Wishmaster said:
Hello,
I'm in the process of translating music lyrics and I'd like to work in a
2-panel text editor: one "panel" for the original text (on the left) and
other for the new text (on the right).
Is there any text editor that can do this?
Thanks.
I've been trying out various free text editors; I've found each of them
to be frustrating to a writer.
http://www.pspad.com/en/ would be great:
it's a really fine, civilized, versatile program -- except for one
exasperating problem: I've found no way to have it wrap a line while
typing -- it'll wrap the line only after the fact: if it's selected as a
paragraph and then wrapped. It'll even save it, if you like, with the
proper hard CR+LF boundary symbols at line ends (most won't).
For a writer, anything sluggish is totally out. And working in two
side-by-side windows may do the trick for you, but I'd rather use
something that can specifically do it.
The only tool that comes to mind is the magnificent XyWrite -- the most
versatile word processing program I've ever used. We're talking raw
power here: it was used to publish/edit/typeset newspapers around the
world; it was the word processor of the US Supreme Court.
And it will, indeed, do locked columns -- as many as you want. It was
used for doing plays and yes, triple-column film scripts complete with
tricky indendations. You can jump back and forth. It's abandonware, and
you can undoubtedly get it someplace. It's so efficient that it runs
with blazing speed on a 1984 original IBM PC.
Oh, there are a few things you should know:
It's DOS (or forget it).
It runs great on Windows 98 (and probably Windows ME, maybe even XP, etc.).
It's command-driven. There's a learning curve. The commands are easy to
memorize and handling is fast as hell. You want to indent all your
paragraphs five spaces, you go "<F5>, IP5" and hit <Enter>. And blam!
all your text is moved in a flash. Commands are entered in the text in a
way that makes them easy to edit if you desire to do so.
It's not WYSIWYG.
Development stopped around 1996 due to the publisher being "seduced and
destroyed" by an arrangement with IBM.
In order to get it to do tricks, you have to customize it -- this takes
some work. However, there are folks who have already written the custom
routines that you'd need. When you've finished your customization, use
will be as sublime as playing on a professional-grade musicical instrument.
There are still XyWrite junkies around the world, with good reason. I
miss it -- by comparison, using Word, Word Perfect, and even Open Office
is sluggish agony to me. FrameMaker is a slog by comparison. XyWrite
will absolutely do what you want.
Interested?
Richard
