Text editors that run from the terminal.

Dart

Active Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2022
Messages
112
Reaction score
131
Credits
1,194
I've been using VI since the latter part of the '80s. It's what everyone else was using, so I had a mountain of info on it's use, shortcuts and anything else I needed to know on tap. I really like it for shell scripting. Once you learn how to customize it, and some of the shortcuts, IMHO it's hard to beat. What I like best is how much contiguous time I can keep my fingers on the keyboard. Using vi is what inspired me to setup keyboard shortcuts to manipulate my windows sizes and positions. wmctrl has a lot of power.
 


OP
C

CrazedNerd

Guest
vi: Using me is difficult.
emacs: hold my beer.
I was never that thrilled about emacs, it's kinda fun but the shortcuts aren't effortless and the browser kinda sucks in comparison to Firefox. I'm fine with just letting Richard Stallman have it to himself.
 
OP
C

CrazedNerd

Guest
I've been using VI since the latter part of the '80s. It's what everyone else was using, so I had a mountain of info on it's use, shortcuts and anything else I needed to know on tap. I really like it for shell scripting. Once you learn how to customize it, and some of the shortcuts, IMHO it's hard to beat. What I like best is how much contiguous time I can keep my fingers on the keyboard. Using vi is what inspired me to setup keyboard shortcuts to manipulate my windows sizes and positions. wmctrl has a lot of power.
that's true, however i can't stand having to switch between insert and normal mode constantly, it's very frustrating. I think they should now design vi/vim to start in insert mode because it's not going to frustrate your normal way of dealing with everything else OUTSIDE OF VIM!

I've actually made a special folder for files so i can keep messing around with the keyboard mapping, because that hjkl crap won't do for me. I'd rather use a text editor that respects standard typing technique becuase it makes typing a hell of a lot faster.
 

forester

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2022
Messages
544
Reaction score
317
Credits
3,829
Started with vi on Sun.
Disliked it.
Discovered Midnight Commande (mc) and have been using it ever since to edit/create config files, for one thing.

I've been told mc is NOT a text editor.
Who cares when it works and does what I want it it do?
(Not a coder)
 
OP
C

CrazedNerd

Guest
Started with vi on Sun.
Disliked it.
Discovered Midnight Commande (mc) and have been using it ever since to edit/create config files, for one thing.

I've been told mc is NOT a text editor.
Who cares when it works and does what I want it it do?
(Not a coder)
i think if you use it to edit text files, then it's a text editor...however, it's certainly not a terminal text editor but a GUI application like emacs, gedit, Code::blocks, LibreOffice, etc. The only terminal text editors i know about are vi/vim, nano, pico, and nice editor. I'm certainly going to check out pico and nice, however i have gotten really comfortable with nano at this point and am unlikely to change camps again in the CLI world. I played with vim for a total of 5 hours about and in the end i was pretty disappointed.

EDIT: Nevermind, i installed midnight commader and it is a terminal application...and has an old-school BIOS look to it
 
Last edited by a moderator:

jpnilson

Active Member
Joined
Jul 31, 2021
Messages
169
Reaction score
88
Credits
1,486
I most often use VI because of the environment I worked in did not allow anything but the bare minimum to be installed. It is good to become comfortable with it as it is almost always available. I do like nano. Notepadqq is also good as you can open and manipulate large files without issue.
 
OP
C

CrazedNerd

Guest
I most often use VI because of the environment I worked in did not allow anything but the bare minimum to be installed. It is good to become comfortable with it as it is almost always available. I do like nano. Notepadqq is also good as you can open and manipulate large files without issue.
I'm pretty sure that nano is just as universal as vi though, correct? All linux distros come with nano and vi by default I think...
 

SlowCoder

Gold Member
Gold Supporter
Joined
May 2, 2022
Messages
455
Reaction score
316
Credits
3,611
I'm pretty sure that nano is just as universal as vi though, correct? All linux distros come with nano and vi by default I think...
I think there's still a few holdouts. While goofing with other distros, I've run into one or two that didn't have nano installed by default. Like maybe Slackware or Arch? I don't remember which.
 

dos2unix

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
2,106
Reaction score
1,716
Credits
15,240
I've run into one or two that didn't have nano installed by default. Like maybe Slackware or Arch? I don't remember which.

Nano has always been part of the repo's for Fedora/Redhat for quite a while. But vi was the default editor that got installed
with the OS for nearly 2 decades. It was only recently (Fedora 34) that nano became the default editor.

If you work a lot with headless servers like I do, then console based makes sense.
But if you have a desktop/laptop with a monitor/mouse. I suspect most people use a GUI text editor.
I like Pluma when I'm using the GUI. If you have VNC or Vinagre you can share the desktop remotely.

It's probably a little bit sad, that I use the command line so much, that I actually find doing things in vi
easier than doing them in Pluma. Maybe it's just force of habit, I don't know. But even when I have a GUI
I find myself opening a terminal to edit things.

Maybe I'm too old :) but I find it difficult to go back and forth between GUI and CLI even when it's possible.
 

captain-sensible

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2019
Messages
2,910
Reaction score
1,972
Credits
18,114
I don't use Debian ; but you can roll your own . Basically get

moe-1.12.tar.lz from https://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/gnu/moe/

then unpack and you get moe-1.12 directory . from terminal cd into directory . The run
Code:
   ./configue
if all goes well you then run
Code:
 make
you should if you have all libs to do it get a file called moe

(
Code:
  [andrew@darkstar:Desktop/moe-1.12]$ file moe                                                                 (07-17 18:51)
moe: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=7c9d6dd5a4ca7be324f1e3d6bd5c158851977269, for GNU/Linux 4.4.0, with debug_info, not stripped
[andrew@darkstar:Desktop/moe-1.12]$
)

then its just a case of giving it -rwxr-xr-x permission, move say to /usr/bin/ then you can run, at $ prompt moe



the editor is a bit basic but interesting exercise to get it ?
 
OP
C

CrazedNerd

Guest
I don't use Debian ; but you can roll your own . Basically get

moe-1.12.tar.lz from https://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/gnu/moe/

then unpack and you get moe-1.12 directory . from terminal cd into directory . The run
Code:
   ./configue
if all goes well you then run
Code:
 make
you should if you have all libs to do it get a file called moe

(
Code:
  [andrew@darkstar:Desktop/moe-1.12]$ file moe                                                                 (07-17 18:51)
moe: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=7c9d6dd5a4ca7be324f1e3d6bd5c158851977269, for GNU/Linux 4.4.0, with debug_info, not stripped
[andrew@darkstar:Desktop/moe-1.12]$
)

then its just a case of giving it -rwxr-xr-x permission, move say to /usr/bin/ then you can run, at $ prompt moe



the editor is a bit basic but interesting exercise to get it ?
It's certainly an interesting editor, I will try to install it when I have more time
 
Last edited by a moderator:
OP
C

CrazedNerd

Guest
I don't use Debian ; but you can roll your own . Basically get

moe-1.12.tar.lz from https://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/gnu/moe/

then unpack and you get moe-1.12 directory . from terminal cd into directory . The run
Code:
   ./configue
if all goes well you then run
Code:
 make
you should if you have all libs to do it get a file called moe

(
Code:
  [andrew@darkstar:Desktop/moe-1.12]$ file moe                                                                 (07-17 18:51)
moe: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=7c9d6dd5a4ca7be324f1e3d6bd5c158851977269, for GNU/Linux 4.4.0, with debug_info, not stripped
[andrew@darkstar:Desktop/moe-1.12]$
)

then its just a case of giving it -rwxr-xr-x permission, move say to /usr/bin/ then you can run, at $ prompt moe



the editor is a bit basic but interesting exercise to get it ?
Nah i ain't got the libraries, according to bash i'm missing <ncurses.h>, lol, the number of times i've had issues because of missing subroutines, especially on windows, i think modern ubuntu might have chucked it. Is there anyway i can download <ncurses.h> to the proper directory?
 

dos2unix

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
2,106
Reaction score
1,716
Credits
15,240
Nah i ain't got the libraries, according to bash i'm missing <ncurses.h>, lol, the number of times i've had issues because of missing subroutines, especially on windows, i think modern ubuntu might have chucked it. Is there anyway i can download <ncurses.h> to the proper directory?

Most distro's have a package called ncurses-devel or something similar. It will take care of this.
Some have libncurses-dev or something similar.
 
OP
C

CrazedNerd

Guest
Most distro's have a package called ncurses-devel or something similar. It will take care of this.
Code:
sudo apt install ncurses-devel

...

E: Unable to locate package ncurses-devel

:-(
 

dos2unix

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
2,106
Reaction score
1,716
Credits
15,240

Staff online


Top