
The JED Programmer's Editor (2017) - weinzierl
http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/
======
xscott
Somewhere around 1994, I used to dial into the university's terminal server
using a Wyse 370 and a 9600 baud modem. (Note, this was not PPP or SLIP
providing TCP/IP. You had to type the atdt modem commands directly...) This
particular terminal had 64 colors as an extension to the VT100 command
sequences. I sent an email to John E Davis asking if he'd be willing to add
support for my one off color capability, and he did! Super nice guy, and JED
was one of the first things I compiled on every new Unix account I got for
several years after that. I was very happy with very colorful source code.

~~~
msla
That's the job of termcap or terminfo depending on the OS.

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wenc
I remember JED! When I started out on Linux in 1997 (coming from DOS/Windows)
I was forced to choose an editor. There was Pico which was specific to the
`pine` e-mailer (this was before nano), and of course vi and emacs.

I didn't want to invest the time to learn vi or emacs so I used JED for a
while, and it served me well. But coming from DOS, JED still had a bit of a
learning curve. I figured if I was going to pick up a totally foreign editor,
I should probably just bite the bullet and learn vi or emacs.

I settled on vi(m) eventually and never looked back. JED helped me make the
transition though.

There was also an editor JOE which had Turbo C keybindings. That would have
been a great fit for DOS heads like me but I learned about it too late. The
ship had sailed. (it's just as well -- I now have vim muscle memory, which is
far more useful)

~~~
mhd
Joe is still around, and actually quite usable/performant. If it's invoked as
"jstar", it gets even closer to WordStar/TurboPascal keybindings. It can also
do "jmacs" which has Emacs keybindings, the default "joe" configuration being
something in between.

Does syntax highlighting, incremental search, regexes, and all that pretty
fast.

If we're talking old DOS editors, JED actually has a quite decent BRIEF
emulation.

~~~
fit2rule
> old DOS editors.

PC-Write key bindings are out there too..

------
unixhero
Jed is amazing, I use it daily.

I still have on by backburner to learn how to actually customize it, but I
make do with the standard configuration most of the time.

What I like about it.

\- Wordstar-like interface (file menu, etc)

\- fast

\- 100% sane user experience, with program options that I can wrap my head
around. Minimum of arcane stuff.

\- Emacs-lisp compatible (somehow, I don't know, I just see that it's there)

\- Multi platform!

Anybody here have any .config files published to Git/lab/hub where I can look
for some ideas for customizing Jed?

EDIT: I guess the website contains all the resources I need to learn more
about customizing the program.

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emmanueloga_
Looks like a borland IDE!

[https://www.jedsoft.org/images/jed1.png](https://www.jedsoft.org/images/jed1.png)

I don't use JED but I do use `most` from time to time, as a replacement for
the `less` pager. I like the keybindings better. Apparently, it is implemented
with S-Lang too.

[https://www.jedsoft.org/most/docs.html](https://www.jedsoft.org/most/docs.html)

~~~
mhd
SLRN used to be be a pretty popular newsreader implemented with S-Lang, never
mind that S-Lang, sans the language part, was a quite common alternative to
ncurses as a terminal interface.

The language itself is... interesting. C-like, but with some array-based
constructs and quite a large amount of backwards compatibility -- there's a
"_for" statement and default arguments are _weird_ , as they're not mentioned
in the prototype, but just done in the main body. It's a bit like Perl, but
without the logic.

~~~
zimpenfish
Oh, I do miss slrn. Even now I still get spam to ` _slrn_ ` email addresses
from usenet spammers.

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pawalt
I used to work at a very small network engineering shop where JED was the
primary terminal editor used (mainly because it was the CTO's flavor of
choice). It's lightweight and easy to learn with Emacs keybindings, but I'd
never use it for doing anything more than quick edits and scripting.

These days, though, an editor not providing Vim emulation pretty much counts
it out for me

------
smitty1e
Wikipedia entry:

JED is a text editor that makes extensive use of the S-Lang library. It is
highly cross-platform compatible; JED runs on Windows and all flavors on Linux
and Unix. Older versions are available for DOS. It is also very lightweight
(meaning very parsimonious in its use of system resources), which makes it an
ideal editor for older systems, embedded systems, etc. JED's Emacs mode is one
of the most faithful emulations available.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JED_(text_editor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JED_\(text_editor\))

~~~
m463
I used to use lightweight editors on small systems like vi (not vim, the
smaller vi).

But when I discovered emacs tramp mode, I sort of got away from that.

emacs comes with tramp mode built-in and allows you to edit a file on even
very small embedded devices using only ssh.

I think it might work on telnet or other protocols, but I've never tried them.

for example

    
    
      emacs /ssh:foo:/etc/bar.cfg
    

where _ssh_ is the protocol, _foo_ is the machine name and _/ etc/bar.cfg_ is
the file on foo to edit.

or

    
    
      emacs /ssh:user@host:.profile

~~~
smitty1e
The syntax for tramp-mode is on the arcane side.

~~~
m463
I mostly use emacs /ssh:ab:.bashrc which I think compares favorably with

    
    
      ssh ab
      emacs .bashrc
    

(or anything with a URL)

my .ssh/config contains a "Host ab" section for particulars about logging into
the machine.

Although you have a point. For instance there is a weird bug or two in tramp
mode, like (absolute-file-p "/ssh:ab:.bashrc") erroneously returns t

------
jedisct1
I've been using Jed as my primary editor for the past 20 years.

Originally because it was faster than Emacs while providing the same
experience.

Then because I loved how its automatic indentation works ("tab" properly
indents the current line), and I still can hardly use an editor that doesn't
behave in a similar way.

Finally, the language extensions are written in ("slang") is great. It feels
familiar, is readable and is easy to pickup, unlike Emacs Lisp.

Jed and Piknik are the two first things I install on any new computer.

Today, in order to write Rust code, I use VSCode, but for everything else, Jed
remains my go to editor.

------
celeritascelery
> Extensible in the C-like S-Lang language making the editor completely
> customizable.

I wonder if this is like Emacs level customizable or just regular editor
customizable.

------
zimpenfish
Interesting* fact: the "Lynx Style Sheets" highlighting was originally done
using S-Lang. Dunno if it's been extended to ncurses since.

------
trm42
Used JED in the 90s to 00s until nano became a default lightweight editor. Was
a lot faster to start for small edits than Emacs. Really liked the editor.

~~~
Koshkin
The thing with emacs is that you normally wouldn’t “start for small edits.”
Rather, you’d start it early in the morning and close it late at night (if
ever).

------
Koshkin
(Not to be confused with jEdit.)

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scottlocklin
That's a blast from the past; I remember using this in the 90s as a
programming editor for the HP100lx pocket computer (a 186 running MS-DOS5).
Quite zippy even on that limited hardware.

~~~
TylerE
It was my go to for a long time for editing over ssh. I eventually broke down
and learned enough vi to get by, but jed has zero learning curve and syntax
highlighted everything without installing packages

------
bfrog
Jed was the first editor I really like back on slacklinux something or other.
I learned vim and never... No wait, I love evil emacs :)

------
fmajid
I used jed as my lightweight alternative to Emacs for a very long time. I
stopped doing so a year or two ago and now just emacs.

