NetBSD adds a new beginner-friendly text editor called atto

(mastodon.sdf.org)

30 points | by luke8086 1 hour ago

8 comments

  • markusQi 4 minutes ago
    The source code and README are here: https://github.com/NetBSD/src/tree/trunk/usr.bin/atto

    You are welcome!

  • Levitating 48 minutes ago
    NetBSD isn't the first to use the name. My pet text editor is also called atto: https://git.levitati.ng/Levitating/atto
  • itomato 51 minutes ago
    NetBSD has beginners?
    • officeplant 13 minutes ago
      Currently seeing an influx of interest from new people who want an OS with strong anti-ai stances.
    • alnsn 25 minutes ago
      You can ask Claude to cross-complie, prepare an image (aka install) and run an emulator. I tried exactly this yesterday and in about an hour I could attach to tmux and run tests on emulated riscv64 board.
    • graemep 44 minutes ago
      Beginners to NetBSD who are not vi users.
  • Rucadi 45 minutes ago
    For me the most easy-to-use editor for cli / ssh and relatively lightweight is https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh everybody can just use it intuitively.
    • hnlmorg 26 minutes ago
      I’ll take a look at this. But it’s worth noting that NetBSDs goal was to have something small enough that it can be used in a recovery shell.
  • OnlineTux 42 minutes ago
    Why not just add nano?
    • jmclnx 23 minutes ago
      Size:

      Linux:

           -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 321832 Dec 15  2021 /usr/bin/nano
      
      per the link, atto(1) is 48 kilobytes.
    • Matl 36 minutes ago
      Because the BSD's are reflexively anti GNU.
      • ninjin 33 minutes ago
        nano(1) is GPLv3 last time I checked and that imposes more restrictions than most (all?) of the rest of the code in NetBSD. It is not about being "reflexive", it is a violation of the very ethos of the project. Gnu rejecting non-free licenses from their own distributions is not "reflexive", it is simply not in line with what they want to achieve and one should respect that.
        • Matl 28 minutes ago
          Unless they modify it, the GPL really doesn't impact them. AFAIK FSF considers most BSD/MIT style licences to be compatible. It's the other way around where things gets stuck. Unless they need Linux GPU/WIFI/BT drivers to make things work, of course. Then it's fine.
          • ninjin 24 minutes ago
            Modification is the whole point of open source: "Unless you want to modify Windows, the closeness does not impact you". If you want to learn about how NetBSD looks at things, there is this page:

            https://netbsd.org/about/redistribution.html

            As for being compatible. Yes, FSF considers anything permissive to be compatible with their family of licenses. However, it is a one-way relationship in that permissive code can be freely used by GPL projects, but not the other way around as using GPL code would impose further restrictions compared to a permissive license.

  • IshKebab 46 minutes ago
    > Perhaps all that needs to be known to use atto at a basic level is that holding the control key, pressing x, then pressing w will write the currently open file, and holding the control key, pressing x, then pressing c will exit the editor.

    Very beginner friendly lol. These people have no idea.

    Micro is a beginner-friendly console text editor. This isn't.

    • hnlmorg 21 minutes ago
      I don’t think NetBSD and yourself are using the term in the same context.

      By this I mean, a beginner to NetBSD is already a far more competent user than a beginner in many other contexts of OS users.

    • passthejoe 25 minutes ago
      Micro is MIT licensed, so it should be shippable in NetBSD base.

      https://github.com/micro-editor/MICRO

      • lukaslalinsky 5 minutes ago
        But written in Go, and I would expect the NetBSD base only includes software buildable using tools already in the base system.
    • CodeCompost 27 minutes ago
      It's using keystrokes inspired by emacs. Ok.
  • jmclnx 26 minutes ago
    >making it suitable for inclusion in the rescue system

    People seem to be missing the point. Also NetBSD has what I call a "read single user mode". Last time I had to boot single user, ed(1) was the only editor available without some work. My guess is this new editor will be useful for people who do not want to deal with ed(1).

    I have not seen it yet, but I guess it will be includes in 11.1.

  • georgestones 28 minutes ago
    [dead]