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BKED, the DOS text editor that rendered text the hard way (tnhh.net)
4 points by mrzool on May 13, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



Very impressive use of modest resources to great effect. From the article:

"BKED (pronounced buh-ked, e as in kept) was the de-facto text editor in Vietnam in the 80s-90s. ... BKED runs on MS-DOS and looks just like Microsft Editor aka edit.com, except for it displays and allows the user to input text in Vietnamese. ... it is a full-blown GUI that runs in Hercules/CGA/EGA/VGA graphics .... It draws every single pixel in its GUI with no acceleration ... It had to do it very quickly and economically – computers in Vietnam at the time were all old secondhand ones imported from the US recycling centers and such. ... it could also do quite sophisticated mathematical formulas and chart drawing. ... the editor was used to typeset the whole suite of national textbooks on every subject in the 90s." Several screenshots in the article demonstrate the features.




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