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.

Comments

VI is everywhere.

[Moderation abuser]

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.

Re:VI is everywhere.

[not_a_product_id]

This is what's been pushing me into learning vi (a process that isn't bad at all. just try the tutor - i think it's "vimtutor"). You KNOW that when you have to use an editor in an emergency vi will be there, JOE (or whatever else you prefer) probably won't. You DO NOT want to be learning vi as you try to repair a production server.

Re:VI is everywhere.

[CoolGopher]

I know what you mean. When I was dropped into doing system development on a Solaris based product I initially set out with the intention of finally learning emacs.

Well, long story short, I couldn't the sucker to compile/run/whatever (I've forgotten the details by now), so I decided not to waste any more time and instead improve my vi skills.

Best decision ever. Easily.
Now I have an extremely powerful, usable, lightweight editor that is available on every *nix under the Sun (ha ha).

Not to mention that starting up emacs on my old 386 would not be a pretty sight, considering that just doing "vi /etc/fstab" takes ~8secs before I can start editing...

This is not to say that Joe is bad/useless. I wouldn't say that, especially since I haven't used it. However, for me, and many others, it's not the most practical choice :)

Re:VI is everywhere.

[lintux]

You know, when you know how to use vim, you certainly don't automatically know how to use vi. Just try to edit a file on BSD using the default version of vi.

- Backspace key won't work correctly when you want to delete text which was there already before you entered insert mode.
- Forget about the delete key, you'll have to quit insert mode and use x. (And for some reason, when you leave insert mode, the cursor magically moves one position to the left)
- When you accidentally use your arrow keys at an unexpected moment, your file gets messed up and/or you sometimes automatically leave insert mode.

And well, I can imagine that it'll be even worse on older machines.

Re:VI is everywhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me help clear up some of your confusion about vi versus vim:

Backspace key won't work correctly when you want to delete text which was there already before you entered insert mode.

There are two misunderstandings here. The first is that there are multiple modes in vi. In reality, there is just what you think of as command mode, and within command mode there is an insert command. The insert command start with an "i", and ends with an escape. The stuff inbetween is inserted into the buffer.

This explains why the backspace does what it does in vi. The backspace allows you to move backwards (destructively) in the text that you are inserting as part of the current insert command. It doesn't move you around in the buffer; it moves you within the insert command. (To make things a little more convenient, vi displays the text you type as part of the insert command in the position in which it will be inserted after the insert command completes.)

Forget about the delete key, you'll have to quit insert mode and use x

Indeed. The delete key is not supported as part of a insert command. vim may have added this as an extension, but that's a vim thing and not a standard vi thing. So if you want to delete destructively to the right, you'll have to finish the insert command you're doing.

And for some reason, when you leave insert mode, the cursor magically moves one position to the left

Well, of course you're not leaving insert mode. You're finishing an insert command. The reason the cursor moves where it does is that at the end of an insert command, the cursor is put on the last character inserted. If you are inserting the string "abc", then you would type "i", then "abc", then escape. Once you have typed the "c", you are still executing an insert command, the cursor always moves after the character you've just typed. But when you hit escape, you have finished the insert command, and the cursor goes to the last character of the string you inserted.

Note that this is actually the more consistent way to do things. In vi, when you are using movement commands (hjkl, etc.) to move around, your cursor must always be on a real character that exists in the document. It cannot be in the space after the last character on the line. (The exception is blank lines, but there is no way to be on a real character then, so you have to make this exception.) So naturally, after you have inserted text at the end of a line, your cursor cannot be AFTER the last character, because this is an illegal position for the cursor within vi. So it must land on the last character. Now, should it behave differently when inserting in the middle of the line? I don't think so. If I insert "abc" somewhere, I want the cursor to be in the same place relative to the newly-inserted string regardless of whether I inserted it at the beginning, end, or middle of the line. Anything else will just create a situation where I sometimes have to look at the screen and see what the state of the program is before I can continue typing, which is a big waste of my time.

When you accidentally use your arrow keys at an unexpected moment, your file gets messed up and/or you sometimes automatically leave insert mode

This is really easy to explain. The reason for this is that vi was invented and was popular before arrow keys were a standard thing on all keyboards. These days, they are pretty standard, but still don't exist on all devices (like cell phone and PDA keyboards). vi will work with most any type of terminal, therefore it doesn't assume that arrow keys exist and it uses other keystrokes instead (namely, hjkl). It could be extended to support arrow keys, which would be nice if you are really used to arrow keys, but honestly, arrow keys are pretty danged far out in right field away from the more useful keys, so using the

Re:VI is everywhere.

[evilviper]

I agree with everything, except this:

The only reason they should be supported as an extension is for people who can't break their mind out of the "arrow keys are the one way to move the cursor" paradigm.

I have a better reason... Any non-US or non-QWERTY keyboard will not put the letters for movement under your fingers. I type in Dvorak, and the 4 keys are scattered across the keyboard.

I don't like moving my hand down to the arrow keys, but at least they are all in one place. Besides, you've got the same problem using the ESC key with your left hand. I really think arrow keys should be better supported by nvi... It's not as if I want to hit the arrow key and have it delete a line for me. If nothing else, it would prevent accidents.

Besides, what's wrong with making life a little easier for those who are used to the arrow keys? They aren't serving any other useful purpose.

It's also more consistent, in that you have to use them to move around in insert mode, so being able to use them in command-mode just makes sense.

hmm....

[k0d0]

does it have a calendar, calculator, email-client and of course tetris build in?

Make that Turbo Pascal 3...

[MavEtJu]

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.

Joe vs. vi vs. GUI based editors

[Bapu]

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.

Great news, but..

[manavendra]

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.

Re:Great news, but..

[Alan Cox]

I for one use joe. It does what I need and it does it fast. More to the point I suspect it uses the same keystrokes I learned back in prehistory (before DOS!) from VDE and Wordstar on CP/M.

Joe 3 will be most welcome here.

Re:Windows is everywhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

JOE is your friend....

[LoboRojo]

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!

My Sweet Joe Memories

[Anonymous Coward]

When I started at the university ten years ago, I was confronted with editors like vi, pico and emacs. Emacs was usually the last choice since the old Sun IPX:es had a hard time coping with ONE operating system. My first confrontation with vi gave me panic and I killed it, only to receive a death notice by mail shortly after. (It took 2 years until I dared starting it again). Joe was one of the few programs I managed to save in (because I used pine, I guess), so I stuck with that.

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.

/Pung

Re:Windows is everywhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if Windows is everywhere you go, I simply don't want to hang out with you.

Re:Anyone have a replica of MS-DOS EDITOR?

[Scott Robinson]

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.

Why vim is better than joe (and obviously emacs)

[Andreas(R)]

Let me just recap the well known reasons why vim is better then joe:

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 ..." to issue an editor command; so "ctrl-m" is actually a switch to command mode). In vim, you are by default in command mode; when in insert mode, you type and then some command, and then i to get into insert mode again.
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 mean features like marks, tags, jumping up/down paragraph-wise, jumping to the beginning/end of a function, searching identifiers in all include files, etc....
I suspect, this is because it's simply just too difficult to remember all those ctrl-alt chords. :) [no offense intended!]

# Speed: CPU-wise, vim is still by far more efficient than joe.
Try running joe on an SGI Indy! Or on a PC/286!

Re:Fanboy......but......

[eclectro]

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.

Value

[mpmansell]

I was browsing this article armed with moderator points, but the quality of the initial few posters has irritated me enough to make a post myself.

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.

Re:Value

[Schwuk]

Vi(m) can be used on Windows - I use it all the time.

Vim can be used as the editor in Visual Studio.

Re:Joe vs. vi vs. GUI based editors

[Garak]

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.

Re:GUI editors can't fix XF86Config, want edit clo

[Blackknight]

It's not a clone but mcedit is pretty nice. It's included with the mc program which is also a nice file manager.

one word: mcedit

[ironhide]

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.

A first step, but Unicode support is incomplete

[lokedhs]

Joe does not have proper unicode support, contrary to what many people claim. It only supports BMP, the fist 64K of characters out of the more than 1 million possible characters.

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.

Hey! Where are the pretty pictures?

[Kaemaril]

What, no screenshots? :)

Editors

[wpiman]

What- no wordpad comments?!?!

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.

... a win98 edit.com clone for linux?

[Lproven]

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.

No syntax files for c++ yet

[MoobY]

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.

Re:Joe vs. vi vs. GUI based editors

[Eivind Eklund]

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.

JOE and I go way back...

[Croaker]

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.

Re:Why vim is better than joe (and obviously emacs

[Croaker]

# vim works like you think. Many commands are "mnemonic".

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.

# Speed: CPU-wise, vim is still by far more efficient than joe. Try running joe on an SGI Indy! Or on a PC/286!

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?

Thoughts on editors, especially vi, Joe, and ed

[ExpressWay]

It's fun to read a thread on character editors once again. These discussions pop up only occasionally these days. It's so rare to find a subject where everyone is right, everyone is wrong, and no one is without an opinion, yet everyone recognizes that the issue is of no consequence, so we avoid personal attacks. (At least with my threshold.)

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.

The issue now is DTD'd browser editing

[kale77in]

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

joe also has jpico jvi jmacs jstar

[Danny Rathjens]

I've never tried the others, but jpico is really great for those that first learned pico. jpico is just a symlink to joe, but when run that way all of the pico keybindings like ^K and ^U to cut/paste lines work; except now you have many of the features pico is missing like search and replace.
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 modes FUD

[oren]

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.

JED

[Tmack]

Alright, I havent tried JOE that much, but the other one, JED, took me away from emacs forever. I cant stand editing and programming in vi, I know it enough to use it if its the only thing around, but its still too cryptic, and has a steep learning curve and no built in help (other than Invalid Command!). Granted, you wont need the help once you master every command an editor has to offer, but who really has time for that? If I should work on a project where a command I never used before would speed things up, with vi I would have to launch a manpage or browser and go look it up. JED, like emacs has apropose (not sure about JOE). Having started under emacs, JED's default emacs mode made me feel at home (it has a Wordstar mode too if you prefer), and if your terminal supports color, you get your syntax highlighting (and its been there for a while, ie: not a new feature). Add to that the different language packs (that auto-load by file extension or #! line) for different programming languages to auto-indent, check basic formatting rules (checks parenths/brackets/; etc) and change the syntax coloring rules, and it has multi-level undo! Add in the interactive replace_cmd and most of emacs' useful functions. I tried it when I was tired of emacs bloat, vi's err vi-ness, ed's uselessnes, and started trying the other varients installed from my slack distro. Joe was a step up deffinately, but to me Jed was better.

Tm

Editor Wars . . .

[Java Ape]

There have been a number of excellent comments regarding ubiquity, use or screen space, and ease of use. Like most holy wars, there is some truth on all sides. I've used Joe -- it saved my butt several times years ago when vi was a strange and foreign demon-tool to me.

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!

Give me a break

[93 Escort Wagon]

...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...