A few weeks ago we featured the excellent Ed for Windows programmer's editor in The Free Software Store. This week we have another: Jussi Jumppanen's equally excellent (and still largely unknown) Zeus for Windows. As most programmers will agree, the editors that are supplied with many programming languages often leave a lot to be desired. As a result, programmers frequently seek out their own specialised editor for code-cutting, and over the years many products like Ed, Brief and QEdit have built hugely loyal fan-bases by filling this need. Zeus for Windows (which currently runs on Win 3.x/95/NT) is a new Australian product with impressive capabilities. It supports four common keyboard mappings (all fully configurable), over a dozen major programming languages (Java, Clipper, xBase, Cobol, SQL, Pascal, Rexx, C/C++ and Fortran amongst them) and has many features that are now "must-haves" in any programming editor worth its name - including infinite undo/redo, colour syntax highlighting, smart syntax indenting and matching braces, background command-line compilation, built-in support for 3rd-party tools, search-and-replace, status bar and toolbar support and much, much more. Zeus only requires 4Mb of RAM and 1Mb of hard disk space and is distributed as shareware by Jussi's company Xidicone Pty Ltd. So if you're still searching for a programming editor you can fall in love with, you really should give Zeus for Windows a run. It's very, very impressive and we really have to make it our Top Pick Of The Week.

Our second selection this week is an unusual new product that solves a very common problem: finding information on your computer. How often have you gone through this sequence: Is the info on my system? (I hope it is). Which application is it in? (Start the app). Which file? (Open the file) Where is it in the file? (Start searching through it....). The honest answer is: "Hey, I do this a lot!" Well, TellMe! from Iceberg Software may change this. TellMe! is designed to provide fast answers to simple questions by mining the data on your computer. TellMe! is distributed free of charge as a starter kit composed of the TellMe! .EXE file and a small swag of custom information databases, and is designed to allow you to retrieve simple information from your system (either your own PC or your corporate network) in a few seconds. It's small, fast and stunningly easy to learn - and the latest version now interfaces with Symantec's ACT! so you can use it to retrieve data from your ACT! databases without needing to boot the main program (more PIM interfaces are on the way). Iceberg hope to make money from TellMe! by producing custom databases (eg: postcodes, Web URL's etc) which sell for around $10-$20 each and to encourage other software manufacturers to make their products TellMe!-capable. The software currently runs on Windows 3.x/95 (a Mac version is planned for later in 1996) and requires 4Mb of RAM and 3Mb of disk space. TellMe! is only 4 months old and its capabilities are steadily growing - but as a new way to make computers more useful it's a clever idea that's certainly worth a look.

Our third and final selection this week is an even more unusual product from Albert Collver (in fact, it's probably the most unusual selection we've ever featured in The Free Software Store!). Calendar Explorer is a 32-bit Windows95/NT program that allows you to explore the Western Church Year (including the major and minor feasts) and generate reports for any year you like. The program allows you to find the date of both Eastern and Western Easter through the centuries, the number of days between dates, perform conversions between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and convert dates to and from Julian Day Numbers. It also offers a Year In Brief viewing mode which shows all 12 months of the year in compact form and a Week Day finder that views the week day for any given date (eg: the next time your birthday will fall on a Saturday). The program requires common .DLL files that most users of Microsoft products will already have on their systems - but in case you don't, the bulk of these .DLLs are also provided for downloading on-site. The program is released as shareware and if you wish to register it, the full registration is only $17.