Re: GNU ex (an enhanced version of GNU ed)

[Karl Berry]

Hi John,

Nice to hear that you're hacking an ex together.

I don't believe there is any GNU ex; at least, I don't see one listed in
the usual places.  If that's so, I don't see any particular barrier to
making it a GNU package when it is ready.  Please email
address@hidden when you have something you'd like to be looked
at.

As far as ed goes, Andrew Moore (the ed maintainer) and I have exchanged
a few emails over the years, most recently about one year ago.  He had
hoped to make another ed release soon at that point, but obviously it
didn't happen.  Andrew, are you there?  Do you still have time/interest
in maintaining ed?

Several patches have come in regarding GNU ed from time to time.  Some
might be relevant to ex, I'm not sure.  I can try to dig them up.  I
expect that Red Hat, Debian, etc., have made tons of changes as well.

I am not sure how to reconcile the "ed" mode of your putative GNU ex and
the current GNU ed, but I guess we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

Speaking for myself, I use ed all the time (to edit crontabs in an ssh
buffer under Emacs), and have come across a few annoyances that have
never been fixed.  I would be very happy to see an actively-maintained
ed or ex!

(As for visual mode, you could probably just fork $VISUAL :)

Cheers,
karl