JOE or Joe's Own Editor is an

ncurses ncurses (new curses) is a programming library providing an application programming interface (API) that allows the programmer to write text-based user interfaces (TUI) in a terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing "GUI-like ...

-based

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...

for

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

systems, available under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

. It is designed to be easy to use. JOE is available for most major

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading ...

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized s ...

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, B ...

systems and Apple's

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

via

package manager A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals w ...

s such as Homebrew.

Description of features

JOE includes an integrated

help system Help is a word meaning to give aid or signal distress. Help may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Help'' (2010 film), a Bollywood horror film * ''Help'' (2021 theatrical film), a British psychological thriller film * '' ...

and a reminder of how to get help is always on the screen. The key sequences in JOE are similar to those of

WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the sol ...

and Turbo C: many are combinations of the

Control key In computing, a Control key is a modifier key which, when pressed in conjunction with another key, performs a special operation (for example, ); similar to the Shift key, the Control key rarely performs any function when pressed by itself ...

and another key, or combinations of Ctrl+K and another key, or combinations of the

Escape key On computer keyboards, the Esc key (named ''Escape key'' in the international standard series ISO/IEC 9995) is a key used to generate the escape character (which can be represented as ASCII code 27 in decimal, Unicode U+001B, or ). The esca ...

and another key. Numerous settings are also available through Ctrl+T. The program is generally customizable through an extensive

configuration file In computing, configuration files (commonly known simply as config files) are files used to configure the parameters and initial settings for some computer programs. They are used for user applications, server processes and operating system ...

, and it supports color

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms. ...

for numerous popular

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

s, a feature that is also configurable. JOE installs

hard link In computing, a hard link is a directory entry (in a directory-based file system) that associates a name with a file. Thus, each file must have at least one hard link. Creating additional hard links for a file makes the contents of that file a ...

s and a set of

rc file In computing, configuration files (commonly known simply as config files) are files used to configure the parameters and initial settings for some computer programs. They are used for user applications, server processes and operating system s ...

s that configure JOE to emulate

Emacs Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

keybindings (when invoked as jmacs), Pico (when invoked as jpico), or WordStar (when invoked as jstar). There is also a variant called "rjoe", which is restricted in that it allows one to edit only the files specified on the command line (which can be useful to enforce the

principle of least privilege In information security, computer science, and other fields, the principle of least privilege (PoLP), also known as the principle of minimal privilege (PoMP) or the principle of least authority (PoLA), requires that in a particular abstraction la ...

). While the

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine ...

of the editor is reminiscent of

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...

editors, it also includes the typical

editor features such as internal

command history Command history is a feature in many operating system shells, computer algebra programs, and other software that allows the user to recall, edit and rerun previous commands. Command line history was added to Unix in Bill Joy's C shell of 1978 ...

, tab completion in file selection menus,

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...

search system and the ability to filter (

pipe Pipe(s), PIPE(S) or piping may refer to: Objects * Pipe (fluid conveyance), a hollow cylinder following certain dimension rules ** Piping, the use of pipes in industry * Smoking pipe ** Tobacco pipe * Half-pipe and quarter pipe, semi-circul ...

) arbitrary blocks of text through any external command.

History

JOE was among the default editors in the early popular

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whic ...

distributions, which gave it some prominence and helped build a user base. It continues to be included as an option in Linux distributions, sometimes in the critical role as a "rescue mode" editor. After version 2.8 was released by Joseph Allen in 1995, the development cycle had halted for several years. The development was taken over by a new group of enthusiasts in 2001, led by Marek Grac, who released 2.9 and several later versions, introducing a standardized build system and fixing many bugs. Allen returned to the project in 2004 and released version 3.0, which introduced syntax highlighting and support for

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of e ...

. The Joe of JOE is not the same Joe as the Joe of

JWM JWM (Joe's Window Manager) is a lightweight stacking window manager for the X Window System written by Joe Wingbermuehle. JWM is written in C and uses only Xlib at a minimum. Configuration is done by editing an XML file; no graphical configu ...

References

External links

* * {{SourceForge, joe-editor, Joe's own editor Unix text editors Free text editors Linux text editors MacOS text editors Software that uses ncurses Free software programmed in C Software using the GPL license

Description of features

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links