A developer named Eric Meyer picked up the source code to a variant of VDO called VDO-EX, aimed at the Osborne machine Eric used, and began writing an enhanced editor called VDE (Video Display Editor). VDE was modeled after the then popular WordStar word processor for CP/M systems, and used the WordStar command set. But it was faster than WordStar, because it did everything in one file instead of using overlays, and it implemented things like macros which WordStar didn't get until later.
In 1987, Eric shifted development to MS-DOS (and still maintains the DOS version - a 1.96a release appeared in November 2009.) He turned his assembler source over to Carson Wilson, who continued to develop and enhance it as ZDE.
Around 1992, Bill Kuykendall of PPCI hired Carson to create a Unix version of VDE, which was originally called UDE (Unix Display Editor), and then renamed SUE (Simple Unix Editor). Bill selected the features and managed the development process. Carson wrote the code from scratch in C. It was intended to resemble VDE, but not be an exact clone. For example, VDE's printer support features were omitted because Unix had an entire printer sub-system.
SUE uses WordStar commands by default, but has an optional function key driven interface. It's a console mode application, run in a terminal from a command line. By default, it uses color in menus, but can be forced to mono mode.
From the Man Page:
It's intended to be a relatively powerful text editor while remaining small and easy to use. If you need fancy control of the printed page, look at something like AbiWord or Open Office Writer. If you need syntax highlighting for a variety of languages and development support, look at Geany, Emacs or the like.Specifically, SUE provides the following functionality:
o Terminal-independent, optimized full screen text editing;
o Dual command modes (control-key and function-key);
o Context sensitive, interactive help display;
o Novice and expert modes;
o Secure mode (restricts access to file system);
o Wordwrap, right margin set, and paragraph reformat;
o Transparent access to Unix, MSDOS, and (quasi-)Macintosh file formats;
o Undelete (yeah!);
o Insert/overstrike toggle;
o Block move, copy, delete, and write to file;
o File import.
I've been a long time user of VDE under DOS, and was pleased to find a Unix editor that resembled it.
I've provided two archives. Sue.tar.gz contains a static Linux binary called sue, a man page, and a README.SUE file with a bit of background on the product. Sue07i.tar.gz is the C source code, reported to compile "out of the box" on Solaris. (I have not tried to build it on Puppy. The supplied bainary works fine.)
No installation is required. Drop sue a directory in the PATH like /usr/bin. Run it from a command line as "sue [filename]" (You may need to chmod +x to make it executable.)
(If desired, you could write a wrapper script like
Code: Select all
rxvt -geometry 80x50 -bg black -fg white -title -e sue
The executable is 320KB, and invokes almost instantly on my old Lifebook.
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Dennis