A newbie's question about tools 4505

Marten Kemp said the following, on 08-20-05 16:14:

It's been quite a few years since I used VM (then VM-SP), but I recognize the tools you've mentioned, so I'll give it a try.

FLIST really was a very useful tool. The most similar Linux tool I can think of offhand is Midnight Commander, from the Free Software Foundation. It gives you a full-screen text list of files and you can do many of the things FLIST does -- it even uses function keys! The home page for the project is here:

General info on Project GNU free software:

This one is a bit tougher. You can display a file page-wise on a text display by using the 'more(1)' or 'less(1)' programs. There is a fairly light-weight text editor called 'joe(1)' which works in full-screen text mode; it can buttume the "personality" of various other editors (unfortunately, I don;t think XEDIT is one of them).

The 'joe(1)' editor is again a possibility, Again, I don't know of an editor that acts like XEDIT, which I liked very much. (In fact, I bought an XEDIT "clone" called KEDIT which ran under MS-DOS and Windows. You could even use a subset of REXX for macros.) Otherwise, I'd just suggest trying a few.

(BTW, I know you said you don't want 'vi', or 'vim' as it's likely to be these days, but one positive about learning it is that it will be present on virtually any Linux or UNIX system you may use. Learning it was a chore, but actually using it isn't as bad as you might think.)

I use the regina-rexx package too. I've liked REXX a lot since it was first introduced, although I use bash script and perl a good deal now too.

Good luck!

-- Rich Gibbs "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." (Richard Feynman)