[HN Gopher] Wanted: Console Text Editor for Windows
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Wanted: Console Text Editor for Windows
Author : rhabarba
Score : 47 points
Date : 2020-06-28 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (virtuallyfun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (virtuallyfun.com)
| petepete wrote:
| I used to work with someone whose editor of choice was
| Epsilon[0]. I've never seen or heard it mentioned anywhere, it
| never figures in any discussions on technical forums/sites I
| frequent, but it appears to have a bit of a cult following.
|
| Also, it definitely has the best mascot[1]
|
| [0] https://lugaru.com/
|
| [1] https://lugaru.com/pics/changing.gif
| justinmk wrote:
| scoop install neovim
| jedisct1 wrote:
| I use Jed.
| agustif wrote:
| micro works nice under wsl/shell env in windows
| rhabarba wrote:
| Why would you do that as there's a native micro for Windows?
|
| (I, personally, find micro too nano'ish. YMMV.)
| slim wrote:
| openwatcom vi looks great
| rhabarba wrote:
| It does indeed! Sad that it doesn't support UTF-8.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I had a sudden memory of using edlin, and "COPY CON FILE.TXT",
| but it has been years since I've used a Windows desktop so I
| don't know what is available for the console.
|
| (Of course everybody knows about Notepad..)
| rhabarba wrote:
| EDLIN has been removed for quite some time, its successor,
| EDIT.COM, has not survived the let's-get-rid-of-efficient-
| software Windows XP era either.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Pre-windows 95, EDIT.COM was actually QBASIC.EXE running with
| the command line switch /EDIT.
|
| Really annoying, as it meant that if you wanted a native TUI
| editor on an MS-DOS book disk, you had to shoe-horn the
| larger QBASIC.EXE on to it somehow just to be able to edit
| config files.
| m0xte wrote:
| This was so annoying that I built a stand-alone clone of
| edit using VB for MSDOS. Unfortunately after compiling it
| was larger than QBASIC :(
| ChrisSD wrote:
| I think EDIT.COM was 16-bit so couldn't survive the 64-bit
| transition.
| tartoran wrote:
| I still casually use copy con in windows. Sometimes i forget
| which is the save shortcut. I think ctrl-z, right?
|
| I also fondly remember edit.com, too bad it didnt survive..
| rhabarba wrote:
| Ctrl+Z would work, or F6.
| tartoran wrote:
| Nice, i didnt know about f6
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I definitely remember windows having some built in terminal
| editor during Windows XP. Maybe EDIT was removed after then.
| rhabarba wrote:
| EDIT was dropped with 64-bit.
| stevekemp wrote:
| That's a shame, I had a happy few minutes remembering
| assembling binaries via debug.com which was the other way of
| creating files back then.
| karmakaze wrote:
| There was this awesome editor called Kedit that I used on OS/2
| and Win NT. I think there were text and GUI versions, but not
| free.
|
| Edit: search turns up a free/shareware GUI version, no mention of
| the 'classic' text-mode one
| rhabarba wrote:
| KEDIT, the XEDIT clone? There is a free version of that, The
| Hessling Editor.
| inakarmacoma wrote:
| It's interesting, a shame emacs org-mode is discarded so quickly.
| If only the barrier of entry weren't so high.
| rhabarba wrote:
| The author implies that vi/Vim and an Emacs are the usual
| suspects here, but they're rather foreign on Windows and DOS-
| like environments - which is true. Other editors in the list
| are - at least, UI/UX-wise - much more common to DOS people.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Emacs has a CUA mode to address that specific issue: https://
| www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/CU...
| hazeii wrote:
| I've been using WordPerfect's 'Programmers Editor' since the days
| of DOS; the C rewrite works for me (on Linux, DOS and Win-
| whatever), works best with a keyboard with F-keys on the left.
| It's about a 75Kb executable on Windows (50K stripped on linux).
| deepspace wrote:
| Interesting to see The Semware Editor in there. Way back before
| Windows, I used to use Qedit, the predecessor of TSE, and at the
| time it blew most other DOS editors out of the water. I believe
| it is the first shareware software I gladly paid for.
|
| By the time Windows and TSE came along, there were many other
| choices, but a 64 bit build of TSE might be worth looking into
| again as a console editor.
|
| My fingers still default to the Wordstar keymap from Borland
| Pascal/C days, so my daily driver in Linux is Joe - wish there
| was a Windows build available.
| rhabarba wrote:
| Joe actually has a Windows build - right from their website.
|
| https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io
|
| By the way, there is a free semi-GUI WordStar clone named
| WordTsar.
| azizuysal wrote:
| There is micro (https://micro-editor.github.io). It works great
| on Mac and I think it works on Windows too.
| shadowfox wrote:
| I second micro. It has become my default console editor on both
| Windows and Linux for quick editing tasks.
| the-dude wrote:
| I remember using The Boxer, console based editor last century.
| This was on OS/2, but I seem to recall it was available for
| Windows too. Not sure though.
| rhabarba wrote:
| There (was and) is a Boxer text editor for Windows, a
| commercial BRIEF successor. Its developer, Boxer Software, was
| founded in the early 90s, so it could have had an OS/2 version
| once.
| craigching wrote:
| Nice! I'll have to check that out! I used BRIEF back in the
| early 90's developing plant monitoring/management software.
| Our products ran on DOS and Windows after that. I'd been
| using emacs at school, but BRIEF was our editor of choice for
| this. The column copy and paste is something I still haven't
| found as intuitive as BRIEF in any other editor.
| rhabarba wrote:
| GRIEF is an open-source BRIEF clone, it can probably do
| that. (The article made me try it. I found and reported a
| few macOS problems, but the Windows version seems to be
| functional. I might keep it.)
| dugmartin wrote:
| My goto editor in the 80s for DOS and 90s for Windows was Norton
| Editor. I had it on various diskettes to use when I needed to
| edit files on customer's computers when I worked in a computer
| store in college.
|
| However it looks like Windows 98 broke it (according to this
| message:
| https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.editors/l24T-Wh...)
|
| For anyone brave enough to try random downloaded apps it looks
| like it is available here: https://winworldpc.com/product/norton-
| editor/20
| stOneskull wrote:
| i noticed he made a 64bit version of fte himself, so i went and
| got that, and it's great. i didn't even think about a console
| text editor in windows before. good article.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > MC overall seems far nicer than FAR
|
| On Windows, use FAR, not mc. Some aspects of mc I think don't
| work on Windows (last I tried), and frankly, FAR is significantly
| more powerful.
| rhabarba wrote:
| Some of FAR's best features only work inside ConEmu though. (I
| think that hasn't changed in a while.)
| rhabarba wrote:
| (tenox /does/ have a point here.)
| craz8 wrote:
| Microsoft did release a nice editor called M back around the end
| of the 80s
|
| Here's some info about it, and maybe a way to get something that
| works today
|
| http://www.os2museum.com/wp/microsoft-editor/
| rhabarba wrote:
| The article talks about it, including modern(ish) clones like
| K.
| LocalH wrote:
| That guest post was by the same author as the linked post. In
| fact, the linked post is also present in your link, linked in
| the first sentence.
| eatonphil wrote:
| My laptops run Windows but I do all my development in Linux VMs
| via Powershell's built-in SSH client.
|
| My biggest ask on Windows is for a native mosh client. There
| aren't currently any.
| jesse9766 wrote:
| Have you tried using Fluent Terminal? It is available on github
| and the Windows Store. To use mosh you need to connect via the
| quick connect menu in the top left corner of the program.
| rhabarba wrote:
| I'm not sure whether a JavaScript-based terminal is a good
| idea.
| jesse9766 wrote:
| I haven't done a test yet, but the Fluent Terminal seems
| fast enough and doesn't eat up that many resources
| surprisingly. As a UWP program it feels very snappy (as
| opposed to Hyper being a full on electron app using 200MB
| for simple text output!) I don't care what technologies
| they use to build a program, as long as it works. I haven't
| experienced any hangups using SSH, so it's good enough for
| me.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Personally, I'm using mosh inside of WSL using wsltty for the
| terminal itself. It works well.
| techntoke wrote:
| Vim works great. Don't see why you'd want to use anything else,
| except maybe Emacs.
| rhabarba wrote:
| I am quite happy with (Acme and) GNU Emacs as my GUI editors,
| but Emacs is really annoying to use on a console to me,
| especially on non-native platforms like Windows. One of the
| reasons why I like the article.
| techntoke wrote:
| Until recently with Windows Terminal the Windows console app
| has been garbage. Any text editor would suck using the
| classic Windows console.
| rhabarba wrote:
| I find the Windows Terminal much inferior to ConEmu.
|
| Anyway, text editors specifically written for DOS
| environments integrate rather well with the ,,classic
| Windows console".
| Lammy wrote:
| How about `ee`? https://github.com/herrbischoff/ee
| rhabarba wrote:
| Does it have a Windows version?
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(page generated 2020-06-28 23:00 UTC)