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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 2:29 am Post subject: |
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| I do plan to write about jedit. In fact, I added a plugin to my version of jedit this evening as I was working on the article. |
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masinick
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 3:05 am Post subject: |
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| I managed to finish up some writing I had been doing about the Elvis text editor and I wrote about the Vim editor, and that's what I got done tonight. |
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masinick
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 3:10 am Post subject: |
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Here is what I've come up with so far:
Linux systems, their related cousins, the BSD systems, and their ancestors, the UNIX systems, all have many things in common. They all have powerful base system utilities, and a wise range of flexible text editors are one of the marks that really set them apart from other systems. Many text editors today are available across a wide range of hardware and software platforms. The editors that we'll be reviewing all have a heritage that began on either a UNIX or a Linux system. Before I go too far, I should state that Linux systems consist of a system kernel, a file system that is accessed through the system kernel, a core set of
commands that provide basic access to the information in the system, and one or more shells that provide access to those commands. Both the system kernel and nearly all of the core set of commands are licensed by the GNU General Public License, also known as the GPL. Richard Stallman, the person who created the GNU idea, the Free Software Foundation, and the GPL, prefers that Linux systems use the name GNU/Linux. I acknowledge this and often use the name GNU/Linux myself to refer to the overall system, but for sake of brevity, I'll just say Linux in this article, noting this acknowlegement.
Many systems, probably most of them today, also provide some type of graphical user interface (GUI). We'll be examining several text editors that work using a graphical user interface. Some of the editors can be used either with a graphical user interface or through a console terminal. Some text editors work only through a console terminal, others work only using a GUI. We'll be looking at many of them, and identifying how they can be used. We won't neccessarily cover every possible platform on which each
editor can be used, but we will mention several editors that work on many different hardware and software platforms.
I won't be going into a lot of detail about what you can and
can't do in each of the text editors, but I will highlight a few
features, particularly when they are unusual or notable.
Most text editors use edit buffers to hold the text that you
type. When you want to save what you've typed, you tell the editor that you want to save the contents of the editing buffer. A few editors can automatically save the contents of the editing buffer for you. Each editor has at least one way to save the editing buffer. Many of the editors have several different ways to save buffers. It is also possible in many of the editors to edit many different buffers from the same editor and move between the buffers, copying, cutting, and pasting the buffer contents.
When you're using a Linux system, (and especially their UNIX system cousins) you have to include mention of the Vi editor and the Vi family of editors. I'm writing the first part of this article using Elvis (some people call it "The King").
The Elvis text editor is a clone of vi/ex, the standard UNIX
editor. Because of this, Elvis is what's called a modal editor.
Elvis supports nearly all of the vi/ex commands, in both visual mode and ex mode. Elvis adds support for multiple files, multiple windows, a variety of display modes, on-line help, and other miscellaneous extensions.
The Elvis text editor can be used in a variety of different
display modes that set it apart, even from other vi clones.
These include the normal display mode, which displays plain
ASCII, just like the traditional vi editor, syntax mode, which
adds syntax coloring to the normal display mode, hex mode, which provides an interactive hex dump, good for binary files, html mode, a simple Web page formatter, man mode, a simple man page formatter, and tex mode, a simple subset of the TeX formatter. All of these modes, to reiterate, are called display modes, and these differentiate Elvis from Vim, Vi, and other vi clones.
Elvis, like all vi clones, operates by default in visual mode.
We also call this edit mode. Vi clones also have an input mode and most of them have an ex mode. You change from edit mode to input mode by typing in a letter that tells the editor where to position itself in the editing buffer.
Elvis can be used either as a graphical text editor or as a
console based full screen editor. In its second form, it can
closely emulate the original vi editor. In fact, on many
Slackware systems, Elvis has been used as the vi editor, and the name vi is linked to the elvis editor.
Vim, and variations of Vim, Gvim, vim-gtk, and a few others, are perhaps the most popular vi implementations available today, and for good reason. Vim is very well maintained, is feature rich, yet reasonably sized. It can be built with or without its broad feature set, so it is quite modular. Vim comes with very good documentation, it has a very active news group, Web site, and Wiki (a Wiki is a form of Web log).
Vi is linked to the vim image on the vast majority of Linux
systems today, so like Elvis, Vim can be readily used as a vi
replacement. In it's simplsst form, Vim can be used in vi
compatibility mode. In fact, if you do not create a vi or vim
resource file and your system's implementation does not have a
resource file either, Vim runs in vi compatibility mode.
Like Elvis, Vim can be used either from a console or from a
graphical user interface. Vim has extensive documentation. In
fact, if you use the graphical version of Vim, GVim, accessing
help is as easy as selecting an entry from the Help pulldown
menu. With the console version of Vim, it's not too much more difficult. If you happen to be in edit mode, all you have to do is type in :h and press Enter and you gain access to comprehensive help about every feature found in Vim.
Vim has edit, insert, visual, and normal modes, in addition to command lines that implement a large subset of commands from the ex editor (upon which the original vi was built). |
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2004
Posts: 8811
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 3:12 am Post subject: |
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| That's a rough draft of what I have so far. Comments, corrections, and suggestions are welcome. I intend to cover many more text editors, I'm only getting started. When finished, this will be a reasonably comprehensive survey of many different text editors. |
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25ft
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maillion
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masinick
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:39 pm Post subject: I can live with that! ;-) |
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| maillion wrote: | | masinick wrote: | | That's a rough draft of what I have so far. Comments, corrections, and suggestions are welcome. I intend to cover many more text editors, I'm only getting started. When finished, this will be a reasonably comprehensive survey of many different text editors. |
After a quick scan, all I can see is a switch between I and we - "I will...", "we will..." - can be a bit confusing, and your high school English teacher would be fuming...  |
Thanks! I'll be sure to clean up the document before it reaches final form- including spelling, grammar, and organization. I'll be sure to keep your suggestions handy!
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masinick
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Dusanyu
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masinick
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| Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 12:06 pm Post subject: Ed came first |
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If I can remember where I found the information, I will even write a bit of history and background that led to the work on ed. At the very least, I will write a bit on it because ed is the foundation upon which vi was created. The people at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) created software that's now known as BSD, the Berkeley Standard Distribution. BSD is not UNIX, it is a complete rewrite, but it is the closest free alternative to UNIX. The editor created by UCB is called ex and it descended from ed. That editor, ex, was used by Bill Joy (and anyone else who worked with him on it) to create vi.
Ed, on the other hand, was created by Dennis Ritchie, if I'm not mistaken. If it wasn't Dennis, it was Ken Thompson --- I'll have to check my facts on that before writing anything definitive.
The ed of today on Linux systems is a complete rewrite again, this time under the GNU project. I have no idea (without checking) who the current author(s) are.
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masinick
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 1:47 pm Post subject: Funny article! |
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I think I've read that article before, but it was quite some time ago. The author may actually be serious, but he's so extreme that his comments are amusing, even funny.
Ed really is a powerful editor, and it is powerful, especially so, considering its small image size. But ed is not the only small editor with a lot of power. I have to go back through my notes and postings to find which is which, but I found several editors that run on Linux and have an image size under 200K and at least two editors, maybe three, that have an image size less than 90K. Once I find my notes, I'll see where ed fits it. Ed was one of the smallest, but I'm not sure it was THE smallest, believe it or not!
When we get into humor, some people say that cat is the only editor you really need! 
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crouse
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Joined: 17 Apr 2003
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Location: Iowa
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masinick
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| Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 8:12 am Post subject: Would be nice to push it a bit further, huh? |
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| crouse wrote: | Looks good so far  |
The ideas, in extremely rough form, are there, but the depth and breadth leave something to be desired, and a consistent writing style is severely lacking. I took notes from a few musings that I've written at various points in time, but simply have not been able to get any more time to take it to the next step. Hopefuly, the day will come that I can get something really cohesive together. There aren't that many people out there who are as geeky as I am when it comes to twiddling and tinkering with user interfaces, Web Browsers, and text editors. I'm glad you like what you've seen so far... maybe someday...
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crouse
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