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Some Highlights

• Portability. In particular, there are versions for general terminals on Unix systems, for X11, and for DJGPP. The terminal versions work naturally across telnet/rlogin/slogin between systems with the same or different terminal types, and X11 is network-transparent, anyway.
• Support for multiple windows, including editing of the same file in several windows at the same time
• Advanced block operations, persistent and non-persistent blocks, editable clipboard, automatic copy function
• A reader for GNU Info documentation, including support for compressed info files
• A paragraph mode, useful for editing mail, news, TeX, HTML, etc.
• A quote protection mode for editing mail and news
• Multi-level Undo/Redo capability
• Lex highlighting
• Autosave mode
• Combines the ease of use known from some Dos IDEs with the power of Unix environments, e.g.:
  • Supports function keys (where available on the terminal) and file selection boxes, but also file name completion with Tab; `$' for environment variables as well as `~' and `~user' for home directories, and all the file name wildcards like `*', `?', `[^-]', `{,}'
  • Easy search/replace capabilities, but also regular expression searches and replacements with backreferences
  • Handles files with Unix or Dos line endings on both kinds of systems, without converting them automatically, but with the easy possibility to convert them explicitly at any time.
  • You can invoke an OS shell, but you can also suspend PENG.
  • You can use control characters like Control-C for cursor movement in PENG if you want, but PENG still reacts correctly to external interrupt, termination or hangup signals and saves unsaved changes whenever possible.
  • Readable configuration files in text format, a global one and per-user ones under Unix
  • Simple and numbered backup files
  • Lock files (compatible with vim) to prevent several editors from editing the same file at the same time
  • Easily accessible context-sensitive help, but in the same format (GNU Info) as used by many other programs, and easily extendable for your own tools
  • PENG tools can invoke external processes (e.g., compilers), but they can also fork them to run in the background while you can already go on editing your files.
• Completely configurable colors. Very important. :-)
• A way to open files read-only, from the menu and the command line
• No mouse support. (-: Leaves the mouse to gpm and similar applications.)
• Hotlist for easy access to files edited frequently
• Extensive tool scripting capabilites:
  • Powerful syntax, similar to Unix shells
  • User-defined variables of several types
  • Many pre-defined functions for strings, regular expressions, file names, boolean values, mathematical operations on real and complex numbers, interaction with the user and control of the editor and info reader
  • Conditional statements
  • Access to a message window, suitable for GNU standard message format, but other message formats can be converted. An example converter for `LaTeX' messages is included.
  • PENG can start external processes in the background and still receive their output. Background processes can be killed easily. Very useful for long compilations.
  • Tools can depend on the file name of the current editor and on other conditions, to allow e.g. several versions of a similar tool by the same name for different languages/formats.
  • PENG can display progress messages and a progress bar while running tools if the tools support it.
  • Tools can be executed automatically at the start or termination of PENG.
  • Many built-in tools, including usage of utilities like `grep', syntax macros, and the compiler invocations with hotkeys familiar from other IDEs (for `GPC' and `GCC' and very similarly even for `LaTeX' and `makeinfo'), all fully customizable

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