Appendix 2: Text Editors

239

ae

Anthony's Editor ae is an exceptionally small program (23.9K) that provides

basic edit capability for the rescue disk and the base system. The default

condition for the editor is with the help screen visible. This is one of the

features that makes this editor so easy to use.

The current release of Debian uses slang1 instead of ncurses, because the

library is much smaller, allowing other things to go on the boot file system.

To accommodate the new library constraints, and to give ae functionality on

many terminal types, the key bindings have been changed to be more like

emacs. Most keys are control keys, with some use of the escape key. For

those terminals without an escape key,  will act as an escape.

All of the possible commands available in the editor are displayed on the

screen.  will toggle the help screen off and on to provide

more screen area for editing. The standard commands are:

 X I

Read a file into the editor.

 X S

Write the contents of the editor to a file.

 @

Block select to cursor movement.

 W

Cut selected block.

 Y

Paste a cut block.

 X C

Exit the editor only if file has been saved. Prompts to

save file.

 Q

Exit the editor without saving the file first. Discards

changes

ae is the only editor available in the base system, so until the system is up 

graded to  standard  there may not be an editor available that is completely

familiar. ae is the compromise between size and familiarity.