From Newsgroup: comp.editors

In article <11479a6$331r5$1@dont-email.me>,
Bernhard Kraft <bernhardkraft@gmx.de> wrote:
...

That may be true. But how to run ed as a Windows user?
I've got it! Install "wsl" on your computer. That is the windows
subsystem for Linux. It is great and includes the editor "ed". For me it >makes the installation of a parallel linux unnecessary! You can
learn to work with ed by typing "info ed". I am so happy to have
such a powerful editor on my comuter"

Yeah. Who needs MS Word when you can now run 'ed' ?

I guess Microsoft is going to have to hang it up and go find honest
employment.
--
A pervert, a racist, and a con man walk into a bar...

Bartender says, "What will you have, Donald!"

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:49:35 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

You don't need a whole Linux system to run ed, you only need a POSIX compatibility layer, which is what MSYS2 provides.

WasnrCOt Windows supposed to have that already?

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOeku3hDzrM>
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Am 28.07.2026 um 08:48 schrieb Lawrence DrCOOliveiro:

On Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:49:35 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

You don't need a whole Linux system to run ed, you only need a POSIX
compatibility layer, which is what MSYS2 provides.

WasnrCOt Windows supposed to have that already?

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOeku3hDzrM>

Yes with Windows NT. But I am always ran the cheap consumer Windows.
Started with 3.11, then 95 an 98. Then 2000 an so on up to Windows 10.
I don't know MSYS2, but have a cygwin installed. Cygwin doesn't has an
ed. But may be it could be installed.
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Am 27.07.2026 um 20:01 schrieb Kenny McCormack:

In article <11479a6$331r5$1@dont-email.me>,
Bernhard Kraft <bernhardkraft@gmx.de> wrote:
...

That may be true. But how to run ed as a Windows user?
I've got it! Install "wsl" on your computer. That is the windows
subsystem for Linux. It is great and includes the editor "ed". For me it
makes the installation of a parallel linux unnecessary! You can
learn to work with ed by typing "info ed". I am so happy to have
such a powerful editor on my comuter"

Yeah. Who needs MS Word when you can now run 'ed' ?

ed/ex can read commands from stdin. This handles recurring tasks by
running simple scripts.
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On 2026-08-08 13:03, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

Am 28.07.2026 um 08:48 schrieb Lawrence DrCOOliveiro:

On Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:49:35 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

You don't need a whole Linux system to run ed, you only need a POSIX
compatibility layer, which is what MSYS2 provides.

WasnrCOt Windows supposed to have that already?

Yes, since early 1990 and its still shite.

I don't know MSYS2, but have a cygwin installed. Cygwin doesn't has an
ed. But may be it could be installed.

Cygwin has `ed`, you need to install from packages, I do all the time because `vim` such and they don't have `nvi`. BUT just to throw a hat some where...

https://codeberg.org/SirWumpus/eh
--
Anthony C Howe
achowe@snert.com BarricadeMX & Milters http://nanozen.snert.com/ https://github.com/SirWumpus
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Sat, 8 Aug 2026 19:03:43 +0200, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

Am 28.07.2026 um 08:48 schrieb Lawrence DrCOOliveiro:

On Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:49:35 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

You don't need a whole Linux system to run ed, you only need a
POSIX compatibility layer, which is what MSYS2 provides.

WasnrCOt Windows supposed to have that already?

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOeku3hDzrM>

Yes with Windows NT. But I am always ran the cheap consumer Windows.
Started with 3.11, then 95 an 98. Then 2000 an so on up to Windows
10.

From 2000 onwards, itrCOs all NT now. The rest is just branding.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Sat, 8 Aug 2026 19:12:54 +0200, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

ed/ex can read commands from stdin. This handles recurring tasks by
running simple scripts.

Which begs the question: if yourCOre going to write text-editing
scripts, why not use a more powerful and capable scripting language?

Like Emacs Lisp, for example.
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Am 09.08.2026 um 01:47 schrieb Lawrence DrCOOliveiro:

On Sat, 8 Aug 2026 19:12:54 +0200, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

ed/ex can read commands from stdin. This handles recurring tasks by
running simple scripts.

Which begs the question: if yourCOre going to write text-editing
scripts, why not use a more powerful and capable scripting language?

Like Emacs Lisp, for example.

Oh, that is to much. A lot of years ago, I tried to
understand Emacs Lisp. I failed :-( .

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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On 2026-08-11 18:40, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

Am 09.08.2026 um 01:47 schrieb Lawrence DrCOOliveiro:

On Sat, 8 Aug 2026 19:12:54 +0200, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

ed/ex can read commands from stdin. This handles recurring tasks by
running simple scripts.

This is true.

[...]

Like Emacs Lisp, for example.

Oh, that is to much. A lot of years ago, I tried to
understand Emacs Lisp. I failed :-( .

Some people also don't seem to mind installing a hundred megabytes
tools when a 64 kbyte 'ed' instance fits well for the desired tasks.

Janis

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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Sat, 8 Aug 2026 19:12:54 +0200, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

ed/ex can read commands from stdin. This handles
recurring tasks by running simple scripts.

Which begs the question: if yourCOre going to write
text-editing scripts, why not use a more powerful
and capable scripting language?

Like Emacs Lisp, for example.

Calling a whole Emacs sub-process to run one
Emacs Lisp script from inside ed is inefficient, I
prefer to write my text editing scripts in C, then
call them from inside ed. With ed, it's easy to
use any programming language you want to implement
your editing workflows, unlike editors like Emacs
where you're trapped inside Emacs Lisp :p

Best Regards,
Lumin Etherlight
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:10:05 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

Which begs the question: if yourCOre going to write text-editing
scripts, why not use a more powerful and capable scripting
language?

Like Emacs Lisp, for example.

Calling a whole Emacs sub-process to run one Emacs Lisp script from
inside ed is inefficient ...

How much RAM do you think Emacs uses?
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Tue, 11 Aug 2026 18:40:13 +0200, Bernhard Kraft wrote:

Am 09.08.2026 um 01:47 schrieb Lawrence DrCOOliveiro:

Like Emacs Lisp, for example.

Oh, that is to much. A lot of years ago, I tried to understand Emacs
Lisp. I failed :-( .

Did you have any familiarity with Lisp at all?

ItrCOs not that hard.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:10:05 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

Which begs the question: if yourCOre going to write text-editing
scripts, why not use a more powerful and capable scripting
language?

Like Emacs Lisp, for example.

Calling a whole Emacs sub-process to run one Emacs Lisp script from
inside ed is inefficient ...

How much RAM do you think Emacs uses?

Emacs without any loaded packages or scripts
takes 70MiBs on my machine, and 40MiBs if started
without GUI. But my Emacs instance I'm actually
using for the past 3 days with less than 5 package
addons, and around 1000 lines of custom settings
and functions, is the second largest program on my
machine, after the web browser, and it's using
700MiBs of RSS RAM, or 600MiB PSS (i.e. excluding
shared libs that other programs are also using).
For comparison, ed with rlwrap for line-editing
support takes 3MiBs RSS, or 1MiBs PSS. And my own
hand-made ed-like editor, edlight, takes 3.5MiBs
RSS or 1.5MiBs PSS, with rlwrap, and 250KiBs PSS
without it. (rlwrap / GNU readline are bloat, one
day I will get mad enough to rewrite the features
I need from them into my editor and be done with
it, but dealing with all terminals without ncurses
(also bloat) is not easy, but perhaps I will only
support my own fork of st and be done with it).

Best Regards,
Lumin Etherlight
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:19:19 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:10:05 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

Calling a whole Emacs sub-process to run one Emacs Lisp script from
inside ed is inefficient ...

How much RAM do you think Emacs uses?

Emacs without any loaded packages or scripts takes 70MiBs on my
machine, and 40MiBs if started without GUI. But my Emacs instance
I'm actually using for the past 3 days with less than 5 package
addons, and around 1000 lines of custom settings and functions, is
the second largest program on my machine, after the web browser, and
it's using 700MiBs of RSS RAM, or 600MiB PSS (i.e. excluding shared
libs that other programs are also using). For comparison, ed with
rlwrap for line-editing support takes 3MiBs RSS, or 1MiBs PSS.

So Emacs only has to be about 600|u better than ed to be worth it.

ItrCOs say itrCOs more than that. If you need 600|u more effort and pain to
do what you do in ed compared to Emacs, then itrCOs definitely worth
running Emacs instead.

A nice thing with Emacs is, you can have it running all the time with
server mode enabled, and tell it to open files from various terminal
sessions.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:19:19 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

Emacs without any loaded packages or scripts
takes 70MiBs on my machine, and 40MiBs if started
without GUI. But my Emacs instance I'm actually
using for the past 3 days with less than 5
package addons, and around 1000 lines of custom
settings and functions, is the second largest
program on my machine, after the web browser, and
it's using 700MiBs of RSS RAM, or 600MiB PSS
(i.e. excluding shared libs that other programs
are also using). For comparison, ed with rlwrap
for line-editing support takes 3MiBs RSS, or
1MiBs PSS.

So Emacs only has to be about 600|u better than ed
to be worth it.

ItrCOs say itrCOs more than that. If you need 600|u
more effort and pain to do what you do in ed
compared to Emacs, then itrCOs definitely worth
running Emacs instead.

A nice thing with Emacs is, you can have it
running all the time with server mode enabled,
and tell it to open files from various terminal
sessions.

Unfortunately, no. As a user of Emacs for
more than a decade, who wrote thousands of lines
of custom Emacs plugins and workflows, I can tell
you with confidence that Emacs is no where near
600x less effort, or more utility than ed. Emacs
is amazing, and I still use it (in server mode, as
you suggested) every day, for GNUS for example, or
as a core part of my consulting company's invoice
and accounting system, through many custom Emacs
Lisp programs, but all of that is mainly due to an
effect of inertia, than it being the best solution
for every text editing problem. Once I got the ed
"eureka" moment, and grasped the big picture of
how it would work, I no longer saw Emacs as really
superior. I'd say the moment you grok ed is kinda
comparable to the epiphany moment one gets when
you grok Emacs, or Lisp itself. It's just that ed
is extremely deceiving in its simplicity, just as
vi is in its arcane, and Emacs is in its vastness.
When I find myself instinctively reaching out for
ed to edit text, over my trusty Emacs, which is
literally one key-binding away from me, I know it
is not that simple and obvious of a comparison. I
sense that people misunderstand ed as a thousand
lines of code with barely any features, where you
move clunky line by line trying to change a thing.
That is not the way of ed. When you compare Emacs
and all of its packages, you ought to compare it
to ed and all of /its/ addons. Ed's addons being
the entire suite of UNIX utilities. When I use ed
more than half my commands are calls to all kinds
of external utilities, I call grep and sed and awk
and make, and aspell, and fmt/par, not to mention
a dozen little custom scripts and programs I have,
to align things to a regular expression, to insert
a new section in my journal, or a new note in my
knowledge system, to insert separators or dates or
file trees, to diff the current file I'm working
on with its previous versions using git or RCS. I
also use ed programmatically by feeding commands
to it, and use it that way to manage my RSS feeds,
my tasks and agenda, my website, my passwords, and
the list goes on. And all of those programs are
near instantaneous in everything they do, taking a
handful of Megs, barely. There is an Emacs way,
there is a vi way, and there is an ed way, but the
latter is sadly a lost art, with barely a handful
of people in the world well-versed in its methods.
Perhaps if we make a demo video or two of using
stupid LLMs from inside ed, some new people would
start getting curious or something :-p


Best Regards,
Lumin Etherlight
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:41:32 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

As a user of Emacs for more than a decade, who wrote thousands of
lines of custom Emacs plugins and workflows, I can tell you with
confidence that Emacs is no where near 600x less effort, or more
utility than ed.

Can your ed do this?

(defun unhtml-wc (beg end)
"does a word count of a selection of HTML text, excluding markup."
(interactive "r")
(save-excursion
(let
(
(curbuf (current-buffer))
(tempbuf (generate-new-buffer "wc-temp"))
(delete-between
(lambda (find-opener find-closer)
; deletes regions between successive pairs of points
; identified by find-opener and find-closer callbacks
(goto-char (point-min))
(while (funcall find-opener)
(let*
(
(end-tag (point))
(start-tag
(progn
(search-backward "<" nil nil)
(point)
) ; progn
)
)
(goto-char end-tag)
(funcall find-closer)
(delete-region start-tag (point))
) ; let*
) ; while
) ; lambda
) ; delete-between
count
)
(set-buffer tempbuf)
(insert-buffer-substring-no-properties curbuf beg end)
; Multiline search seems to be troublesome (e.g. slow, stack overflow),
; so find opening and closing tags using separate searches.
(funcall delete-between ; Get rid of commented-out sections.
(lambda () (search-forward "<!--" nil t))
(lambda () (search-forward "-->" nil nil))
)
(dolist (tag '("head" "style" "script"))
; Gobble entire content for these tags, up to and including closing tags
; (luckily they donrCOt nest).
(funcall delete-between
(lambda () (re-search-forward (concat "<" tag "\\b[^>]*>") nil t))
(lambda () (re-search-forward (concat "</" tag "\\b[^>]*>") nil nil))
)
) ; dolist
(goto-char (point-min))
(perform-replace "<[^>]+>" "" nil t nil)
(setq count (count-words (point-min) (point-max)))
(kill-buffer tempbuf)
(message (format "Words: %d" count))
) ; let
) ; save-excursion
) ; unhtml-wc
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On 2026-08-15 09:32, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:41:32 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

As a user of Emacs for more than a decade, who wrote thousands of
lines of custom Emacs plugins and workflows, I can tell you with
confidence that Emacs is no where near 600x less effort, or more
utility than ed.

Can your ed do this?

[ about 60 lines of lisp-like code snipped ]

What is "this"? - If you'd instead explain what your lisp-like
program actually does we could probably answer your question.

(Not that I think it would tell anything beyond that a built-in
scripting language in an editor will allow you writing arbitrary
and complex functions. - But I'm curious anyway about an answer.)

Janis

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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:41:32 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

As a user of Emacs for more than a decade, who wrote thousands of
lines of custom Emacs plugins and workflows, I can tell you with
confidence that Emacs is no where near 600x less effort, or more
utility than ed.

Can your ed do this?

(defun unhtml-wc (beg end)
[2611 characters of needless lisp code omitted]

Of course, friend, enjoy:

$ curl -o testpage.html https://www.etherlight.link/
$ ed testpage.html

!links -dump % | wc -w

89

And for reference, here's the string output:

!links -dump %
links -dump testpage.html

The world orients itself before you
-a-a-a-ain mysterious ways...

:: Etherlight Link

A Software Consulting Company.

Apologies if you were expecting much more here. Most of our clients come
through word-of-mouth referrals, so we've never had the need for flashy
online marketing so far. For inquiry, consultation, or perhaps just to say
hi, you're welcome to send us an email to: contact@etherlight.link. You
can use OpenPGP when emailing us for better security and privacy through
encryption, our PGP public key is available.

rCo Lumin Etherlight

Number of views: 37603


Best Regards,
Lumin Etherlight
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:

On 2026-08-14 23:41, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

[...] There is an Emacs way,
there is a vi way, and there is an ed way, but the
latter is sadly a lost art, with barely a handful
of people in the world well-versed in its methods.

Curious; is there something possible in 'ed' that
you'd say isn't possible in 'ex' - i.e. done in a
similar way? Or is it just ed's minimalism that
you find appealing?

I'm not very familiar with ex. I would say
ed's minimalism is a big factor, but not the main
one. Instead, it is the feeling that I'm free of
barriers between me and the OS, that I can use any
tool for the job, while still editing. All other
venerable editors have that, vi can run commands
just like ed, and Emacs has compilation mode and
shell mode, and allows filtering content through
external commands too. My interest in ed is the
realization that this integration with external
commands is /all you will ever need/. And from
that comes great focus when working, "zen-like" if
you will. The editor gets out of the way, and the
entire arsenal of tools and OS utilities is there
for me to use. It becomes central, whereas in the
other editors it is relegated to something you use
once in a while, because it doesn't feel "natural"
or something. You can use the ed way in vi or in
ex or in Emacs even, just like you can use vi key
bindings in Emacs, or write Lisp plugins in neovim
or whatever. The ed way is not limited to ed. I
personally use an ed-like editor I wrote myself in
around half the line count of OpenBSD's ed, and in
much less, definitely, than GNU's ed.

A handful (at most) of occasions I used 'ed'; to
simply feed command scripts. (But I can do that as
well with my standard editor.) And for complex
tasks I resorted to text processors (like 'awk')
instead of using ed/ex/vi or 'sed'.

Indeed. I find scripting ed itself to be
less useful to me than just using awk or sed or in
some cases even writing little C programs. But it
is still, once in a while, a handy tool to have,
or in most cases, a nice convenience.

(While not directly related to what you wrote your
mention of LLMs reminds me the "doctor"(?), some
"Eliza" module in Emacs; not an "AI" but obviously
misconceived as such.)

The great doctor healed me of many ills indeed :)


Best Wishes,
Lumin Etherlight
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From Newsgroup: comp.editors

On Sun, 16 Aug 2026 03:14:59 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:41:32 +0300, Lumin Etherlight wrote:

As a user of Emacs for more than a decade, who wrote thousands of
lines of custom Emacs plugins and workflows, I can tell you with
confidence that Emacs is no where near 600x less effort, or more
utility than ed.

Can your ed do this?

!links -dump % | wc -w

How much RAM did it take to load links?
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