VZ Editor, a fast and lightweight text editor for MS-DOS, has been made open source and is now available on GitHub – GIGAZINE

“VZ Editor”, which gained popularity as a text editor for MS-DOS, has been made open source 30 years after its last update, and the source code and image files have been published on GitHub.

GitHub – vcraftjp/VZEditor: MS-DOS Text Editor
https://github.com/vcraftjp/VZEditor

VZ Editor was developed by programmer Yoshihiko Hyodo (c.mos, @c_mos for X) and was released in 1987 for the PC-9800 series as an improved version of EZ Editor. It was released on. One of its features was its price of 9,800 yen, which was an unprecedented price for a high-performance text editor at the time, and it entered the stronghold of MIFES, which was the king of domestic text editors.

However, while MIFES was compatible with Windows, VZ Editor was not compatible with Windows and was no longer updated with version 1.6 released in 1994.

After 30 years, the source code of this final version, “VZ Editor version 1.6”, has been released on GitHub. Mr. Hyodo expressed his gratitude to Mr. Mitsuru Nakamura (VC), who was the president of Village Center, for his kind permission to release the work.

Published on GitHub are master disks for PC-9800 and J-3100, master disks for DOS/V, AX, PS/55, and US, manuals from that time, FD image files for emulators, and PCs from that time. “Fun Programming” was serialized in Power magazine.

The manual and “Fun Programming” are markdown format files that can be viewed using Notepad or a text editor.

In addition, a large number of macros have been created in VZ Editor by user volunteers, and although their publication has been postponed due to the inability to contact the author, a “Macros” folder has been prepared for publication at a later date. .