
Ne: the nice editor - znpy
http://ne.di.unimi.it/
======
unixhero
I recommend Jed's editor for a very friendly editor as well. I'm a console-
menu guy and like the EDIT.COM feel :)

Plus it's got some Emacs (s-lang) to it although I never use it.

Also, you can't argue with 8bit clean.

It's in the repos.

Homepage:
[http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/features.html](http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/features.html)

On a sidenote. I am addicted to Jedsoft's console pager "most". Also in the
repos. With colour, search and really the whole nine yards. It's the most. So
much more than more and even more than less!. Pipe to |most and see for
yourself!

~~~
znpy
Yes, most is awesome. I recommend that too.

------
ansgri
FYI the package 'ne' on Ubuntu does exist.

The question is: why didn't it replace the goddamn Nano as a default editor
long ago? This editor should be known more widely.

~~~
jhallenworld
In order to avoid fading completely into irrelevance, I've been improving JOE
to hopefully better compete with Nano/Pico. People like nano because there is
no learning effort at all. I can't argue with that- if you're a student trying
to write a first-year program, you don't want to waste time being hindered by
the editor.

JOE is already pretty simple (it says hit ^K H for help on the screen always,
and if you hit it you get the basic commands), but even then I find that a top
google search for JOE is "How do you save and exit?" People can't seem to see
the "Hit ^K H for help" in the top-right corner. Also this message annoys
power users since it's a waste of valuable status line real estate.

So I'm trying this for JOE 4.2: the pop-up copyright notice is replace with
one-line of help:

    
    
       JOE 4.2 ** Use Ctrl-K X to save/exit, Ctrl-C to abort, or Ctrl-K H for help **
    

This shows up on the bottom line which I think is more noticeable.

ne and emacs both show this kind of help when you first start the editor. But
in both cases, you have to do a lot of reading (emacs shows too much, and in
ne the help is buried in the middle of a long copyright notice).

Ne is pretty nice otherwise, it almost has the Windows cua key bindings and
includes column block operations. Of course JOE is better :-)

~~~
Someone
_" but even then I find that a top google search for JOE is "How do you save
and exit?" People can't seem to see the "Hit ^K H for help" in the top-right
corner"_

I would see that as a very strong hint that the time when Wordstar keybindings
made sense in an editor with "no learning curve at all" has passed.

I think you should very seriously consider either having control-S for save or
dropping the idea to compete with editors without a learning curve. If you
want to keep aiming at the low learning curve, Google tells me that key
bindings are highly configurable, so what's wrong with shipping with ones
beginning users will be familiar with?

If you want to keep Wordstar bindings by default, I think your new message can
be improved.

I fear that people who read _" Use Ctrl-K X to save/exit"_ may think that
Ctrl-K X will give them _the option to save changes_ , and then exit. That can
put them up for a huge disappointment the first time they want to exit without
saving.

IMO, the use of "abort" for "exit without saving" doesn't help there, either.
For me, "abort" signals abnormal termination, but there is nothing wrong with
exiting without saving.

~~~
jhallenworld
What would you suggest that fits in 80 columns?

~~~
Someone
I doubt you can get any significant improvement that way, but unless I am
miscounting

    
    
      Save file and Exit=Ctrl-K X    Exit Without Saving=Ctrl-C    Help=Ctrl-K H
    

fits in that space. I doubt it will help much because people will have
forgotten the key combinations seconds after typing the first character, and
even if they do remember them, they will not become as engrained as the
keystrokes they know work in other programs.

I am pessimistic because I see three problems with Control-K X for 'normal'
users:

\- they aren't used to the tiny mode that Control-X introduces (it wouldn't
even surprise me if interviewing a few 'normal users' would show that they do
not know what "Ctrl-K X" means)

\- most other applications separate the 'save' command from the 'exit' command
(web and phone apps are exceptions, but they don't use explicit save at all)

\- it's not control-S (unfair? Maybe, but I would call it realistic)

I doubt reminding them "hey, this program is different" at startup will help
much for that.

Disclaimer: I'm not a professional in this field and I am wildly guessing at
the target audience for a simple text editor.

~~~
jhallenworld
I do have a single exit command, so I'm taking your advice. New users only
have to remember two commands:

    
    
      Joe's Own Editor 4.1 (utf-8) ** Type Ctrl-K Q to exit or Ctrl-K H for help **

------
david-given
Alas, for a lot of people, ne will forever be the Norton Editor.

[http://www.danielsays.com/ss-gallery-dos-the-norton-
editor-1...](http://www.danielsays.com/ss-gallery-dos-the-norton-
editor-13c.html)

I have written so, so much code in this.

~~~
ino
Was it the same as the F4 (edit) in norton commander?

~~~
unixhero
Slightly trimmed version.

You have a clone of it bundled with Midnight Commander. "mcedit"

------
diegolo
Sebastiano Vigna never ceases to amaze me

~~~
unixhero
What else has he been involved in?

~~~
OJFord
A Java framework, 'fastutil', seems to be his most popular.

[https://github.com/vigna?tab=repositories](https://github.com/vigna?tab=repositories)

------
mwambua
This is all very nice... but real programmers use ed
[http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html](http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-
msg.html)

------
frik
so something like Nano but with better shortcut keys.

~~~
keithpeter
The slackbuild.org script for Slackware 14.1 compiles in about 30 seconds on
my ancient Thinkpad. Looks OK. You have to set the backspace key to generate a
Ctrl-H in the Xfce-terminal preferences (this is mentioned in the info page in
relation to Mac OS).

Nano gets the job done for tweaking Web pages on ssh &c. It does have some
fans...

[https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/09/24/editor/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/09/24/editor/)

------
bobajeff
I just want a text editor with good intelligent c++: code completion, call
tree generation, jump to declaration/definition and syntax highlighting - that
works on the command line so I can use it over ssh.

~~~
drdaeman
A good intelligent code editing would either require a good pile of hacks or a
completely different approach.

Common "text code editors" don't understand a thing about the code they edit.
They're just supplemented with ton of hacks that produce meaningful result in
acceptably high number of cases (like regex-based highlighters) but still
don't have "real" intelligence towards the content of their buffers.

And with ever-growing number of hacks the thing's unlikely to be small or low
on dependencies. You'll end up with another emacs/vim/etc - a fairly small
cores, and then a scripting or external tool execution support to do
highlighting, parsing, context-aware searching, refactoring etc etc to make
them useful for code editing. (And then why bother when we have emacs and vim
already?)

~~~
bobajeff
>And with ever-growing number of hacks the thing's unlikely to be small or low
on dependencies. You'll end up with another emacs/vim/etc

That's acceptable as long as it _works_.

~~~
drdaeman
Don't Emacs or VIM already do?

And, well, if they don't work, it's certainly easier to patch their hacks or
pile even more hacks, rather than trying to redo everything from a clean
slate.

~~~
bobajeff
No and I'm not suggesting they reinvent the wheel either. I also don't care if
it's a "common text editor" either. It can be a full blown IDE for all I care.
I just want it to work correctly and in the command line so I can use it over
ssh.

~~~
danmaz74
Appears to me what you really want is a full-featured IDE working in the
terminal. I guess the market for that would be too small.

~~~
bobajeff
What I really want is a way to debug, compile, examine and code C++ using a
build server for all the cpu heavy tasks.

~~~
danmaz74
I think you could use a web IDE for that, instead of a terminal IDE. There are
already several web IDE AFAIK.

~~~
ngrilly
Which web IDE would you recommend?

~~~
danmaz74
I honestly can't recommend any, I just tried a couple of them but (at least
for now) prefer to use a traditional IDE (RubyMine).

------
AYBABTME
I wonder if there are terminal based IDEs that are specifically made to edit
and work on code, perhaps aware of ASTs and working on them, instead of being
text editors with language plugins.

------
great_kraken
Installed this from the AUR and tried it. Sadly I can't backspace, since it
doesn't support using ^? for backspace, only ^H.

~~~
e12e
What layout uses ^? for backspace? The wikipedia[w] page doesn't appear to be
aware of it, and a few simple searches turned up nothing...

I suppose you mean, "I can't backspace with my backspace key" \-- as you
probably can backspace fine with ^h (ctrl+h)?

[w]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace)

