NetBSD adds a new beginner-friendly text editor called atto

(mastodon.sdf.org)

50 points | by luke8086 2 hours ago

11 comments

  • chipotle_coyote 20 minutes ago
    To promote this to a top-level comment, because I think it's important context: nothing in the README file says the point is to be "beginner-friendly". As far as I can tell, that's something that Hacker News or whoever submitted this used as a description. Neither the word "beginner" nor the word "friendly" appear in the README; its goal is to "be the smallest functional Emacs in less than 2000 lines of C."

    I think somebody incorrectly described Atto as comparable to nano/pico, and these comments are dragging it because it's not something that it was never intended as.

    • insanetake 6 minutes ago
      From the announcement

      > To ease the transition for new users...

      So I would consider it for beginners ("new users") and friendly ("to ease").

    • drummojg 17 minutes ago
      I would never drag pico. I wrote software that's been packaged in Linux distros in pico. And I lost the urge to be The Smartest Guy In The [Room/Mailing List/Forum] a long, long time ago.
      • Natfan 11 minutes ago
        what's really the point in being the smartest person in the room? you'll never learn anything!
  • codedokode 29 minutes ago
    Why are they using weird key combinations instead of traditional Ctrl + S, Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C used in desktop applications? Why every console program wants to be a special snowflake and not use standard key combinations, please explain. I do not care that 40 years ago someone used Ctrl + C to send SIGINT, it is 2026 now.
    • elehack 12 minutes ago
      Atto's default key bindings match Emacs, which is about as standard as you get for non-modal editing keys in older Unix traditions.
    • insanetake 8 minutes ago
      These key combinations have been used for 50 years, so I'm not sure why you call them non-standard. They're just a different standard from what you're used to.
    • rustyhancock 8 minutes ago
      Because this isn't beginner friendly it's a new micro Emacs and those are standard libreadline/emacs bindings.
    • currysausage 21 minutes ago
      You might enjoy the new Microsoft Edit [1].

      [1] https://github.com/microsoft/edit

    • boricj 23 minutes ago
      That sounds like Emacs. Wouldn't know though, given that I dislike vim too.

      I would prefer ms-edit or nano if I have to edit text files from the terminal.

  • Levitating 1 hour ago
    NetBSD isn't the first to use the name. My pet text editor is also called atto: https://git.levitati.ng/Levitating/atto
  • markusQi 36 minutes ago
    The source code and README are here: https://github.com/NetBSD/src/tree/trunk/usr.bin/atto

    You are welcome!

  • itomato 1 hour ago
    NetBSD has beginners?
    • officeplant 45 minutes ago
      Currently seeing an influx of interest from new people who want an OS with strong anti-ai stances.
    • graemep 1 hour ago
      Beginners to NetBSD who are not vi users.
    • alnsn 57 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.
      • daishi55 30 minutes ago
        Careful, they might ban you!
  • OnlineTux 1 hour ago
    Why not just add nano?
    • Matl 1 hour ago
      Because the BSD's are reflexively anti GNU.
      • ninjin 1 hour 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 59 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.
          • brewmarche 15 minutes ago
            > Unless they need Linux GPU/WIFI/BT drivers to make things work, of course. Then it's fine.

            The parts of Linux that get integrated into BSDs should not be GPL-licensed, e.g. <https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/c339f4010dea8b0d754f8...> and its siblings use MIT.

            • ninjin 0 minutes ago
              [deleted]
          • ninjin 55 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.

    • jmclnx 55 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.
  • Rucadi 1 hour 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 58 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.
    • Daunk 24 minutes ago
      I think they'd have your head on a plate if you suggested a vibe coded text editor.
  • jmclnx 58 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 "real 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 included in 11.1.

  • IshKebab 1 hour 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 52 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.

    • chipotle_coyote 23 minutes ago
      Nothing in the README file says the point is to be "beginner-friendly"; as far as I can tell, that's something that Hacker News or whoever submitted this used as a description. Neither the word "beginner" nor the word "friendly" appear in the README; its goal is to "be the smallest fuctional Emacs in less than 2000 lines of C."

      tl;dr: I think somebody incorrectly described Atto as comparable to nano/pico, and these comments are dragging it because it's not the thing that it was never meant to be.

    • passthejoe 56 minutes ago
      Micro is MIT licensed, so it should be shippable in NetBSD base.

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

      • lukaslalinsky 36 minutes ago
        But written in Go, and I would expect the NetBSD base only includes software buildable using tools already in the base system.
    • yearolinuxdsktp 27 minutes ago
      Project headline is “The smallest functional Emacs in less than 2000 lines of C.”

      How someone jumped to beginner-friendly from that is the real question.

    • CodeCompost 58 minutes ago
      It's using keystrokes inspired by emacs. Ok.
      • pwdisswordfishq 24 minutes ago
        As we all know, beginners love Emacs keystrokes.
  • arbor-group 3 minutes ago
    [flagged]
  • georgestones 1 hour ago
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