8 ms·

JOE – Joe's own editor 4.5 released

129 points by jhallenworld 9y ago

codazoda 9y ago
Wait. People still use sourceforge? I thought it was a wasteland of old projects that had crapware attached to all their downloads.
- ssijak 9y ago
  lol, I opened comments to post the same question as yours. Whenever I see something on Sourceforge my default reaction is that it is something shady.
  - swsieber 9y ago
    It's been cleaned up though. New site owners. Hard to break that reaction though.
    - djsumdog 9y ago
      Yea, it's no longer owned by the Dice/Slashdot people. Still that stigma and the bundled adware pushes from the previous owners has kinda tainted them. I'm glad to see it's still going. Freshmeat/Freecode is now a time capsule sadly.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        SourceForge and Slashdot are both owned by BIZX. They bought them both from DHI (Dice) back in the start of 2016. The sale was announced in January of 2016. BIZX is pronounced like 'physics' but with a B. As near as I can tell, BIZX is an advertising company.
- exikyut 9y ago
  I heard there was new management that was acknowledging those events as mistakes and trying to fix them. Not sure though.
- detaro 9y ago
  Sourceforge doesn't belong to the company that did the crapware thing anymore, and the new(-ish by now) owners stopped doing that. EDIT: relevant announcement from January 2016: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-fut...
  - moe 9y ago
    They should just shut it down. It's hard to think of a domain name with a worse reputation in tech circles.
    - mynewtb 9y ago
      Really? ... Please don't post shallow hyperbole noise like that.
    - tome 9y ago
      It's got an excellent reputation with open source fans who were around at the turn of the century.
      - pluma 9y ago
        That describes me and I didn't follow its course after the crapware thing so it had a terrible reputation with me until I just learned about the acquisition in this thread. I wouldn't be so sure.
- azeirah 9y ago
  Sourceforge is fine nowadays, it changed owners a few times in the past years, the new team is doing good work.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- LambdaComplex 9y ago
  zsh still uses sourceforge, if that's worth anything
hsnewman 9y ago
I've been using joe for over 25 years, I just like how easy it is to use.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  For me, over a decade. It's simply easy and does not pull any confusing tricks like nano with long lines, or vi with... incomprehensible behavior.
  - epicide 9y ago
    Everything seems incomprehensible until you comprehend it.
  - danellis 9y ago
    My one use for vi is to edit /etc/joe/joerc to enable -nobackups.
    - fpoling 9y ago
      That was one of the reasons I gave up on using Joe for system administration. It showed rather big mismatch between my mental model of how a system editor should work and what Joe did.
      - jhallenworld 9y ago
        We will continue to debate making nobackups the default, but what other behavior is wrong for system administration?
        fpoling 9y ago
        Scrolling, not wrapping, of lines that do not fit screen.
        Spivak 9y ago
colanderman 9y ago
I've used JOE for 15 years. I recently upgraded form JOE 3.x to 4.4 and was unimpressed with the recent decline in quality to the point of considering switching editors. Hopping between open/close braces with ^G no longer counts nested pairs correctly; TAB now randomly inserts 2 or 3 spaces instead of the 2 I have it configured for and that my files use; and my home-key settings in my config file are ignored. I'm completely baffled how the developers can add such bugs to a stable, decades-old product. Regardless of whether the bugs get fixed, it's shaken my confidence that I can trust JOE not to screw up my work. (Even 3.x JOE gets into screwed-up states and crashes from time to time; I trust 4.x JOE even less. Even the "save often" mantra I'm cautious about, since I don't want to save data from a screwed-up state. That's worse than straight-up crashing.)
- jhallenworld 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you are seeing- it's possible the config file syntax has evolved. Anyway, if you find issues, please submit bug reports for them: https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/bugs/?source=navbar https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/bugs/?source=navbar This is the best way to influence the development direction and we certainly do fix issues.
  - colanderman 9y ago
    Yes, it looks like both the joerc and the ftyperc formats have changed in a non-backward-compatible way. At least, wiping those fixed the ^G issue for me. (I can't tell yet about the indent issue since I can't reproduce that reliably; if it persists I will file a bug report.) Thanks for all your work developing and maintaining JOE. My apologies for such a negative earlier post; I would not get so easily frustrated if I did not rely on JOE every day :)
- morganvachon 9y ago
  I used joe in Slackware exclusively throughout the 2000s until I started having issues as well. I would save a file, script wouldn't work, open it back up and my changes never committed. I switched to nano and had no more issues, and I've been using nano at the console since then (and Geany in X).
barrkel 9y ago
jmacs is my go-to lightweight emacs - not as light as mg, but comes with syntax highlighting and keyboard macros. The hex editor is reasonably nifty too.
- gnuvince 9y ago
  mg also has keyboard macros, but it doesn't have UTF-8 support yet, which is the reason why I prefer to use jmacs for quick edits.
alexnewman 9y ago
I wont use software on sourceforge. period.
- skrebbel 9y ago
  Why? Question mark.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I'd guess because of their bundling of relative malware (sometimes against devs knowledge). https://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don%E2%80%99t-download-software-from-sourceforge-if-you-can-help-it/ https://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don%E2%80%99t-downl... Supposedly it's better now??
    - shpx 9y ago
      "We acquired SourceForge and Slashdot in January [2016] from DHI Group (also known as DICE). The first thing we did after we took over was remove bundled adware from projects: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-fut... and https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under-new-management-sourceforge-moves-to-put-badness-in-past/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under... As of a few weeks ago, we also now scan for malware in case third party developers are adding their own adware: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-now-scans-all-projects-for-malware-and-displays-warnings-on-downloads/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-now-scans-all-proje... " https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
    - skrebbel 9y ago
      They haven't done that for a long time now, ever since they changed owner. The site is ugly and old fashioned, and a little spammy with the ads at times, but that's it.
      - 9y ago
placebo 9y ago
I found JOE while looking for a free cross-platform, preferably open source editor that could handle huge files with ease - you know, file sizes that make most editors choke and die (or make your system freeze while trying to allocate an insane amount of memory). Even vim isn't especially effective handling very large files. JOE was the first (and for the time being, the only) free cross-platform editor I found that handles the largest of files easily. Found it here (noticed this link was submitted to HN in the past): https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/blob/master/editor-perf/readme.md https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/blob/master/editor-p...
emmanueloga_ 9y ago
Who's Joe? Is he still around? There's a bit of history about the editor here but not too much about Joe himself (well, he appears to have children and own a house these days :-) [1]). 1: https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/mercurial/ci/default/tree/docs/history.md https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/mercurial/ci/default/tr...
- theonemind 9y ago
  I think he's replied to a few comments here as "jhallenworld"--so guessing he's around!

129 points by jhallenworld 9y ago

Wait. People still use sourceforge? I thought it was a wasteland of old projects that had crapware attached to all their downloads.

ssijak 9y ago
lol, I opened comments to post the same question as yours. Whenever I see something on Sourceforge my default reaction is that it is something shady.
- swsieber 9y ago
  It's been cleaned up though. New site owners. Hard to break that reaction though.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Yea, it's no longer owned by the Dice/Slashdot people. Still that stigma and the bundled adware pushes from the previous owners has kinda tainted them. I'm glad to see it's still going. Freshmeat/Freecode is now a time capsule sadly.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      SourceForge and Slashdot are both owned by BIZX. They bought them both from DHI (Dice) back in the start of 2016. The sale was announced in January of 2016. BIZX is pronounced like 'physics' but with a B. As near as I can tell, BIZX is an advertising company.
exikyut 9y ago
I heard there was new management that was acknowledging those events as mistakes and trying to fix them. Not sure though.
detaro 9y ago
Sourceforge doesn't belong to the company that did the crapware thing anymore, and the new(-ish by now) owners stopped doing that. EDIT: relevant announcement from January 2016: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-fut...
- moe 9y ago
  They should just shut it down. It's hard to think of a domain name with a worse reputation in tech circles.
  - mynewtb 9y ago
    Really? ... Please don't post shallow hyperbole noise like that.
  - tome 9y ago
    It's got an excellent reputation with open source fans who were around at the turn of the century.
    - pluma 9y ago
      That describes me and I didn't follow its course after the crapware thing so it had a terrible reputation with me until I just learned about the acquisition in this thread. I wouldn't be so sure.
azeirah 9y ago
Sourceforge is fine nowadays, it changed owners a few times in the past years, the new team is doing good work.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
LambdaComplex 9y ago
zsh still uses sourceforge, if that's worth anything

hsnewman 9y ago

I've been using joe for over 25 years, I just like how easy it is to use.

mschuster91 9y ago
For me, over a decade. It's simply easy and does not pull any confusing tricks like nano with long lines, or vi with... incomprehensible behavior.
- epicide 9y ago
  Everything seems incomprehensible until you comprehend it.
- danellis 9y ago
  My one use for vi is to edit /etc/joe/joerc to enable -nobackups.
  - fpoling 9y ago
    That was one of the reasons I gave up on using Joe for system administration. It showed rather big mismatch between my mental model of how a system editor should work and what Joe did.
    - jhallenworld 9y ago
      We will continue to debate making nobackups the default, but what other behavior is wrong for system administration?
      - fpoling 9y ago
        Scrolling, not wrapping, of lines that do not fit screen.
        Spivak 9y ago

colanderman 9y ago

I've used JOE for 15 years. I recently upgraded form JOE 3.x to 4.4 and was unimpressed with the recent decline in quality to the point of considering switching editors. Hopping between open/close braces with ^G no longer counts nested pairs correctly; TAB now randomly inserts 2 or 3 spaces instead of the 2 I have it configured for and that my files use; and my home-key settings in my config file are ignored. I'm completely baffled how the developers can add such bugs to a stable, decades-old product. Regardless of whether the bugs get fixed, it's shaken my confidence that I can trust JOE not to screw up my work. (Even 3.x JOE gets into screwed-up states and crashes from time to time; I trust 4.x JOE even less. Even the "save often" mantra I'm cautious about, since I don't want to save data from a screwed-up state. That's worse than straight-up crashing.)

jhallenworld 9y ago
I'm not sure what you are seeing- it's possible the config file syntax has evolved. Anyway, if you find issues, please submit bug reports for them: https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/bugs/?source=navbar https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/bugs/?source=navbar This is the best way to influence the development direction and we certainly do fix issues.
- colanderman 9y ago
  Yes, it looks like both the joerc and the ftyperc formats have changed in a non-backward-compatible way. At least, wiping those fixed the ^G issue for me. (I can't tell yet about the indent issue since I can't reproduce that reliably; if it persists I will file a bug report.) Thanks for all your work developing and maintaining JOE. My apologies for such a negative earlier post; I would not get so easily frustrated if I did not rely on JOE every day :)
morganvachon 9y ago
I used joe in Slackware exclusively throughout the 2000s until I started having issues as well. I would save a file, script wouldn't work, open it back up and my changes never committed. I switched to nano and had no more issues, and I've been using nano at the console since then (and Geany in X).

barrkel 9y ago

jmacs is my go-to lightweight emacs - not as light as mg, but comes with syntax highlighting and keyboard macros. The hex editor is reasonably nifty too.

gnuvince 9y ago
mg also has keyboard macros, but it doesn't have UTF-8 support yet, which is the reason why I prefer to use jmacs for quick edits.

alexnewman 9y ago

I wont use software on sourceforge. period.

skrebbel 9y ago
Why? Question mark.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I'd guess because of their bundling of relative malware (sometimes against devs knowledge). https://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don%E2%80%99t-download-software-from-sourceforge-if-you-can-help-it/ https://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don%E2%80%99t-downl... Supposedly it's better now??
  - shpx 9y ago
    "We acquired SourceForge and Slashdot in January [2016] from DHI Group (also known as DICE). The first thing we did after we took over was remove bundled adware from projects: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-fut... and https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under-new-management-sourceforge-moves-to-put-badness-in-past/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/under... As of a few weeks ago, we also now scan for malware in case third party developers are adding their own adware: https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-now-scans-all-projects-for-malware-and-displays-warnings-on-downloads/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-now-scans-all-proje... " https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_of_sourceforge_since_its_acquisition_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4n3e1s/the_state_...
  - skrebbel 9y ago
    They haven't done that for a long time now, ever since they changed owner. The site is ugly and old fashioned, and a little spammy with the ads at times, but that's it.
    - 9y ago

placebo 9y ago

I found JOE while looking for a free cross-platform, preferably open source editor that could handle huge files with ease - you know, file sizes that make most editors choke and die (or make your system freeze while trying to allocate an insane amount of memory). Even vim isn't especially effective handling very large files. JOE was the first (and for the time being, the only) free cross-platform editor I found that handles the largest of files easily. Found it here (noticed this link was submitted to HN in the past): https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/blob/master/editor-perf/readme.md https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/blob/master/editor-p...

emmanueloga_ 9y ago

Who's Joe? Is he still around? There's a bit of history about the editor here but not too much about Joe himself (well, he appears to have children and own a house these days :-) [1]). 1: https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/mercurial/ci/default/tree/docs/history.md https://sourceforge.net/p/joe-editor/mercurial/ci/default/tr...

theonemind 9y ago
I think he's replied to a few comments here as "jhallenworld"--so guessing he's around!