EE: The Easy Editor

Introduction

Have you ever opened a terminal, wanted to write some text, and opened a program which was so unintuitive you had to look up how to close it online? The author of ee, Hugh Mahon, certainly had. He released ee because he hated seeing “new users and non-computer types get frustrated by vi” and wanted to see more intuitive interfaces for basic tools become more pervasive.

For people new to computers, or for those who just use them for email, ee is intended to be a simple, terminal-based editor that requires no instruction to use.

FreeBSD ships with EE, a testament to its stability and alignment with a philosophy of clarity. In an ecosystem where every tool assumes you’ve read the manual, EE is a breath of fresh air.

Interface Philosophy

Unlike vi’s modal approach or Emacs’ key chord complexity, EE presents a straightforward interface. Its simplified design is highlighted by the use of pop-up menus, which make it possible for users to carry out tasks without needing to remember commands.

Furthermore, a toggleable information window at the top of the screen shows the user the most important operations available with control-keys. You can see all available commands at a glance, and they do exactly what they say they’ll do.

Design Philosophy

The philosophy behind EE is simple: software should adapt to humans, not the other way around. Hugh Mahon’s goals for ee were clear:

1. To be so easy to use as to require no instruction.
2. To be easy to compile and, if necessary, port to new platforms by people with relatively little knowledge of C and UNIX.
3. To have a minimum number of files to be dealt with for compilation and installation.
4. To have enough functionality to be useful to a large number of people.

When you’re troubleshooting a server at 2 AM, you don’t want to remember which mode you’re in or what obscure key combination does what. EE respects your time and cognitive load.

Under the Hood

While being simple for the user, ee has some interesting technical details.

• It was developed using K&R C (“classic C”), but it can also be compiled with ANSI C.
• To ensure consistent behavior across different UNIX systems, ee includes new_curse, a custom subset of the curses library. The author notes that vendor-supplied curses often has defects, and new_curse was developed to provide a reliable screen painting experience.
• It relies on the virtual memory abilities of the host platform and does not have its own memory management capabilities.
• Building the editor is as simple as typing make. A makefile is generated that takes into account the characteristics of your system, and then the editor is built.

Usage

Usage is as simple as:

ee /path/to/file

No flags, no options, no configuration needed. Just open and edit.

When to Use EE

This is the editor I reach for when I need to make quick changes without ceremony. When the goal is editing text, not demonstrating mastery of arcane key combinations. It’s a tool that does one job well and gets out of your way.