
Wanted: Console Text Editor for Windows - rhabarba
https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2018/02/15/wanted-console-text-editor-for-windows/
======
userbinator
No mention of MS-DOS EDIT which came with Win95 and AFAIK is still there in
Windows 10 (32-bit version only)? That would probably be the editor I've used
the longest, alongside Notepad and vi. It has a very useful "binary" mode that
is somewhat of a cross between a text and hex editor; I've done a lot of
binary patching using it.

~~~
discordance
The author tried to use EDIT in the first screenshot at the top

------
petepete
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/](https://lugaru.com/)

[1]
[https://lugaru.com/pics/changing.gif](https://lugaru.com/pics/changing.gif)

~~~
rhabarba
Epsilon seems to be a GUI editor?

~~~
rhabarba
I stand corrected: It seems to have both versions included. Still, 250 US$
seem to be obscene.

~~~
petepete
Yeah, it's a hefty price tag. The programmer in question (super experienced
Perl-slinger) had been using it so long he knew just about every command and
trick, and he'd customised his set up so much he'd locked himself in!

Edit: an excerpt from the website that indicates its age

> Why not settle for the "free" editor that comes with your compiler, or some
> lesser programmer's editor, or even try to use a word processor to edit your
> programs?

~~~
rhabarba
Must be a Perl thing - even Epsilon’s website is a cgi one.

------
stevekemp
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
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.

~~~
tartoran
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
Ctrl+Z would work, or F6.

~~~
tartoran
Nice, i didnt know about f6

------
azizuysal
There is micro ([https://micro-editor.github.io](https://micro-
editor.github.io)). It works great on Mac and I think it works on Windows too.

~~~
lillesvin
Yeah, for his criteria it seems like a perfect match. He mentions it as the
very last one and seems to like it but think it ought to include a file
browser... I disagree, though. File browsing is a different beast, and a good
file browser would be able to launch micro for editing a file. Likewise you
can probably configure micro to use [file browser] for browsing files.

------
drummer
Anyone remember Sidekick? It was the first 'terminate and stay resident'
program I saw back in the day. Used it as source code editor in DOS.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick)

~~~
rhabarba
Borland surely had many editors, it seems.

------
dugmartin
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...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.editors/l24T-WhI17I))

For anyone brave enough to try random downloaded apps it looks like it is
available here: [https://winworldpc.com/product/norton-
editor/20](https://winworldpc.com/product/norton-editor/20)

------
deepspace
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
Joe actually has a Windows build - right from their website.

[https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io](https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io)

By the way, there is a free semi-GUI WordStar clone named WordTsar.

------
BeetleB
> 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
Some of FAR’s best features only work inside ConEmu though. (I think that
hasn’t changed in a while.)

~~~
BeetleB
A lot of mc's features don't work on Windows. FAR without ConEmu is still
better.

------
jakear
VS Code’s remote ssh extension could help here. It’s basically a “headless
vscode” running on the remote instance that your local machine can connect to.
(A la. emacs, from what I’ve been told.) The language services and etc. all
run on the remote instance, so there isn’t the giant network penalty you get
from sshfs or whatever either.

Disclaimer: on team, but not in this area specifically :)

~~~
andreareina
Connecting to a remote emacs client is a bit of a pain. What it does do is
handle remote paths via TRAMP: pretty much anything that takes a path (file
editing, magit, shell mode, etc) handles ssh automatically.

~~~
jakear
Sounds like you know a bit about this, have you tried using the remote-ssh
extension for VSCode? If so, how does it compare?

~~~
andreareina
I've never used VSCode. A cursory look suggests that the VSCode way performs
better (in particular, no need to ship files back-and-forth), but depends on
the remote end also having VSCode installed. The TRAMP way suffers a bit when
dealing with large files, or large numbers of files, but works anywhere ssh +
the usual shell utilities does.

~~~
jakear
We do try to make the remote install easy. It happens behind the scenes on
first connect and will even tunnel through the ssh tunnel in cases where
proxies/etc. would typically make things annoying.

~~~
rhabarba
Which operating systems are possible on the remote end?

~~~
jakear
In short: x86_64 and ARMv7/8 Linux, Windows 10 / server 2016/2019\. MacOS
Mojave.

In length:
[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh)

~~~
rhabarba
I understand that it’s not a solution for my BSD servers then. Thank you
though, I didn’t know about that and I might try it later.

------
deeblering4
I respectfully disagree that “learning curve” is a reason not to go with a
well established console editor like VIM.

There is a learning curve for everything, including the code and
configurations being edited.

I think taking the time to learn tools, like editors, that are available on
many platforms saves time in the long run and helps to manage diverse systems
more effectively.

~~~
jpalomaki
Investment in learning something like vi makes sense in the nix world, where
it is available everywhere by default. On Windows side the problem is that
there's no comprehensive "default editor" to learn.

If you are doing server side sysadmin work on different environments then you
might be limited to what is already available. Often you don't want to go
through the trouble of getting a specific editor installed in order to edit
some config files (3rd party software may require approval, somebody to
install it, etc).

~~~
rhabarba
> where it is available everywhere by default

It is not (anymore), so not even that is clear.

------
Renaud
The author seems to focus a lot on having 64 bit versions of the editors.

I'm wondering what's the downside of using a 32 bits in the case of a console
text editor? I doubt that it's because you could theoretically need to load
4GB+ text files in memory.

Is there a good reason to want a 64 bit version of an editor to the point of
excluding it if there isn't one?

~~~
jussij
On Windows the executable will most likely only have access to 2 GB of memory.

The Windows PE header contains the LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag which controls the
memory available to the executable.

When that flag is off (i.e. the Microsoft recommended default value) the
executable only has access to 2 GB of memory.

To access more memory that LARGEADDRESSAWARE PE flag set to on:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/cpp/build/reference/largead...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/cpp/build/reference/largeaddressaware-handle-large-
addresses?redirectedfrom=MSDN&view=vs-2019)

But in any case, you would think 2 GB is more than enough RAM for most text
handling scenarios.

------
hazeii
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).

------
tuckerpo
4coder exists
([https://4coder.handmade.network/](https://4coder.handmade.network/)). Quite
popular with the "handmade" crowd of folks (Casey Muratori & friends).

------
eatonphil
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
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
I’m not sure whether a JavaScript-based terminal is a good idea.

~~~
jesse9766
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.

------
bitwize
Emacs runs in Windows consoles. Presumably you start it the usual way, by
saying: emacs -nw

When you have Emacs, why use anything else? :)

~~~
rhabarba
Even in CUA-mode, Emacs is very unusual in quite a lot of ways in the DOS
world. That’s why, I guess.

------
inakarmacoma
It's interesting, a shame emacs org-mode is discarded so quickly. If only the
barrier of entry weren't so high.

~~~
rhabarba
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
Emacs has a CUA mode to address that specific issue:
[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/CU...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/CUA-
Bindings.html)

~~~
rhabarba
It still feels rather different than (e.g.) TSE. Don’t misunderstand me, I
surely like Emacs and I use it regularly, but the command-line version is a
strange thing in a DOS environment.

------
lsllc
The TSE/QEDIT and FTE TUI's look like they were made with Borland's Turbo
Vision framework [0].

Oh man, so much retro-computing these days on HN, I love it!

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Vision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Vision)

------
craz8
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/](http://www.os2museum.com/wp/microsoft-editor/)

~~~
LocalH
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.

------
karmakaze
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
KEDIT, the XEDIT clone? There is a free version of that, The Hessling Editor.

~~~
karmakaze
Yes. I's forgotten its xedit roots. Lots of interactive operations like block
editing a subset of lines matched by pattern. And it could edit huge files
fast.

------
the-dude
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
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
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
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.)

------
Lammy
How about `ee`?
[https://github.com/herrbischoff/ee](https://github.com/herrbischoff/ee)

~~~
rhabarba
Does it have a Windows version?

------
rhabarba
(tenox /does/ have a point here.)

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techntoke
Vim works great. Don't see why you'd want to use anything else, except maybe
Emacs.

~~~
rhabarba
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
Until recently with Windows Terminal the Windows console app has been garbage.
Any text editor would suck using the classic Windows console.

~~~
rhabarba
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“.

------
29athrowaway
If you mention HT editor, you also have to mention Hiew. HT is sort of a clone
of Hiew.

------
grzm
(2018)

------
keithnz
honorable mention, even though you are likely not to run it on a headless
windows server, is with a WSL shell you can run any *nix terminal editor and
edit windows files just fine.

------
stOneskull
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.

------
slim
openwatcom vi looks great

~~~
rodgerd
It does. If the vi that shipped with Linux distros had that TUI, a lot fewer
people would hate vi.

------
agustif
micro works nice under wsl/shell env in windows

~~~
rhabarba
Why would you do that as there’s a native micro for Windows?

(I, personally, find micro too nano’ish. YMMV.)

------
jedisct1
I use Jed.

------
justinmk

        scoop install neovim

