You could have heard about Emacs and Vim and Nano, the quintessential Linux textual content editors, however Linux has an abundance of open supply textual content editors, and it is my purpose to spend December giving 31 of them a good go.
In this text, I have a look at Jed, a terminal-based editor that includes a helpful drop-down menu, which makes it particularly straightforward for customers who’re new to terminal editors, in addition to those that simply don’t love remembering keyboard mixtures for each operate.
Install Jed
On Linux, your distribution’s software program repository could make Jed obtainable to put in by your package deal supervisor:
$ sudo dnf set up jedNot all do, but it surely’s a simple utility to compile from supply code. First, obtain S-Lang (the language Jed is written in) and set up it:
$ wget https://www.jedsoft.org/releases/slang/slang-x.y.z.tar.bz2
$ tar xvf slang*bz2
$ cd slang-x.y.z
$ ./configure ; make
$ sudo make set up
Once that is put in, do the identical with the Jed source code:
$ wget https://www.jedsoft.org/releases/jed/jed-x.y.z.tar.bz2
$ tar xvf jed*bz2
$ cd jed-x.y.z
$ ./configure ; make
$ sudo make set up
Launch Jed
Jed runs in a terminal, so to begin it, simply open a terminal and sort jed:
F10 key ==> File Edit Search Buffers Windows System HelpThis is a scratch buffer. It is NOT saved if you exit.
To entry the menus, press F10 or ESC-m and the use the arrow
keys to navigate.Latest model info is out there on the internet from
<http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/>. Other sources of JED
info embody the usenet newsgroups comp.editors and
alt.lang.s-lang. To subscribe to the jed-users mailing checklist, see
<http://www.jedsoft.org/jed/mailinglists.html>.Copyright (C) 1994, 2000-2009 John E. Davis
Email feedback or ideas to <jed@jedsoft.org>.[ (Jed zero.99.19U) Emacs: *scratch* () 1/16 eight:49am ]
How to make use of Jed
The directions that Jed auto-loads are clear and useful. You can press both the F10 key or the Esc key adopted by the letter M to enter the highest menu. This locations your cursor into the menu bar on the prime of the Jed display screen, but it surely would not open a menu. To open a menu, press Enter or Return in your keyboard. Use the arrow keys to navigate by every menu.
The onscreen menu will not be solely useful for first-time customers, it additionally gives nice reminders of keyboard shortcuts for skilled customers. For occasion, you possibly can most likely guess how one can save a file you have been engaged on: Go to the File menu and choose Save. If you wish to pace that course of up, you possibly can study the keyboard mixture of Ctrl+X after which Ctrl+S (sure, that is two keyboard shortcuts in succession).
Explore Jed’s options
For a easy editor, Jed has a stunning checklist of helpful options. It’s obtained a built-in multiplexer, permitting you to have a number of information open without delay however “stacked” on prime of each other, so you possibly can shuffle by them. You can cut up your Jed window to have a number of information onscreen without delay, change your shade theme, or open a shell.
For anybody skilled with Emacs, lots of Jed’s “unadvertised” options, reminiscent of keyboard mixtures for navigation and management, are immediately acquainted. Then once more, there is a slight studying (or perhaps unlearning) curve when a keyboard mixture is drastically totally different from what you count on. For instance, Alt+B in GNU Emacs strikes the cursor again a phrase, however in Jed, by default, it is a shortcut for the Buffers menu. This caught me off-guard about as soon as every sentence of this text.
Jed additionally has modes that assist you to load modules or plugins that will help you write particular sorts of textual content. For occasion, I wrote this text utilizing the default text_mode, however I used to be in a position to swap over to lua mode when hacking on a Lua script. These modes provide syntax highlighting and assist with matching parentheses and different delimiting characters. You can see which modes are bundled with Jed by wanting in /usr/share/jed/lib and since they’re written in S-Lang, you possibly can evaluation the code and presumably study a brand new language.
Try Jed
Jed is a pleasing and refreshingly clear textual content editor in your Linux terminal. It’s light-weight, straightforward to make use of, and comparatively uncomplicated in design. As an alternative choice to Vi for fast edits, you possibly can set Jed as EDITOR and VISUAL in your ~/.bashrc file (and in your root person’s ~/.bashrc file when you’re root). Try Jed at present.
