What is behind the slack setup installer-ncurses or what?

I mean the text based multiple choice menu system from keybd setup to exit.

I'm asking 'cause I'm still searching for a true-easy to use-console-only-text editor similar to jdarkroom/q10/etc, kinda like nano but targeted towards text-only processing.
Basic functions only- save/txt format/punctuation, etc

If I can't find one I will have "invent" one-which would be hard...
Any ideas?
Thanks.

It's ncurses.

And how would one turn ncurses into a console text editor-even if all it could do was save as a text file-no formatting etc?

If you mean console based text editors, try mcedit, which is part of the mc file manager package. That is what I use when I absolutely have to use a console editor. I don't know of any console based text editors that mimic the basic GUI interface with top drop-down menus (somewhat like the old MS-DOS Edit). Seems a shame that such an interface does not exist somewhere. All of the console text editors have their own unique interface dating to the stone ages.

After you become comfortable with one of the many text editors, you can set your default console text editor through the following environment variables:

EDITOR
VISUAL

I set those variables to mcedit. Any console function that tries to open a text editor should obey those variables and open mcedit for me.

Awesome-never knew about mcedit!
That might be the ticket; all I need is simple text format with save function.
Thanks woodsman!

OK-now-what pkgs from slack 12.2 would be required for a targeted minimal install that had bash, nano, mc , but no X and under 100MB installed?
possible?

That topic has been discussed many times here at LQ. Just hit the search trail...

Look here. This will give you a basic command line that is only capable of downloading and building packages. You can use it as a base and build up what you need.

samac

The slackware installer uses 'dialog', which uses ncurses.

For ncurses text editors, search freshmeat or sourceforge, I remember I had a reasonably good one installed, but removed it because nano is just better.

Yes TexMex, I am beginning to appreciate nano alot.
I reference ttylinux in searching for a minimalistic writer's mini-distro that I want.
I want something between ttylinux and minimal slackware.

It's for my laptop mostly-Toshiba 7000CT 160MB RAM/4GB HD.
I have 12.2 installled on it now with xfce4;which works great, but I don't really need X for writing and it's a distraction too.

However-I really need a non-X slimslack with a editor that has "tabs", so I can look at different text files-guess that might not be possible.

I still find it hard to believe Linux doesn't have a dedicated non-X text editor; with tabs, indent, etc.

Ah yes, I just remember the one I was using before:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/leeditor

Hi,
You could look at 'Minimal System'.

This link and others are available from 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Your the man, Onebuck.