LEXX (text editor)


LEXX is a text editor which was possibly the first to use live parsing and colour syntax highlighting. It was written by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM around 1985. The name was chosen because he wrote it as a tool for lexicographers, during an assignment for Oxford University Press's second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The program ran on mainframes under VM/CMS. LEXX's design was based on several other editors written by the same author augmented by the ability to dynamically parse text and display colour on the new colour terminals that had recently become available.
LEXX uses dynamically-loaded parsers which assign classes of elements to fonts and colors. It allows indentation to be used to format and show the structure of the file being edited, and other formatting options allow the hiding of selected classes of text, such as tags. A collection of screenshots is available.
LPEX is a reimplemented derivative of the LEXX concept, originally produced for OS/2 and AIX. It now also runs on Windows, Linux, and the Java JVM.