nvi? https://sites.google.com/a/bostic.com/keithbostic/vi/
Sure it doesn't have the features of Vim or Emacs (and some would say that's a feature!), but it's perfectly serviceable if you're okay with vi's modality.
Re:Vis: A Vim-Like Text Editor
by starseeker on Friday April 08, 2016 @07:03AM
(#11453821)
Close, but it doesn't appear to be active (the version you get from the download link is from 1996?) and it's using the 4 clause BSD license, which (as I understand it) poses GPL compatibility problems.
Go is a good target for portable text editors these days, IMO: https://github.com/nsf/godit
Re:Vis: A Vim-Like Text Editor
by starseeker on Friday April 08, 2016 @07:05AM
(#11453825)
A good point. I didn't specify in my initial comment (and I should have) but one of our other criteria is to be able to build everything with just a C/C++ compiler. So we'd have to bundle/bootstrap Go just to build the editor, which I believe is too heavy to be practical for that (unfortunately).
Microsoft VS Code is MIT licensed.
For a standalone piece of software, what about licensing matters for your use cases?
If the sam code is optional or easily replaced, this could evolve to become a serious, modern text editor with a truly liberal license (something surprisingly absent from the current landscape, to the best of my knowledge - I've done a couple searches for an editor that could be embedded with an LGPL project, and the choices were pretty limited. This looks quite interesting.
From a portability standpoint, is there any chance of creating a native Windows version using something like http://www.projectpluto.com/win32a.htm ? That was another kicker when I was searching previously - only the really big editors like vim/emacs appear to have Windows ports...