CE - the simple unix text editor

WHAT IS CE?

CE is a simple, easy to use unix text editor. It allows full cursor control, in fact, you must have cursor keys to use it! It will also support Function keys if your terminal has them. It hasn't been actively updated since 1995 but compiles fine today with GCC on SunOS 5.8. Charles Henrich originally wrote and maintained this program but has allowed me to make it available again. In 1992 I had a uucp connection to the net and let friends and relatives dial into my box to use email and usenet: people that I couldn't even begin to train on using vi

I looked around ftp sites and found an editor called "ce" written by Charles Henrich that even my mom could use with ease. Things changed: the web emerged and people got their SLIP/PPP dial-ins, I shut down my uucp box and forgot all about ce.

I started thinking about it recently and couldn't find it anywhere on the net. Hunting thru some old QIC-150 tapes I found the source and Charles' name and was able to track him down. He has graciously agreed to let me make the source available and begin maintaining it.

So if you have users you don't want to train on vi/emacs or you want an editor that understands "Page Up"/"Page Down"/"Home"/"Insert"/etc on any POSIX system with a 101 key keyboard, you might want to try it.

WHY CE?

CE will allow new-comers to unix and those who aren't technically minded, or those who just dont want to have to learn one of the initially user unfriendly editors that are commonly found in a unix environment. (i.e. vi and emacs) Quite simply, the design goal was to have just about any computerphobic person using CE in the shortest amount of time possible, with the smallest amount of documentation possible. The goal was to have people using it in under 20 minutes.

FEATURES:

CE can't have many features one might think, being simple and all, and it's true. CE in comparison to emacs or vi has just about no features but it has enough to allow decent text editing for the average joe. In fact, it allows rather good editing for just about anything. CE was written entirely within CE since version 1.1e

RUNS ON:

CE has been tested, and used on Sun Sparc's, NeXT's, Convex's, Linux on x86, AIX, and an AT&T 3b2. CE should work on just about any POSIX system. If you can't get it to work drop me a note and I'll see what I can do.

WHERE CAN I GET IT

Version 1.3.0 is the newest, Version 1.2.17 was the relaunch and version 1.2.06i which was wildly popular in the early 1990's.
ce-1.3.0-1.i386.rpm the i386 RPM
ce-1.3.0-1.src.rpm the Source RPM

OTHER DOCS

Here is the page on freshmeat.net

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