (SIMPLE), Robocomm Script Language, COMMO Script Language, Procomm Plus ASPECT Script Language, Qmodem Script Language, Telemate Script Language, OzCIS Script Language, AUTOSIG Script Language, TAPCIS, PC Board v15 Programming Language (PPL), and the AT&T DSP32SL Package.

Contributed

Assembly language for Microchip 16C715, Mitsubishi 37451, PL/M-51 and 8051; CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), MivaScript, Oracle SQL, Progress v8, Python, Ruby TCL/TK Dataflex (updated 12/09/2002) JavaScript VBScript PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) Cisco IOS KiXtart version 2001 Spacecraft Control Language (satellite programming) Windows Interface Language (WinBatch) Ground Control Ruby (interpreted scripting language)

These are all separate downloads that were available from the Boxer Software homepage, the current version has a lots of more contributed syntax highlighting files but it is not known if they are compatible with the OS/2 & DOS versions.

Macro support

• Originally no Macro language but simply a keyboard recording macro function.
• Later added a simple macro language slightly reminiscent of the BRIEF C like macro language (not the original BRIEF LISP dialect) but a lot less powerful, modern Windows versions of the editor are much better in this regard.

Keyboard mappings

• Built in: BOXER (DOS), BOXER (CUA), Borland IDE, Brief, EPM, Epsilon, MS Word, Multi-Edit, Norton, PFS:Write, QEdit, VDE, WordPerfect, and WordStar.
• You can add your own.

License

• Commercial software - Discontinued.
• The BOXER/DOS version retailed for USD 35, later upped to 55.
• The BOXER/TKO and BOXER/OS2 versions retailed for USD 95, later lowered to 89.

Links

• Boxer software homepage

Publications

Local articles

• Andy Pitonyak: Boxer Text Editor version 7.5c for OS/2 - A review from 1998

External articles

• Boxer Brings You High End Features at Low Cost - 1992 - Review of the DOS version 4 by PC Magazine

Tips'n'Tricks

• Ryan Gray : Using CCA with Boxer/OS2 - Getting the text mode BOXER to work with OS/2 clipboards.

Author

• David Hamel
• Boxer Software

P.O. Box 14545

Scottsdale

AZ 85267

U.S.A.

Tel: +1 602 485 1635.