🚀 go-pugleaf

wolff@inf.fu-berlin.de (Thomas Wolff) writes:

>As a reaction to my moroseness about the apparent unavailability of a 
>simple text editor for Unix and the monstrous complexity and slowness 
>of the only widely spread alternative (emacs), I captured the source 
>of a freely available editor and turned it into a safe, fast, and easy 
>to use text editor. (I also announced it to this group some time ago.)
>It is available by ftp from ftp.fu-berlin.de [130.133.4.50]:
>/pub/unix/editor/mined.tar.Z (108841 bytes)
>/pub/pc/editor/mined_pc.zip (114522 bytes)

I'm FTPing the above editor to try it out.  But a good -
simple editor I have just given to site users
is PICO.  It really is very simple and users didn't
believe there could ever be a simple editor for UNIX but they
have been proved wrong.  It is also public domain software.


It also came with
a number of makefiles for different computers so I didn't have
library problems to get the thing to compile.

FEATURES:-
It has the menu at the bottom on the screen with all the options.
Line wrap.
REALLY USER FRIENDLY.

I no longer have to feel guilty about introducing
new users to UNIX by warning them to leave an afternoon
or two free to learn vi.

It is very easy to get elm to use it as its default editor
and you can make nn use PICO as its default editor by putting
the line

setenv EDITOR /bin/pico  (or wherever the editor is)


One of the indicators on how much average users hate vi
is that some of the site users were editing their
documents in a simple DOS editor, then uploading
it to the unix machine.  Is this comomon on other
sites that use UNIX.

The most extreme case was for email.  The person edited
his letter in MS WORD 5.0 for DOS.  Saving the final copy as
a text file.  Then uploading it via serial line to the UNIX
machine to mail off.

This question was part of the is UNIX dead flamewar on comp.unix.questions
but if UNIX is so good compared to DOS - and DOS is the bottom of the barrel -
how come you never seem to find new DOS users uploading their text files
to a UNIX machine to edit.  This seems to imply UNIX has some big
failings with common users.  And no - the fact that you can get vi for DOS
is not the only answer!!  

At least with some very kind people writing
simple editors for UNIX, new users will not be turned off immediately
after they try to edit a text file.
-- 
  Lachlan Cranswick  -  CSIRO             _--_|\  lachlan@dmp.CSIRO.AU
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