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JOE Hits 3.0
orasio writes " Joe's Own Editor , a unix editor very much like the old Turbo-Pascal 4 editor, or WordStar, used and enjoyed by us console freaks who still miss the old DOS days, and cannot finish understanding vi's modes, has been revamped, adding syntax highlighting and internationalization support after many years without new features. The Sourceforge project is open for contributors since a year ago, but this is the first major feature improvement, that brings new life to JOE as a neat console-based programmer's editor." Joe is one undervalued program -- less arcane than vi, less cumbersome than emacs.
Well yeah since it now has Unicode support. Which is quite handy if you need to edit an XML document, HTML or something else with accents.
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JOE isn't.
So when I learned vi, I could use the knowledge on every Unix system I've ever been on. That alone makes it more useful than JOE.
JOE's really JAE.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
does it have a calendar, calculator, email-client and of course tetris build in?
Make that Turbo Pascal 3 which has the wordstar-like editor. Version 4 and later had a full blown GUI, which got later replaced by Borlands TurboVision IDE. Which made it, at least for me, the best CUI there was.
bash$
I want Qedit for unix. It's macros were extremely usable on the fly and I've found nothing else that balance of power and features that it had.
Column copy, split windows, multiple macros that could be quickly defined by a simple to use keystroke recorder. Completely configurable. Oh, and fast and small.
I've tried most of the unix terminal editors. I end up using either vi or nano.
plurvert
Everyone should use Joe because CTRL-k-d is so much easier and more intuitive than ESC :wq!
Joe was a nice alternative for DOS refugees when vi was the only other choice, but X-windows based editors make everything nicer...try middle click cut-and-paste for starters.
Unless we are all sitting at green Wyse 50 terminals, why are we still so married to command line editors? I am guilty of it too. vi is my God.
realistically, how many ppl use Joe?
Yes I've used wordstar in past. And Joe as well. But it seems to me the world has moved far far ahead in the last few years. Sure, vi and emacs lovers wouldnt even think of using any other editor, but IMO, for any serious editing purposes there already are a variety of editors available.
So perhaps, this is news for those who get a nostalgic feeling about the good-old-days. Maybe some will even d/l and give it a go, but the very fact that the this is the first major feature improvement even though the SourceForge project has been open for contributors for over a year, speaks volumes about its usage, demand and popularity.
http://efil.blogspot.com/
UNIX isn't.
So when I learned Windows, I could use the knowledge on every computer I've ever been on. That alone makes it more useful than UNIX.
Cannot believe the bunch of negative comments on Joe... what are you trolling about? In the old times, for most people getting into Linux from DOS, JOE was the only editor worth to be relied on. vi was cryptic as hell and emacs was... emacs.
Long life dear old JOE!
---
All my submissions to Slashdot rejected... and proud of it!
Later I had an affair with Jed and found its syntax hiliting to be a bless. And, I could figure out how to get the background black!
Now, I've grown up and am much to comfortable to develop in anything less than a good IDE.
Give me CygnusEd or give me death! Now there was a text editor.
BTW, had to smile at the end of the editorial - as if anything could be more arcane than vi and/or more cumbersome than EMACS!
that's a turnoff for a start... and an awfull lot of the younger slashdotters will be going "Wordstar"??? Yes kids... it was big but Wordstar failed to keep up in the feature race back in the days of Wordperfect for Dos etc... I use nano and or pico myself...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Dude, if Windows is everywhere you go, I simply don't want to hang out with you.
Have you tried using Jed?
For the record, I'm was leaving Joe *right now* for Jed.
With version three, I think I'll take another look at my favourite editor.
vim is upward compatible to vi.
So if you master vim you can edit with vi. vi is on every unix box, even on the most "naked" ones.
In addition, vi runs on practically any terminal and any connection, even when logged in from half around the world through several "hops". (I'm typing this on an old Ampex terminal (vt 100 like) via a 9600 Baud connection.)
# vim works like you think.
Many commands are "mnemonic". In a recent post, Randy has put it quite nicely:
As I said earlier, vi works like I think. I think "replace this word with that one;" "delete this line;" "yank this paragraph and put it down there;" "move there and insert a word;" "format this paragraph." Vi provides commands that map to how I think. Some of the time I'm just typing in text without editing it, but normally I'm editing text. I tend to write something, then go back and make it perfect. I prefer to copy something that is already there and then modify it to be what I need. This expresses very well what I believe has been a major design goal of vi!
# Now for the modal/modeless controversy.
If you really think about it, it boils down to the following: it's a matter of how you define "modal"/"modeless"; in other words: if vim is modal, so is emacs - if emacs is modeless, so is vim.
The reason: in emacs you are by default in "insert" mode; you have to type "ctrl-m
While programming, you are at least half of the time in command mode (if you are an Emacs user you might not be aware of that because nobody calls it like like that). The difference between Vim and Emacs is that most most Vim commands are mnemonic and need much less modifier keys, such as Ctrl, Alt, etc.
# I believe that modal editors are more efficient for programming (and similar tasks, like writing latex).
This is because I find myself much more often editing text which is already there, rather than producing new text which hasn't been there before.
This goes well with the observation, which someone reported in the comp.editors news group about joint strain. I almost get joint strain myself when I see emacs users holding down the ctrl or alt key all the time with their pinky or thumb
# I'm not sure what the reason is, but I've never seen emacs users who actually used all those feature which emacs-the-editor offers. (At the office, I'm surrounded by emacs and nedit users
I suspect, this is because it's simply just too difficult to remember all those ctrl-alt chords.
# Speed: CPU-wise, vim is still by far more efficient than joe.
Try running joe on an SGI Indy! Or on a PC/286!
Clearly GUI editors aren't much use until you can get X running. I use vi my self, but none of the existing Linux text mode editors use the "standard" keyboard shortcuts such as cntl-c for copy. To old win/dos users I would recommend pico as the least esoteric of the non-X editors. Does anyone know of a win98 edit.com clone for linux?
I think it is. I never knew about this project until now, and was quite afraid I was going to have to learn a new ide when I wanted to return to programming.
There are those of us who consider the turbo pascal interface an extension of our fingers, because we used it so heavily back in the day.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The old hands among us will remember and still have the hidden ability of WordStar keystrokes 'programmed' into our fingers. While many of us have moved on to more powerful editors, we still appreciate that Wordstar like editors give efficient and competent editing capabilities in a small package. There are many of us that don't like drop down menus since we actually spend time writing code and find the action of hunting a mouse menu cumbersome.Deriding these tools because they are DOS like is irrelevant
While I don't often use it, Joe is a good example of this class of editor and I know many people who enjoy using it. While I am firmly in the Vi camp, I enjoy the fact that they have the choice to use a tool that suits them.
However, with the addition of syntax colouring, it may well become my editor of choice (instead of nedit) for when I'm doing multiplatform work and the practical and psychological leap of hopping from a WhineDoze box with Visual Studio to a linux box with Vi (utterly different paradigm) causes tangled fingers (and nerves :) )
(Please feel free to donate large sums to pay for my treatment when windows finally drives me nuts)
On a more general /. rant, over the last few years more an more trolls have invaded our forum. Too many socially defective individuals think that purile comments and insults are somehow witty, even though they have nothing of value to add to the discussion. All too often I see the hard work of developers who are donating their creations to our community belittled by people who I doubt even have the skills of a script kiddy.
Please people, if you have nothing of value to say, then just don't say it.
I used to use JOE but moved to vi when I found myself working on more JOE-less machines. I used because it had the Wordstar keys I was used to from the DOS editor I used at the time. There are still a lot of people out there with DOS skills who find life difficult when moving to a Linux or similar environment. For many this might seem like a retrograde step, but I have often wished that there was a port of the DOS 5 Edit interface on a Linux editor, complete with clunky MS style menu system. If people are to be encouraged to move operating systems, a few familiar looking tools would help them along their way.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
CTRL-c to exit without saving ...
CTRL-k, s save
CTRL-k, x exit and save
CTRL-k, b start block
CTRL-k, k end blow
CTRL-k, c copy/paste block
CTRL-k, f find
vi has a steep learning curve, no onscreen help, it trapped me too many times for me to give it a chance whe I first started out.
Joe was the only one besides pico with on screen help that I could find in my early slackware days. It stuck and I still use it all the time. In the mean while I've still learned enough vi to use it when I have to.
God, root, what is the difference?
It's not a clone but mcedit is pretty nice. It's included with the mc program which is also a nice file manager.
There really is no shortage of cross-platform editors available -- it's mostly the IDE addicts that risk being locked into a platform-specific editor.
I use vi-derivatives like vim everywhere. There are no shortage of Win32-based implementations, both for text window and for GUI use.
GNU Emacs is also on any platform I've ever used, and MicroEmacs was almost as portable.
Then there are multi-platform IDE's like Eclipse or SunONE Studio.
I really don't understand why people lament when editors don't have more active support and new features. There just isn't much need for more editors unless someone comes up with a truly unique approach to manipulating text.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I use mcedit contained in Midnight Commander, more nostalgia and userfriendliness than either Joe or Pico. It also has a nice blue color which remind me of the days of dos edit or wp5.1. Screenshot here.
"cannot finish understanding vi's modes"?
Give over, man. It has *two* modes! You can always get back to the default mode by hitting escape.
Even iPod has 2 modes (wheel fer scrolling / wheel fer volume)
Now Emacs, that's another matter. I've put serious effort into learning Emacs on three separate occasions in the last 10 years, and every time I gave up because even the simplest thing requires you to remember a seriously obscure series of keystrokes.
-sigh- should have learned not to join editor flamewars by now.
If you load a file with non-BMP characters in it they will come out as garbage. If you try to input any such characters it will mess up every single characters except those with a code point less than 128.
However, Editors like Joe still have their little niche in the software ecosystem since they are small (not sure how big the new one is yet, hope it doesn't make this comment look foolish by dwarfing Emacs
Much as I like Vi, sometimes there are editing tasks that are more intuatively done in Nedit or Joe
Regarding Emacs users only using a subset of commands, what is wrong with this? In fact, how many Vim users know or use all the commands? Like Emacs, it is safe to say that some commands are little enough used, or complex enough to confuse and lead people to solve the problem another way. For a normal mortal example, take regexes. I have used Vi and Unix style regexes almost every day for the last 15 years. Even so, I still have cause to stop and think about some solutions. Some incantations probably do look like they should be done at midnight under a full moon
My argument with an editor has always been practicality. If you can use a subset to get your job done, then why worry is you don't learn anything else?
BTW, nano is the editor of choice in the Gentoo setup. Good for them.
I didn't get the job...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Clearly GUI editors aren't much use until you can get X running. I use vi my self, but none of the existing Linux text mode editors use the "standard" keyboard shortcuts such as cntl-c for copy. To old win/dos users I would recommend pico as the least esoteric of the non-X editors. Does anyone know of a win98 edit.com clone for linux?
Actually, for Windows users migrating over to *nix, 'ee' [easyeditor] would be much more intuitive. The only problem [as I see it] with ee is the different implementations between different platforms--different control key sequences for the same action, depending upon OS.
Why is that?
What, no screenshots? :)
Or is it just a slow news day?
That, and the fact that it's 5:00 in the freakin' morning! Man, give it a few hrs - you'll get your SCO update.
less arcane than vi
:wq or just :x...
Yeah, because Ctrl+KX is so much less arcane than
#include "sig.h"
and more intuitive
when are ppl going to realize that 'intuitive' is not an objective standard and that it means different things to different people? Intuitive implies a pre-learned context that not everyone shares. It's juat a fancy way of saying, "I like it!".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Anyone who ever has to work in a cross platform enviroment should at least be able to use vi. This is everywhere.
Personally, I like it but it took some dragging me across the hot coals by one stubborn instructor in a week long class to get me to adopt it. Once I did, I liked it. Now I use GVIM on the PC and vi on the unix platforms. GVIM on the PC is real nice, it has language support and pull down windows. What I'd like to do is learn how to set up XEMACS to run in VI mode so I can get the best of both words- but I am to busy doing work or reading slashdot to learn.
Dude, you can download any editor with in 3minutes.
just ftp/http/wget it from 100000 sources, there are binaries for everything, including dreamcast to your microwave and vacume tubes
VI is everything, god, talk about lazy.
Yes, windows is everywhere, but are you using it?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That is the question, all right.
A typical Emacs user rates the virtues of their editor as power, extensibility and flexibility.
Those are Unix-type virtues. Over in the GUI desktop world, they don't count for much. What people want is simplicity and discoverability. Multiple ways to do things, ways that are similar between different programs. No macros, no customisation, no syntax highlighting, no language-specific optimisations, because they're not programmers and they're not programming. Thus they don't want or need a programmers' editor. They want a users' editor.
The MS-DOS 5+ editor is a model of these virtues for a text-mode app. It's CUA-compliant, the Wordstar standard for the 1990s and onwards, it can be driven from the keyboard or mouse, as you prefer, using standard commands, and is as close to a Windows (or indeed MacOS) app as you can get in an 80x25 console.
It's good.
And I know of no free xNix product anything like it.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
Funny that, replace "text editor" with "operating system" and you've just described the stereotypical Windows zealot.
As with anything, it all comes down to what you determine to be the best tool for the job. If you work with all sorts of *NIX OSes, groking vi is valuable as it is ubiquitous.
An interesting side-effect of using vi is the tie-ins between vi, ed, and sed, as they all use largely the same command set. Knowing how to do something like a search-and-replace in one translates easily to the other two, and vice versa.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Too bad they have provided only a limited list of syntax files. As an example, there is no syntax highlighting file for C++ programs yet.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
When switching to Un*x/Linux some years ago Joe was a life-saver for me, it was simple, a well known spot on an unfamiliar landscape :-). After a few years with most of the unfamiliarity gone I found myself wanting efficiency/performance in my daily programming, so I tried vim. For weeks, I was feeling very satisfied with my ability to do some basic editing (without using cursor keys, of course :-)), then I realized I didn't like it and I've been an emacs user since.
There is so much to learn, you have to choose wisely. However, if you're serious about programming you will invest much energy over the years in learning an HTML editor, a good C/C++ editor, a docbook editor and perhaps even write your own editors for specific purposes. This realization made me pick kitchen-sink-emacs. But I still do not touch cursor keys.
Why am I "married" to command line editors? There are really two reasons: Flexibility of context for use, availability in the context I am, and the price of screen real estate.
I'll address these in opposite order (which I think may be in reverse of priorities, but I'm not sure):
A plain xterm with a minimal border takes less screen real estate than a GUI editor. Screen real estate is a limited commodity - I'll do more or less anything to get more space for what I'm actually working on instead of decorations. And what I'm working on is the text I'm editing, not the buttons and menus that sit there.
A "command-line-based editor" (started from command line and run in the same window allows me to edit a file *in the same visual context as I already was*. This means that I have less of context change than if I either start a new window or use an editor launcher to get a buffer in an already running editor.
And finally, a terminal-based editor gives me flexibility to use the same editor in most contexts I use an editor. I can run it in a console to fix up a config file on a machine that hasn't got X yet, I can run it remotely on a server that isn't supposed to have X installed, I can run it on a remote machine I don't trust to have an X connection to my box (as an X connections allows keyboard snooping), I can run it when I sit on a Windows box with no X and should fix an issue with a server for a customer that use Windows desktops and Unix servers, I can run it when there is enough latency for X to be a pain, I can run it against servers where an X based editor takes too much resources (yes, these exists - for instance, I'd feel bad about running an X based editor on the FreeBSD.org servers, for resource reasons), etc, etc, etc.
Basically, there are a couple of direct UI advantages to terminal based editors compared to X based editors, as well as there being a lot of times it just isn't feasible to run an X editor. Until an X editor in itself is noticably better than the terminal based editors (and that day may come, but I don't know of any X based editor that is clearly better) people like me will keep running only terminal based editors, instead of running an X based editor with a side-dish of a *different* terminal-based editor whenever we can't run the X-based one.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
I know, this is about JOE, not VI, but the submission DOES bring up an almost universal misconception people have about vi.
The whole "insert mode" versus "command mode" thing in vi?
It's a mistake. There is no "insert mode".
VI is a command-oriented editor. You're always entering a command. The "insert mode" is just an incomplete insert command. The command structure of VI is basically a simplified subset of TECO.
Once one quits thinking of it as being in this mode or that mode, and thinks of inserting text as a command, 99% of the problems people seem to have with vi just drop away.
Joe (the Joe in JOE) was my college roomate. He'd stumble in in the middle of the night to rave about this or that optimization, and how he'd figured out the perfect way to do such-and-such.
Technically, the one thing Joe kicked most other editors asses at (except perhaps vi) was its ability to provide a user-friendly text editor environment over slow connections. Joe paid a lot of attention to optimizing the screen redraws to ensure that the minimum number of characters were sent over the pipe. Back in the days of 1200 baud modems and painfully slow cross-country telnet sessions, this made a big difference.
It's funny how JOE (the editor) keeps turning up... I hacked my TiVo recently following all of those instructions on the Internet, and was amused to see that the editor of choice for TiVo hackers is... Joe!
Later today I'll be installing Gentoo on what is going to be my home theater box. The first program I'll emerge? Joe. Simple as that.
My first text editor in UNIX was vi. I hated it's arcane commands, but saw it's usefulness if I was actually on the 300 baud connection it was designed for. I was then introduced to pico. I used pico for a few years, and it's just about as simple of a text editor as you would want. The commands are fairly easy, but sometimes I needed to go to the help screens, and hated navigating through them to fine some of the stranger options I wanted. I was also frustrated by the lack of advanced features that I knew from vi, like command line pipes and such.
I don't recall from where, but a few years later in 1997, I found joe. As a former pico and vi user, I really liked joe. It allowed you to show all the shortcuts on the top of the screen while you were editing documents, so it was easier to learn than pico, and it allowed many of the advanced functions of vi.
For instance, command line pipes are probably my most used joe feature that wasn't available in pico (maybe someone snuck it in recently). You can select a bunch of text, and hit Ctrl-K/. You are then prompted for a command line that all this text will be sent through. Your command line can be as easy as "sort", and all of your lines that you are selected, or as complex as a command-line perl script. For me, the most common are sort, uniq, cut, and perl.
On top of that, joe felt natural. From 1987 to 1996 I used Wordstar throughout all of my school reports. I knew all of the key combinations by heart.
I get weird looks from other senior UNIX admins still when they ask "vi or emacs?", and I answer "joe". I've been doing UNIX admin work now for 8 years, and still hate vi to this very day. I know enough to get a machine repaired enough to install joe, however. joe, screen, and zsh are the first 3 things to get installed on any machine I administer: from Linux, to Solaris, to IRIX to FreeBSD. When I teach new people UNIX, I teach them with joe, not vi. If I ever meet Joseph Allen, I'll be sure to buy him a drink!
Uh, not the way I think. Not the way most people think. Most people, especially those new to the UNIX platform, have no clue. Does alert you to the help facilities on starting up? Does Vim just let you start typing?
Mnemonics are sweet and all, but they are useless unless you already know the command and you are trying to remember it. Joe was really one of the first editors that made it easy for newbies to get help straight off the bat.
You're talking out of your ass here. Have you tried running joe on a slow platform? I have... 16 Mhz 68000 UNIX systems, under a 80186 (yes, "1", that's not a typo) at 10Mhz under DOS. What's more I've used it over 1200 baud modems, raw telnet connections across the country back when you were lucky to have a 56k baud line shared with an entire campus. It worked perfectly. I'm not saying that Vim can't do that as well, but you obviously have no clue when it comes to Joe's system requirements. Maybe you're thinking it's some offshoot of EMACS?
Here are my qualifications: I've been using UNIX for 32 years, starting with ed, the original line editor. No screen editors then because we didn't have screens. They didn't show up until around 1975. Soon after Bell Labs employees who went to Berkeley started bringing vi back with them.
Anyway, now for my opinions:
1. One must distinguish between the learnability of an editor and its usability. (True of any user interface, in fact.) For UNIX character-oriented screen editors, there is a huge difference between the two. For other user interfaces the difference is not so great, but it is in this case. Go to a beginner learning vi and you will find that the modes are confusing. Go to an experienced vi user, and you will find that he or she is barely aware of the modes.
2. I edit UNIX files a lot, but in two very different ways: The first is occasional use, right at the console, when I'm unfamiliar with the system or just setting it up. In this case the last thing I want to do is install an editor. I would be happy to use ed; I just want something quick to, for example, set up an fstab file. The second kind of use is for everyday editing, and for that I'm willing to take the time to install what I want. Actually, though, because I have so many different machines, I don't bother. As soon as the system is able to, I go to my primary machine and access the new machine via SSH or Xterm.
I used to think, as many others here do, that vi was the essential editor to learn because it is always there. Imagine my surprise when I installed gentoo the other day and found no vi! Something I'd never heard of, nano, was there instead. OK, fine, Control-o to write the file. At least it was listed at the bottom of the screen. Soon I "emerged" vi (vim, really), and the Gentoo system was back in the fold.
For everyday use, I never use a character editor anyway. I did once, but stopped around 10 or 12 years ago. (Guys, I'm way older than most of you, but even I know that it's 2004!) So for me (given my description of the roles editors play, above) joe has no use whatsoever. In fact, it solves a problem that I don't actually have.
Nonetheless, I wish the new joe project all the best. WordStar (which I used a bit in the mid-1980s) was a great piece of work, and it's nice to see it live on.
Check SIMTEL's archives. Ages and ages ago there was a version of Joe for DOS, but Joe gave up on it since it was a pain in the ass to develop for DOS with all that 64K memory segment crap.
Anyhow, a quick Google turned up this file. It's version 2.2, which doesn't have up-to-date features, but it runs.
There was a thread months back about getting a package picked up by the major Linux distro's. The funniest response said "Write a text editor, man -- there just aren't enough text editors in Linux".
After 300 odd posts, the only point worth saving that I've thus far seen is that Joe is friendly to people who still think in terms of some program they used in the eighties.
So how about somebody writes the kind of editor we need NOW?
The biggest challenge over the past few years has been editing *ML text on servers via browsers, and making it BOTH XHTML (or some subset thereof) and user-friendly. I've seen 20-odd attempts to do something *like* this, but nothing that actually puts the two together.
IMHO then, the #1 most helpful thing that could be written at the moment is a browser-mod for Mozilla that would allow a web form to attach a DTD (and a stylesheet) to a TextArea, which the browser would then respect by firing up an XML editor that followed the given XML definition. Xopus could be a good model for how this might work.
I won't say there hasn't been progress -- I'm writing and spellchecking this HTML in gVim via Mozex at this moment. We're getting there! But the DTD linking can only really occur in the browser.
(Write it myself, I hear you say? I don't have 3 months free to get my C up to speed. Anyone want to code this in exchange for a website?) :D
Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about operating systems. I was talking about text editors. Which I feel is a totally different class of problem/difficulty. Why do I need a manual to do the simplest and most basic things in a text editor? Seriously.
As for that "it's a steep learninig curve, but once you learn it it's powerful" statement people like to bring up, things like Joe are powerful because they do not have a steep learning curve. What exactly is it that vi's steep learning curve gives people apart from a feeling of "eliteness", that can't be found elsewhere in easier to use software? What's the pay-off?
[...] groking vi is valuable as it is ubiquitous
How come that is the only argument I hear from people about why vi is so great? "It's everywhere". So is windows. So what.
--
Simon
If being installed everywhere is a must, then you should use ed, that way you could use your editor, even if your only way to read output is a line printer, or maybe cat > file.txt, that is everywhere too ;)
I'm a sysadmin and can use vi fairly well if I don't have joe available, just because I feel more confortable at it, and I don't think that is a problem, but I like to install bash, joe, less, top, lsof and several things, not because it can't be done on a clean install, but why not use some extra tools?.
For me the advantage of joe over all the other editors is that it has a *very easy* learning curve, and I can introduce new ppl to Unix text editing in a few minutes, also time is not wasted because is joe is a lightweight and very powerful editor if you go deep into it, a lot of the combos are useful in the prompt of several shells because they are similar to emacs.
Have you ever tried to guide through telephone a guy who hasn't have a clue of unix through editing a conf file with vi? I have been through that some times, and joe served its purpose nicely.
Can't understand all this banging is all about choices.
You know speaking of editors what I really want is something capable of column editing. Under windows I found ultraedit but nothing with linux. Makes me wish for ISPF again.
Mandrake 7.0 had vi, but that thing is a horrid joke no matter what anyone says (I'll be flamed for this). I found JOE a lot easier to use, and it was possible to discover what was going on in the program, as opposed to having to look up how to quit vi on the net somewhere. I actually started using JOE because it shares the same name as me ;).
I can't spell ripburger
FTE also has menus. But the project seems dead...
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
So it is a great way to 'move up the ladder' of editor functionality/productivity.
Incidentally, the first unix editor I used was 'ed'. For those arguing for an editor to be used on every system, it should be the ancient 'ed' which is even a part of the rescue shells like sash(this is what you use when glibc gets messed up somehow or you messed up ld.so.conf and none of your dynamically linked binaries work, ;).
VI doesn't have modes, damn it! VI has commands, period. It so happens that some commands have arguments, one of the possible arguments is text to be inserted into the file. There is no "insert mode" and "command mode". If you learn VI keeping this fact firmly in mind, you'll have no problems. If you try to keep track of "insert mode" vs. "command mode" you'll get lost faster than you can say "dt,f)P".
People get so hung up about VI's "modes" they miss its true brilliance - its orthogonal command structure: a VI command is usually a combination of (1) character(s) indicating which action to take followed by (2) character(s) indicating what area of the file is affected. For example, if 'w' moves the cursor one word, and '$' moves it to the end of the line, then you can combine them with the 'd' (delete) action to obtain 'dw' - delete word and 'd$' - delete to the end of the line.
When you insert text, you type something like "aText", reading "add-to-right-of-cursor" "Text" "done". "Text" is just an argument to the "add" command (there are various other commands that also insert text into the file). There is no "insert mode", there's just "writing the argument to an insertion command".
This is much more intuitive than remembering that control-W or alt-E deletes a word and control-T or alt-Q deletes to the end of the line. It is also much, much more powerful, since at the price of N+M commands you get all N*M combinations. No other editor comes even close. I'll bet most non-VI users don't know whether their editor even has a command to delete to the end of the line, and even less what the command is if there is one. No to mention useful things like "cut everything between this parenthesis" ("d%"), or "copy the next function argument" ("yt,").
*That* is what VI is all about. It is also why so many editors can be made to emulate each other's keystrokes, but they can't emulate VI.
I have had friends learning VI, and once this simple notion "clicked" they became proficient very quickly. Watching people learn VI is rather fun... first, make sure they understand the above. Then, and only then, let them work through the tutorial, and in general use VI for all their editing work.
For the first few days, they'll tend to throw a chair at you if you ask them how well things are going. Don't worry, that's a normal response. Most people drop off at this stage, but since your vic... - sorry, friend - knows why he's going through this, he'll pull through.
Within a week you'll see the "click" happening. It is easy to verify; at this point, be prepared to duck another chair if you dare suggest to the new VI convert that he give it up for the "intuitive" editor he's been using before. The real fun part is having plenty of witnesses to both the "before" and "after" reactions.
Now, if someone decides, for some mysterious reason, the universe needs yet another editor, at least do it *right*! The "perfect" editor would use the VI way of constructing commands, but all commands would start with control-X or alt-X, so that normal ASCII characters would be just inserted. My biggest disappointment with Emacs is that it doesn't work this way. I'm certain it is possible to write an Emacs mode that _does_ work this way, but nobody did (except, of course, VIPER - which makes Emacs emulate VI).
I have been using VI ever since its first version came out for UNIX version 7, and AFAIK, in all this time, *nobody* has *ever* came up with another editor that uses VI-like combined operator/operand commands. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. I suspect a lot of it is due to people getting so hung up about VI having "modes" and therefore being so "bad" there's nothing good to learn from it. Well, their loss!
Well, I (and many others) will hang on to our out-"moded" editor. VI addiction is so strong that I have personally ported VI to VMS to satisfy it. Today we have VIM running on every imaginable platform, so getting our fix is easier than ever.
Tm
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Techincally, :!man vi is onscreen help. Not well organized, or user-friendly. But you can get onscreen help from vi.
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
Having worked for companies that preferred both emacs and vi, I've learned both reasonably well.
The best editor is the one that meets your needs. I consider all of these as terminal editors, good for quick and dirty edits of small scripts or config files. I'm personally partial to vi, and use it frequently for such tasks.
The best GUI editor I've ever found is JEdit. It's fat, written in Java (not universially installed by any means), and likes to take up screen real estate. But it has so many features to make text-editing painless! My goodness, it's like the good-parts of every other text editor I've ever worked with, and it's got syntax higlighting etc. for every language I've ever heard of. No offense to the GUI versions of VI and emacs, but they've been roundly beaten.
Personally, if I'm going to get serious about editing code, it's almost always better to either transfer the files to my local box or install JEdit on the remote system. I lose a little time in setup, but I can work much more quickly and efficiently.
Naturally, if all I want to do is add a hosts entry or change a firewall rule, I'll use a console editor. Big job = big tool, little job=little tool. It's a simple concept.
While it may be true that to a man with a hammer, all problems resemble nails, at least we can employ a variety of hammers!
...and cannot finish understanding vi's modes...
Why do vi folks always think "if you don't like vi it's because you don't understand vi"? Maybe we prefer a different editor simply because we do. To me, vi seems like a relic of the 80s - a powerful relic, to be sure; but still it's a relic.
On a related note, I don't use "mail" from the command line anymore either...
#DeleteChrome
No crap! That happened to me when I was remotely logged onto a server and tried to use the cvs commit command without the -m flag. (Disclaimer: I'm a Mac user, so I have no clue how to do much in Unix other than CVS.) Suddenly the screen blanked with a little line across the bottom and a blinking cursor at the top and I'm supposed to know what the hell to do? It wasn't until I was talking with a bud later on that I figured out I was even in a text editor. At the very least, can't they spare a line at the top of the screen for "VI Text Editor version X" or something? After trying every key combination I could think of I ended up just closing the terminal window and cutting off the connection.
When people say that open source software has terrible, terrible UIs it's not just talking about the graphical stuff. It's usually worth it to be to hook up FTP, download the file, edit it with my old copy of the Codewarrior IDE, then re-upload. I could have done that process twice in the time it would have taken me to figure out how to type a line of text and save it in VI.
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You're referring to Midnight Commander.
Oh sure, JOE gets on the front page of Slashdot. How about JED? It's like the missing editor that Emacs never had. It's also got built-in S-Lang scripting, has built-in syntax highlighting, session recovery, drop-down menus, and has been ported to many platforms.
I guess if we're going to whore our favorites, go here to learn more about JED.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
(Regarding arrow keys): The reason for this is that vi was invented and was popular before arrow keys were a standard thing on all keyboards.
I'm going to expand on this a little because you missed an important point on why vi behaves as it does. The reason why arrow keys "mess up" documents is that vi is a character mode editor. That is, it reads one character at a time and interprets it as a command as if it was typed.
On the VT-100 series of terminals, the arrow keys map out to: ESC + [ + (A|B|C|D) where A is up, B is down, C is left, and D is right. So when a person is in edit mode in vi and they hit, say, the right arrow, they end the insert (ESC), get a beep for an invalid command ([), then get the remainder of the line hacked off (D). Combine that with the other arrow key sequences and you can get a real mess in a hurry.
The
I use JOE almost exclusively. being converted from windows notepad, I find a heavily-modded jpico configuration was easiest for me to pick up.
/etc/apt/sources.list so that I can apt-get install joe :).
The only exception is when I use NEdit to copy a whole document (bigger than the screen) to the clipboard, or vi before I have JOE installed on a new system (usually just to edit
What with (weird, but usable) search & replace regexes, recordable macros, useability in non-X environemnts (I work remotely with machines with broken X forwarding a lot), insane customizability (jpico, jstar, jmacs emulation modes), and the ability to pipe stuff back and forth from the shell, I don't really need anything else, and I didn't need to re-learn a whole lot to move to it.
Besides, with the time I saved by not participating in the vi/emacs wars, I actaully got work done!
ctrl-s is, like 's' for 'saving'
So it's English-biased? What happens when you port it to Spaish or German or Chinese or Korean and those key mnemonics don't make sense anymore? For those people (and there are a lot of them) the keystroke choices are arbitrary.
My other first post is car post.
What exactly is it that vi's steep learning curve gives people apart from a feeling of "eliteness", that can't be found elsewhere in easier to use software? What's the pay-off?
Well, for starters, when you spend a good deal of time editing text files (source, confs, whatever), vi can be marvelous for doing a lot of work with just a few keystrokes. Delete a word, delete a line, delete to this mark, search and replace, yank and paste, all easily done with 2-3 keypresses.
When having to do edits over a console link, every keystroke counts if you're doing a great deal of editing. I learned vi specifically for this reason when performing emergency firewall rule changes or fixes over a 9600 baud serial connection at my last job.
How come that is the only argument I hear from people about why vi is so great?
When you are put in a situation where you have to edit something on a UNIX system that you are unfamilar with, or any Solaris system that's recently been reinstalled, knowing vi makes doing any editing task very easy.
Not everyone is faced with these sorts of situations, and not everyone has a significant need to use/learn vi (note I never said there was a steep learning curve, I picked up on basic skills in less than a day). For the reasons mentioned above, knowing how to use vi was incredibly useful and saved me a good deal of time. Learning it was a minimal investment that had a significant benefit in my case.
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