One of my favourite past times is flicking through old computer magazines, mainly from the 80s. I am currently looking at BYTE magazine circa 1985. Other than the articles and news from that time, I also like to pay attention to the adverts. I believe this gives me a fascinating view of the history of computers from that time.

One of these adverts caught my attention not because it was a full-page, coloured article. Quite the opposite! It was a pretty dull 1/3 of a page advert, black and white, only text. The headline reads: “Program Editing Breakthrough! Get 20% More Done“. The advert was about BRIEF, a text editor created by Solution Systems, and it made me remember that I was actually a user of that editor, albeit a little later (~1990).

At the time, I was still in college but also already working as a software developer, and I remember at some point, for my MS-DOS development work here and there, I used BRIEF quite a lot. I remember I acquired a copy of version 3.1 from a friend (don’t judge me, you’ve been there!), and from that moment, I fell in love with how fast and powerful the editor was!

I didn’t know then, but BRIEF is a backronym for Basic Reconfigurable Interactive Editing Facility), and it was available for MS-DOS. It was created by UnderWare Inc, a company founded by David Nanian and Michael Strickman. Solutions Systems was the publisher, therefore the name at the bottom of the advert above.

From a time when RAM and other resources were scarce, BRIEF was very powerful. You could edit programs of any size, it offered multiple undo/redo, the ability to edit multiple files at the same time, and make them visible on different windows. Unlike modern editors, BRIEF could have more files in memory than visible windows, you could bring them to any window at any time, and you could even have the same file in two different windows.

Another breakthrough feature was the support to compile programs directly from the editor, and you could use many of the most popular compilers of the time.

BRIEF also has a very comprehensive macro language, initially based on LISP and later using a C-like syntax. Many of the functions in the editor used such macros, allowing the users to customize existing workflows at their will. I assume this rings a bell for Sublime editor users.

Among many other features, what I remember the most is the keymap. The developers were fortunate to create clever shortcuts for every function (there were no menus). At some point, BRIEF became so popular that other development tools started to copy the editor keymap, Including juggernauts of the time like dBase, Borland C++, and many more. Since I was a heavy Borland user, I felt right at home using Borland’s marvellous IDEs.

Even today, you can configure popular editors and IDEs to emulate BRIEF’s keymap, including Visual Studio Code and Sublime. I confess that new programmers will unlikely look for a different keymap, but old geezers like myself might enjoy the nostalgia feeling while working.

BRIEF Today

It’s been approximately 30 years since I last used BRIEF, but reading about it makes me feel the urge to see how is the old editor today. BRIEF lived an astonishing success from many years, and in 1991, Borland bought the product, including it among its development tools offering, including Windows and OS/2 versions. At that time, fully-featured IDEs were unbeatable in easy-to-use features, and BRIEF lost its space and was discontinued. The editor’s legacy lives to this day in products like Embarcadero Delphi, though.

To re-live some of the old times, I found BRIEF 3.1 for DOS and fired up my DosBox emulator. I copied the two floppies’ content to a folder and executed the setup program, including settings like tab size, colours, etc. I was sure that all that keybindings would return to my mind and my fingers, but as soon as I saw the blue screen, I was stuck! After some try and error, I got a few shortcuts back, some obvious as CTRL+X to exit, CTRL+W to save the file, etc.

To have a better experience, the ashamed me went to the Internet and looked for a keybindings reference. With a little more practice, I was doing pretty well, now able to easily create new windows with F3+ and move between windows using F1+. It would take a few days of daily use to get my speed back, but I could see that BRIEF could be used today as my primary editor, except for the lack of syntax highlighting, a vital feature it doesn’t have.

Modern Clones

BRIEF is long gone, but I could find three clones currently active (or they seem to be). Two of them are commercial software, and one is open source.

The first is available on briefeditor.com website. Only available for Windows, this new-ish BRIEF incarnation seems to be very close to the original and even offers a very limited free version for you to try. Based on the website 90’s look, I am unsure how active the project is, and with the full version costing a steep US$ 120, I imagine it doesn’t sell that many nowadays with too many free offers. No offence to the developers and the quality of the product!

The next one is CRiSP, another commercial product. CRiSP is clearly an active project, with the last version released late last year. It is a GUI-based program, and it is available for all major platforms. It offers a 21-day trial; after it expires, you must pay a whooping US$ 275.00 to keep using it. From what I see, CRiSP looks like an early 2000s desktop application, and it offers many neat features, including the syntax highlighting that the original lacked. Using the same reasons stated for the previous one, this might be a tough sell these days, but maybe the public is there.

The third modern BRIEF incarnation is Grief, an open-source software that aims to be a really a BRIEF clone, still offering some other features missing in the original. There is an install for Windows, and you can build it reasonably easy for Linux or macOS from the source code. I installed the Windows version, which is BRIEF on its core for sure, but it includes some neat menu-oriented setup and help. The Grief project is active, with new versions being released very often.

(*) I compiled the macOS version successfully, but the keybindings don’t work perfectly, making it hard to use, maybe because of some conflicts with existing shortcuts available only on macOS.

You can download the original BRIEF versions 2.0 and 3.1 here.

Have you ever used Brief? If so, let me know your experience in the comments below!