The Editor can be configured to launch third party tools from buttons or menus. The Editor commands !, Shell and CommandToWindow are appropriate for this purpose.
! (and the equivalent command ExecuteCmd) takes the current selection in the editor, if any, and pipes it to the standard input of the specified command, and then replaces the selection with the standard output of the specified command. If there is no selection, the command gets no input, and the output is inserted at the cursor.)
Shell runs a shell command with no input/output redirection.
CommandToWindow runs a shell command and creates a new editor window which the standard output of the command is redirected to.
For more information on !, Shell, and CommandToWindow, see Chapter 7, "Editor commands".
Here is an example configuration that invokes some simple UNIX commands:
menu: MyTools {{'insert pretty date' ! date "+%l:%M %p on %B %e, %Y"} {'count words' CommandToWindow "printf %8s%8s%8s%9s\\\\n lines words chars filename ; wc %FILE"}}
menu: EditMenuBar {{&File ->EditFile} {&Edit ->EditEdit} {V&iew ->EditView}{&Block ->EditBlock} {&Tools ->EditTools} {MyTools ->MyTools} {&Version ->EditVersion} {&Config ->Config} {&Help ->EditHelp}}
Recall that an easier way to configure menus is to use the Menus... button on the General tab of the Config > Options... dialog.