Most users will prefer to use a 'screen' editor, which lets you see and access many lines at a time, rather than a 'line' editor. Occasionally, a particular terminal/modem configuration may force a user to use a line editor; the line editors are listed in the second half of this page.

Pico

Pico is a simple, user-friendly screen editor based on the Pine message system composer. As with Pine, commands are displayed at the bottom of the screen and context-sensitive help is provided. As characters are typed they are immediately inserted into the text. Type 'pico filename' to edit a file.

GNU Emacs

GNU Emacs is a screen editor that works on many terminal types, from vt100 to X-windows, and can do everything from reading mail to newsgroups to simple editing. It has its own help and tutorial, which can be accessed by typing 'Ctrl-h i' and 'Ctrl-h t' respectively. Type 'emacs filename' to edit a file.

Jot

Jot is a screen editor tuned to run on Silicon Graphics machines. If you are connecting to helix from an SGI workstation and using X-windows, you can use the jot editor. Jot uses the SGI graphics library and hence will not work on a generic X terminal. Type 'jot filename' to use jot.

Xedit

xedit is a simple screen editor that will work on all X-windows terminals. It has a command summary on the top of its window. Type 'xedit filename' to edit a file using xedit.

vi

vi is a screen-oriented editor based on ex. It is commonly available on Unix systems, so users who have been using other Unix computers may be familiar with vi. Although powerful and versatile, we recommend one of the simpler editors described above for the casual user.

edit

Edit is a line editor, described as 'a variant of ex for casual users'.

ed/red

ed is a line editor, and red is a restricted version of ed that can only edit files in the current directory and cannot execute shell commands.

edt

edt is a 'Text Processing Utility' that can be used to build new word/text processors and batch text manipulation routines.