Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!cnrdean2
From: cnrdean2@violet.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Wanted SIMPLE editor and Re: Mail Editor
Message-ID: <12129@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 16 Jul 88 02:13:36 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: cnrdean2@violet.berkeley.edu ()
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 33
Keywords:RAND editor, simple editor, ice, mail


Bob Drzyzgula writes:
>Here at the Federal Reserve Board, we have a number of senior and
>not so senior management type users that feel that having to learn
>a "complicated" syntax for an editor just to send and receive mail
>is an undue burden...
>The last thing I need is a project to write a new editor.
>I keep thinking that the Rand editor e would be the answer,
>but then I worry about the user that all of a sudden wants to send
>something with tabs in it (I don't know, a Makefile or something)...
>So I invite discussion on this. Does anyone know of a deathly
>simple, entirely intuitive, full screen editor that will work on
>vt220 terminals, and maybe do function keys and stuff, that might
>satisfy these users?

I posted a similar request to comp.editors 3 weeks ago for the same
reasons: we need a SIMPLE (VERY SIMPLE) cursor-key-driven editor for
ADMINISTRATIVE mail users. We would settle for running only on vt100
terminals and PC's that emulate vt100.

I got 2 replies: both suggesting RAND editor--which appears to be WAY
TOO COMPLICATED for these users.  The editor that comes with a $300
Radio Shack Model 100 notebook computer is much more appropriate for
these people.  Is it possible that nothing like this has ever been
written for UNIX and vt100 terminals??!!

There was a trivially simple editor called "ice", written for PDP-11
Unix, which came out of Canada.  Was this written in C or assembler?
It is only 8K on a DEC PRO-350 running VENIX. It could only run on
vt100 terminals.  This is sort of thing we're looking for, if written
in C.

Jim Bradley, College of Natural Resources Computer Facility, UC Berkeley