NetBSD adds a new Emacs-like text editor called atto
24 points by luke8086
24 points by luke8086
I suggested dropping "beginner-friendly" from the title. It's not present in the original post, nor in the manpage, nor would I say Emacs-based is inherently beginner-friendly when CUA exists.
Pedantry aside, 48 kilobytes is impressive and the code is remarkably readable despite being C (NetBSD has a reputation for having very hackable code). I'm surprised they didn't go with OpenBSD's mg, but I guess that'd be too heavy for their purposes.
To paraphrase the old saw about Unix, Emacs is user-friendly. It's just particular about who it calls friends.
I suggested dropping "beginner-friendly" from the title.
Makes sense after learning more about it. I've changed the title to say Emacs-like.
From the thread:
Counterpoint: Users can figure out how to use atto in 10 seconds by spamming key combinations and being greeted with "Not bound - try ctrl+x+w to write and ctrl+x+c to exit".
I think it's meant to be beginner friendly, but they just haven't documented that yet.
I use Emacs these days, but with evil keybindings because I spent 25+ years using Vim. Why anybody would want an editor with Emacs keybindings but not with Emacs' functionality is a bit of a mystery to me. I guess as a minimum system editor it kind of makes sense, if we assume users are familiar with Emacs bindings.
ISTM that if the goal is to provide a quick-and-easy text editor for all users, that CUA bindings would be the preference?
I'm surprised at the lack of CUA bindings myself. That said, nano has its own weird-ass keybindings (inherited from pico?) but it also has a handy cheat-sheet along the bottom of the screen.
Some more information can be found in the README
Interesting how they never mention the word Emacs in the man page... ;-)
I saw the Emacs keybindings in the man page, and thought "oh! It's another microemacs!". And then followed the link in this thread to femto, and thence to the atto README. It's like a minimum viable emacs.
Don't worry, SI nerds, we didn't skip femto.
Correct femto: https://github.com/hughbarney/femto
So that's an enhancement of "Atto Emacs", which is probably not the same as the submission?
atto was written primarily by Hugh Barney, and was originally based on public domain code from Anthony Howe's editor (commonly known as Anthony's Editor).
Original Atto Emacs:
https://github.com/hughbarney/atto
Naming is hard...