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A comment on Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Written in Rust. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by dark-star on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @03:45AM (#44374646)
As they explained, they needed a text editor that works in a command line (for Windows Core server installs), works across SSH (because for a while now Windows included an SSH Server so you can completely manage it through SSH), and can be used by non-vi-experienced Windows administrators (i.e. a modeless editor).
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by llarsson on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @03:53AM (#44374677)
Telling people to use nano would of course have been next to impossible. Much easier to rewrite a DOS-era editor in Rust, naturally.
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by dark-star on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @04:02AM (#44374746)
does nano support mouse usage? It doesn't seem to work for me (but maybe it just needs to be enabled somewhere)

I guess they thought that inheriting 25 years of C code was more trouble than designing a new editor from scratch. But you'd have to ask the devs why they decided to go down that route

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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by Elfener on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @05:17AM (#44375200)
> does nano support mouse usage?

Yes, but you have to put `set mouse` into your nanorc.

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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by red_admiral on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @04:33AM (#44374944)
This way gets coolness points, HN headlines, makes the programmers who wrote it happy, and probably is a contribution to making a couple of autistic people feel included.

Rust + EDITOR.COM is kind of like remaking/remastering an old video game.

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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by oersted on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @04:52AM (#44375036)
micro would have been an even better choice, the UX is impressively close to something like Sublime Text for a TUI, and very comfortable for those not used to modal editors.
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by aembleton on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @05:19AM (#44375214)
This is the first time I've heard of micro. More info here: https://micro-editor.github.io/
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by subjectsigma on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @08:24AM (#44376474)
I like micro and use it occasionally. I like this even more. I booted up the editor and instantly thought “it would be nice if there was a clickable buffer list right about…” and then realized my mouse was hovering over it. My next instant thought was that micro should have implemented this feature a long time ago
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by mixmastamyk on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @12:19PM (#44379014)
It doesn’t have a menu for windows devs, and is supposed to be small and light. Two strikes against.
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by nmeofthestate on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @05:52AM (#44375421)
nano's great but the shortcuts are a bit oddball, from the perspective of a Windows guy.
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by Kwpolska on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @05:58AM (#44375449)
> rewrite

This is not a rewrite. Maybe it’s slightly inspired by the old thing, especially with having GUI-style clickable menus (something not seen often in terminal editors), but it’s much more modern.

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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by Gormo on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @07:56AM (#44376241)
It does seem "modern" in the sense that it is incredibly limited in functionality (EDIT.COM from DOS is much more full-featured) and deviates from well-established UI conventions.

CUA-style menubars aren't that uncommon in textmode editors. Midnight Commander's editor has traditional menubars with much more extensive functionality, as does jedsoft.org's Jed editor. Both of these also support mouse input on the TTY console via GPM, not just within a graphical terminal.

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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by dark-star on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @06:53AM (#44375784)
I still see it as rewrite even if you only use the original as inspiration. But that's just semantics
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by dmd on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @07:28AM (#44376023)
If they hadn’t called it “edit” you wouldn’t have thought of it as a rewrite.
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by TiredOfLife on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @07:28AM (#44376027)
It's no semantics. It's just a lie
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Re:Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Writte... by JdeBP on Wednesday June 25, 2025 @05:02PM (#44381803)
The developer actually explained, on Hacker News just over a month ago, some of the engineering choices that ruled out nano.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44034961

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