LEXX.

About LEXX

LEXX is a text editor which was probably the first to use live parsing and colour syntax highlighting for marked-up text and programs. It was written by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM in 1985. The name was chosen because he wrote it as a tool for lexicographers, during an assignment for Oxford University Press's 'New 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. It is programmable using dynamically loaded compiled commands or using interpreted commands.