Good minimalist text editor?

DavidMcCann · 05-12-2017, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeratul

what about ed?

I never realised that it's still part of the POSIX standard and I've got it installed! I can remember using edlin on DOS: not an experience I'd want to repeat.

Xeratul · 05-12-2017, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann

I never realised that it's still part of the POSIX standard and I've got it installed! I can remember using edlin on DOS: not an experience I'd want to repeat.

edlin on DOS, still MS

"ed" was/is powerful.

rtmistler · 05-12-2017, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeratul

Hello,

Let's discuss about possible good minimalist text editor?

A small editor is good for learning programming in C.

There is nano which is quite nice, but actually,there are much simpler.

Here a good one, tiny, and simple to compile.
Just a single file for a good learning experience.
https://pastebin.com/raw/smjP1xvK

You've written an editor. Great job!

It does compile and work as an editor.

I like vi, and I like emacs.

I do not feel that a small editor is good for learning programming in C, or for continued code development.

Why do you feel it is good to have a small editor when learning C code?

I fully agree that a minimal text editor is great to have. I will continue to use vi as that minimal text editor since it is there on distributions.

dugan · 05-12-2017, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeratul

nice. vi source code is no longer so easy to find.

Would you settle for the source for elvis? It's Slackware's vi executable.

http://elvis.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/

Xeratul · 05-12-2017, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Would you settle for the source for elvis? It's Slackware's vi executable.

http://elvis.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/

Elvis need a compilation try. Cool is elvis

I would be more interested by the portable form of original vi editor for testing.

Anyhow, vim is today replacing heavily vi, and you cannot find the source code of vi on debian, ubuntu, mepis,... from repositories.

Shadow_7 · 05-12-2017, 10:04 PM

vi was elvis, or at least evolved from it. It's in the name: el(vi)s.

At least according to the linux books I bought in the late 90s that came with RH 5 and star office, that I only partially read.

astrogeek · 05-12-2017, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow_7

vi was elvis, or at least evolved from it. It's in the name: el(vi)s.

I am pretty sure that was the other way around - elvis was a vi clone, but right on the name.

astrogeek · 05-12-2017, 10:21 PM

From wikipedia, about the clones:

Quote:

While commercial vendors could work with Bill Joy's codebase (and continue to use it today), many people could not. Because Joy had begun with Ken Thompson's ed editor, ex and vi were derivative works and could not be distributed except to people who had an AT&T source license. People looking for a free Unix-style editor would have to look elsewhere. By 1985, a version of Emacs (MicroEMACS) was available for a variety of platforms, but it was not until June 1987 that Stevie (ST editor for VI enthusiasts), a limited vi clone, appeared.[23][24] In early January 1990, Steve Kirkendall posted a new clone of vi, Elvis, to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix, aiming for a more complete and more faithful clone of vi than Stevie. It quickly attracted considerable interest in a number of enthusiast communities.[25][26] Andrew Tanenbaum quickly asked the community to decide on one of these two editors to be the vi clone in Minix;[27] Elvis was chosen, and remains the vi clone for Minix today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeratul

Elvis need a compilation try. Cool is elvis

I would be more interested by the portable form of original vi editor for testing.

Anyhow, vim is today replacing heavily vi, and you cannot find the source code of vi on debian, ubuntu, mepis,... from repositories.

Elvis is still the default on Slackware, too.

From the above article...

Quote:

Despite the existence of vi clones with enhanced featuresets, sometime before June 2000,[29] Gunnar Ritter ported Joy's vi codebase (taken from 2.11BSD, February 1992) to modern Unix-based operating systems, such as Linux and FreeBSD. Initially, his work was technically illegal to distribute without an AT&T source license, but, in January 2002, those licensing rules were relaxed,[30] allowing legal distribution as an open-source project. Ritter continued to make small enhancements to the vi codebase similar to those done by commercial Unix vendors still using Joy's codebase, including changes required by the POSIX.2 standard for vi. His work is available as Traditional Vi, and runs today on a variety of systems.

You can still get the source from the original heritage as ex-vi from the above link, but the last update look to be 10-11 years ago.

Laserbeak · 05-12-2017, 10:37 PM

Cool, I downloaded and built ex-vi and it went into my /usr/local/bin which is above my vi that was just linked to vim.

Xeratul · 05-13-2017, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrogeek

You can still get the source from the original heritage as ex-vi from the above link, but the last update look to be 10-11 years ago.

From the ex-vi, you get EX, but no VI is compiled??

pan64 · 05-13-2017, 04:08 AM

as far as I know ex and vi are the same binaries with two different names, so you only need to link ...

Xeratul · 05-13-2017, 04:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

as far as I know ex and vi are the same binaries with two different names, so you only need to link ...

LINUX does not longer support VI. It is fairly replaced by heavy VIM.
Is *BSD* still officially supporting the original VI?
http://www.bsd.org/viref.html
Old stuff, why would BSD care about VI?

Xeratul · 05-16-2017, 12:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtmistler

It does compile and work as an editor.

You can give another try:
https://pastebin.com/raw/4a1j7Wn7

ESC goes to EDIT or VISUAL mode
It works as the famous "vi"

Barkester · 05-18-2017, 08:34 PM

Echo in the terminal has been described as the ultimate minimalist text editor. output to a text file and you're good.

Probly' too minimalist but there it is.

Xeratul · 05-18-2017, 11:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Barkester

Echo in the terminal has been described as the ultimate minimalist text editor. output to a text file and you're good.

Probly' too minimalist but there it is.

very minimal... what's the source code of your `echo` editor?