[TUHS] screen editors

arnold at skeeve.com arnold at skeeve.com
Thu Jan 9 18:30:02 AEST 2020


Mary Ann Horton <mah at mhorton.net> wrote:

> Nearly everyone at Bell Labs (outside area 11) was using either vi or 
> emacs, but System III just had ed. There was a big push to add vi or 
> emacs to UNIX 3.0 (System III), but USG instead chose to write se, the 
> "screen editor" and put it in UNIX 4.0. Nobody would use it, so UNIX 5.0 
> (System V) relented and included vi.

Thanks for confirming that se existed in Unix 4.0, as I remember it.
I used it some; the only thing I remember about it was that the command
line was at the top of the screen.

I must have been disappointed with it, because I ended up doing most
of my contract programming work in ed. :-)

It'd be interesting to see the source for this 'se', but it's probably
lost forever.

Arnold


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