

Ask HN: Simple, simple, simple editors for Linux. - RiderOfGiraffes

My father-in-law is 81 and in good mental shape, but he's unwilling to learn yet another bunch of stuff that seems irrelevant to his main requirement.  All he wants to do is write letters (to be printed and posted) and write papers (which may be printed, may be emailed, but will certainly be plain text).<p>He doesn't want to learn about OpenOffice, and certainly doesn't want to learn about vi or emacs.<p>Any suggestions?<p>EDIT: They run KDE, and he has trouble using a mouse.  Driving entirely through the keyboard is close to an absolute requirement.  Sorry I forgot to say this earlier.
======
makecheck
Terminal-based "pico" (part of the pine distribution) is pretty simple to use.

~~~
raffi
Many distributions don't install this by default, but nano is there. I find it
an acceptable pico clone.

------
indrax
Joe (Joe's Own Editor) which IMO has better on screen help than pico/nano.

Although if the app is well designed, a GUI editor should be entirely keyboard
controlled as well. Hit alt-f(ile) or alt-e(dit) in whatever text editor came
with the install. If that works, find out how to disable the button bar to
free up that screen real estate.

------
cschep
Is having a GUI a requirement? If not, check out Diakonos
(<http://purepistos.net/diakonos/>) I haven't used it much, but the keyboard
shortcuts are all "standard", and it's branded as a "Linux editor for the
masses". Maybe the lack of a GUI would be helpful?

------
empone
I think Kate is the default in KDE, have they tried that?

------
caffeine
I'm pretty sure they sell "e-mail typewriters" for this - a typewriter that
you hook up to an e-mail account, and you can see emails come in on it and you
can type them back out - and that's it.

If not, it can't be hard to customize a linux distribution to do that.

EDIT: Or get a typewriter & a fax machine with your fax2email number on speed-
dial.

------
joeyo
I'm generally a fan of SciTE. It runs on Linux, Mac and Window with the exact
same UI; you can drive it with a keyboard alone. It is very simple to use, but
it's intended as an editor for code (it has built-in syntax hiliting for a
large number of languages) so it may not be _exactly_ what he is looking for
unless he writes his letters in LaTeX...

------
sorbus
Mousepad or Gedit.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Thanks for the swift reply - let me add that they are running KDE, not Gnome.
Also, he has trouble using a mouse, always has. Ideal would be something that
can be driven entirely, and obviously, from the keyboard.

I'll investigate Mousepad.

~~~
pavelludiq
nano is simple enough, if it has to be all keyboard i guess it works fine for
that.

------
pasbesoin
A while back, someone came out with a prototype driver for a mouse that used,
for lack of a better word, "stabilization" to compensate for a jittery hand. I
want to say it was an IBM Alphaworks project, but I'm not sure. Think of image
stabilization, but applied to mouse input rather than a camera image.

If a shaky hand is limiting his ability with the mouse, while a long-shot, it
might be worth looking into this. (I'll google around a bit and see if I get
lucky.)

\----

EDIT:

The following apparently is only for Windows. Whether you might be able to
adapt/adopt it in one way or another, I don't know.

SteadyMouse

<http://www.oatsoft.org/Software/steadymouse/>

The page mentions an IBM hardware adapter as both inspiration and as a
possible alternative, albeit one that (as of 2006) is not yet available.

A comment to the page mentions this hardware adapter. Looks like it sits on
the mouse's USB line and is fairly OS independent. I can understand the
pricing based on the probable small size of sales and corresponding mode of
manufacture. And for someone really needing it, it may be money very well
spent. But it's not cheap. (On the other hand, some of use spend as much on
ueber-keyboards.)

<http://www.montrosesecam.com/index.html>

Per the About page, it looks like this is the licensed offshoot/production of
the IBM product:

 _In 2004 IBM secured a global licensing agreement with Montrose Secam Limited
to manufacture and market the mouse adapter._

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Thanks for the info - but a shaky hand isn't the problem, so stabilisation
won't help. It's partly a cognitive thing, and partly an alzheimer's-like
problem (actually Binswager's). He's likely always to have a problem with a
mouse, but I'll also have a look.

Thanks.

And thanks to everyone for the incredibly useful responses. Currently I'm
looking at pico or nano.

