Brief (text editor)

Brief
Screenshot of a sample Brief session
Original author(s)	UnderWare, Inc.
Developer(s)	Borland International
Initial release	1985;40 years ago (1985)
Stable release	3.1 / May 16, 1992;33 years ago (1992-05-16)
Operating system	MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows
Platform	x86
Type	Text editor

Brief (stylized BRIEF or B.R.I.E.F., a backronym for Basic Reconfigurable Interactive Editing Facility), is a once-popular programmer's text editor in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was originally released for MS-DOS, then IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. The Brief interface and functionality live on, including via the SourceForge GRIEF editor. ^[1]

History

Brief was designed and developed by UnderWare Inc, ^[2] a company founded in Providence, Rhode Island by David Nanian and Michael Strickman, ^[3] and was published by Solution Systems. UnderWare moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1985. Solution Systems released version 2.1 in 1988. ^[4]

In 1990, UnderWare sold Brief to Solution Systems, which released version 3.1. ^[5]

Solution Systems advertised the $195 Brief as a "Program Editing Breakthrough! / Get 20% More Done". ^[6] Solution Systems closed permanently after the sale to Borland. Brief is no longer sold by Borland.

Features

The original product features contain:

• A Lisp-like macro language; later, a C-like macro language was added
• Completely configurable keyboard
• Template editing and smart indenting for all major micro-compilers
• Multiple undo/redo
• Unlimited file size (restricted only by disk space)
• Program compiling from within Brief, with "go to the next error line" service
• Support for all major popular compilers
• User configurations to support any other compiler with menu-driven setup
• EMS caching for all files and macros
• Mouse support
• Complete edit operations
• Regular expression search and replace
• Multiple windows, including multiple windows on the same source file
• Ability to set extremely high key-repeat rates

Brief for Windows features

• All the features of Brief for DOS and OS/2
• The first programmer's editor to make use of the Windows WYSIWYG environment
• Color coding of language constructs
• Multitask within Windows environment
• Full use of Windows memory for caching all files and macros
• Ability to spawn off compiles to a DOS box without leaving the editor

Popularity

Both the Brief interface and its functionality had a following, and they live on via SourceForge's GRIEF. ^[1]

Clones

Some Vim and Emacs packages provide Brief functionality. There was more than one program written to provide Brief-like functionality:

• Brief Basic
• Brief Editor ^[7]
• Boxer
• Short
• Terse
• CRiSP ^[8]
• GRIEF ^[1]
• SlickEdit
• Zeus

Emulators

The Brief keyboard layout became popular and was implemented in or emulated by other editors, such as Lugaru Epsilon, by providing a remapping of the keyboard shortcuts and editor behavior; dBase, an early DOS-day database, also copied this keyboard mapping. ^{[9] [10]}

• Borland C++ 5.0
• CodeWright
• Embarcadero Delphi, formerly Borland
• Embarcadero JBuilder, formerly Borland
• JED - by John E. Davis
• Lugaru Epsilon
• Microsoft Visual Studio (Built-in) 6, 2003, 2005, 2008
• Microsoft Visual Studio (via Addin) 2010, 2012, 2013 ^[11]
• Platform Builder for Microsoft Windows CE 5.0 ^[12]
• RimStar
• TextPad
• The SemWare Editor
• VEDIT
• CRiSP Editor Emulator (Emacs CRiSP mode) ^[13]
• BRIEF Editor Emulator (Emacs BRIEF mode) ^{[14] [15]}

References

1. "GRIEF: BRIEF clone" . Retrieved 2014-10-01.
2. William Zachmann (August 17, 1987). "Underware's handy Brief". Computerworld .
3. Mark Malamad (June 26, 1984). "This 'Underware' is not for wearing". Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio).
4. "Solutions Systems: Brief editor, version 2.1". Computerworld . September 12, 1988.
5. "About BRIEF Text Editor". In 1990, UnderWare sold BRIEF to Solution Systems .. which released version 3.1 .. a year later sold BRIEF to Borland.
6. "Program Editing Breakthrough!". BYTE (advertisement). March 1983. p. 326. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
7. "Brief Editor, an incomplete rewrite, ver: 4.50" . Retrieved 2008-07-08.
8. "CRiSP: Brief Compatible Programmers Text Editor". Crisp, Inc. Vital, Inc. Retrieved 2012-05-14.
9. "Brief Editor keyboard mappings". dBase.com.
10. "brief-keyboard". Lugaru Software Ltd.
11. "Visual Studio » BRIEF keyboard emulation implemented in VS2010 AddIn (downloadable project)". Mark McGinty. 7 April 2012.
12. "Text Editor Emulation". Microsoft. Retrieved 2007-10-12.
13. "GNU ELPA - crisp". elpa.gnu.org. GNU ELPA Packages. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
14. "GNU ELPA - brief". elpa.gnu.org. GNU ELPA Packages. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
15. Sander, Jon (2018-08-16). "The Past Comes Around Again". irreal.org. Retrieved 2023-02-03.

External links

• TextEditors Wiki: BriefFamily