Professor Norm Matloff's Joe Editor Web Page

Professor Norm Matloff
Dept. of Computer Science
University of California at Davis
Davis, CA 95616

(Please mail any questions to Norm Matloff.)

The joe ("Joe's Own Editor") text editor has become popular because although it is simple and compact, it:

• Allows the user to create subwindows (extremely useful and important; see my introduction to joe ).

• Has very accessible online help.

• Compiles "right out of the box" on virtually any Unix system, without tweaking by the user.

All the CSIF systems have joe available. And again, if you work on some other system, joe compiles quickly and without any special effort on your part.

Here are information sources on joe:

• The Joe source code and documentation. See also my own local copy, version 2.8.

• Official joe documentation.

• My introduction to joe.

I usually myself use the elvis text editor, a greatly enhanced version of vi, featuring windows, mouse capability and many other conveniences. Unlike joe, vi/elvis is not "modeless," meaning that in vi/elvis you cannot add text simply by typing wherever the cursor is; you must enter "text insert" mode first. I like vi/elvis for this reason, as it saves a lot of key strokes, but many people prefer a modeless editor. If you wish to go to a more advanced editor after learning joe but want to stick to the modeless class, by far the most popular modeless editor in the Unix world is emacs, which I highly recommend. In fact, joe has the capability of emulating a subset of emacs; simply type

jmacs filename

joe filename

Other software Web sites by Norm Matloff:

• Professor Matloff's Unix/C tutorials.

• His Java tutorial.

• Dr. Matloff's beginner's guide to installing and using Linux.

• His "Extremely Quick and Simple Introduction to the Vi Text editor," and his introductions to the elvis and vim extensions to vi. The latter are much better than ordinary vi (and far, far better than pico). X11 mouse capability; subwindows (even on nongraphics terminals); infinite undo; paragraph formatting and so on.

• Norman Matloff's guide to fast debugging! See also his text-editing tips designed especially for programmers.

• Professor Matloff's LaTeX tutorial and resource page, and his tutorial on LyX, a GUI interface to LaTeX.

• Dr. Matloff's introduction to the mutt e-mail utility. Don't use pine! It was designed for people who are afraid of computers, not for computer experts.

• Norm Matloff's Chinese-language software page.