mhb@ukfca1 (Mark Hanbury Brown) (11/17/87)
Does anyone know of a VERY VERY SIMPLE screen editor for dumb terminals.
What I want is something which a totally naive computer user can learn in
5 minutes. All it needs to do is
- move the cursor around the screen, scrolling the text (arrow keys?)
- insert text (by typing it)
- delete text (using delete key?)
It should not spring any surprises when wrong keys are pressed (ie. vi,
emacs, etc. are not considered at all suitable).
The more portable the better, but I need it specifically for Sun Unix. VAX/VMS
would be useful too.
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for me to write, but if anyone's all ready
invented this particular wheel, I'd be grateful.
Mark Hanbury Brown
{steinmetz,philabs}!nyfca1!ukfca1!mhbdavidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) (11/17/87)
In article <296@ginger.UUCP> mhb@ukfca1.UUCP () writes: |Does anyone know of a VERY VERY SIMPLE screen editor for dumb terminals. |What I want is something which a totally naive computer user can learn in |5 minutes. All it needs to do is | - move the cursor around the screen, scrolling the text (arrow keys?) | - insert text (by typing it) | - delete text (using delete key?) |It should not spring any surprises when wrong keys are pressed (ie. vi, |emacs, etc. are not considered at all suitable). You know your needs best, but microemacs will do just what you want. Disable all key bindings except those you want. It's portable and reliable. I agree that vi would give too many "look at that!" situations with bad typists. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
mmtowfig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mark Mehdi Towfigh) (11/18/87)
In article <7895@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >In article <296@ginger.UUCP> mhb@ukfca1.UUCP () writes: >>Does anyone know of a VERY VERY SIMPLE screen editor for dumb terminals. >> >>It should not spring any surprises when wrong keys are pressed (ie. vi, >>emacs, etc. are not considered at all suitable). > >You know your needs best, but microemacs will do just what you want. >Disable all key bindings except those you want. I agree with this; vi is a piece of junk, which no one should ever have to use. The Emacs-*style* editor I use, JOVE, can easily disable the bindings you don't want, as Bill said. You could just have five functional command keys, if you wanted. It has a lot of nice features; one of the most powerful is used in programming: the key sequence ^X^E saving all modified files, runs make (or another command of your choosing) into a buffer, and then takes you to each line where an error occurred, to fix up. You can also run shells, or pipe a given region through a command and back into the region (like using cb, the C beautifier. It's on many UNIX systems, and I think it comes with 4.3 BSD. I can't tell you how strongly I recommend it. -- ======================================================================= Mark Towfigh If there's one thing I like better than a bologna and whipped cream sandwich, it's honey and ketchup. UUCP: ...princeton!phoenix!mmtowfig BITNET: 6110480@PUCC
gwyn@brl-smoke.UUCP (11/19/87)
In article <296@ginger.UUCP> mhb@ukfca1.UUCP () writes:
-Does anyone know of a VERY VERY SIMPLE screen editor for dumb terminals.
-What I want is something which a totally naive computer user can learn in
-5 minutes. All it needs to do is
- - move the cursor around the screen, scrolling the text (arrow keys?)
- - insert text (by typing it)
- - delete text (using delete key?)
-It should not spring any surprises when wrong keys are pressed (ie. vi,
-emacs, etc. are not considered at all suitable).
Use EMACS with its keys bound to the desired commands and other command
keystrokes bound to something innocuous such as ring-bell. You will have
to figure out how you want the user to terminate with and without saving
changes, then bind keys appropriately.carroll@snail.UUCP (11/19/87)
Are people out there running different version of emacs than I've seen, or do I just type too fast? I use =vi= because I haven't seen another visual editor on UNIX(registered trademark of AT&T) that can keep up with me. I've even tried GNU-emacs on a SUN-3/50, and it's still just too slow. I can't type when the editor is 3 or 4 words behind. I need to see what I'm typing as I type it or my error rate goes to 1 very quickly. I type about 50-80 WPM in normal C/assembler editing.
wcs@ho95e.UUCP (11/20/87)
In article <296@ginger.UUCP> mhb@ukfca1.UUCP () writes:
:-Does anyone know of a VERY VERY SIMPLE screen editor for dumb terminals.
:-What I want is something which a totally naive computer user can learn in
:-5 minutes. All it needs to do is
:- - move the cursor around the screen, scrolling the text (arrow keys?)
:- - insert text (by typing it)
:- - delete text (using delete key?)
:-It should not spring any surprises when wrong keys are pressed (ie. vi,
:-emacs, etc. are not considered at all suitable).
Several people have suggested using emacs with most keys bound to
something innocuous like ring-bell. You can do the same with vi, just
about as easily. A modeless editor is a bit more appropriate here, but
if you use vi 3.9 with the showmode option on, it's pretty safe. The
user needs arrow keys, enter/leave insert mode, delete char/word/line,
and ZZ to save files (so they don't need :). You *could* even :map
most of the other keys to autoinsert, if you wanted to :-)!
I normally use vi; I've gotten used to orthogonal commands sets, and it's too
painful to tolerate emacs's different-looking-letters-for-similar-commands
syntax in spite of the benefits of modelessness, c-mode, nroff-mode,
windows, buffers, etc. I wish somebody did a "MacWrite" for dumb terminals.
--
# Thanks;
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcskevin@ttidca.TTI.COM (Kevin Carothers) (11/21/87)
>In article <296@ginger.UUCP> mhb@ukfca1.UUCP () writes: >-Does anyone know of a VERY VERY SIMPLE screen editor for dumb terminals. And Doug Gwyn writes: (gwyn@brl.arpa) >Use EMACS with its keys bound to the desired commands and other command >keystrokes bound to something innocuous such as ring-bell. (...) Well, sounds like a potential problem if more than three or four people start using EMACS, and other memory-bound processes are going on also. Remember that EMACS, even in it's simplest executable state (no windows, no multiple file opens, etc...) is a *HUGE* muhonga (about a quarter mbyte?). I don't know what the intent is in the systems design, but if a simple forward-backward type browse is needed, with "marks" and simple selective writes, maybe the "less" pager posted a couple of weeks ago (sorry - forgot the newsgroup) would be sufficient? PS --- Can the original poster be more specific on the exact terminal? EMACS doesn't work very well on some dumb (ie; no cursor-positioning) terminals...Never did get it to work on some ADDS, and Lear-Siegler models. Kevin !{csun,rdlvax,trwrb,psivax}!ttidca!kevin
gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (11/23/87)
In article <1484@ttidca.TTI.COM> kevin@ttidcb.UUCP (Kevin Carothers) writes: >Remember that EMACS, even in it's simplest executable state >(no windows, no multiple file opens, etc...) is a *HUGE* muhonga >(about a quarter mbyte?). Different implementations vary widely in their memory requirements. In fact, when I use EMACS it is usually an old version of Jove, small enough to run on a machine with a 64Kb process size limit (PDP-11). Anyway, on any reasonable system, only one copy of the executable code is resident in memory, no matter how many processes are current. The data space requirements depend on the size of the files being edited; if they're moderately small, there's plenty of memory.