an editor that doesn't require any esc or control keys to be used...

[adamm at menlo.com (Adam S. Moskowitz)]

"Jerry Feldman" <gaf at blu.org> wrote:
> where the remote user wants to do more than just some simple editing,
> something more than a line editor should be more useful. 

Excuse me? Remember, we're talking about EDITORS here, not WORD
PROCESSORS. What more is there to do that ed (or maybe ex) can't
handle?

I'm a vi user from far too long ago -- but I use the "escape-to-ex"
(i.e., ":") nearly every day. Why? Not for the simple stuff -- but for
the HARD STUFF! Global search and replace? Piece of cake. Want
confirmation of each change with that? Only one character different.
Need a Turing-complete language to edit your code? It hasn't been
proven, but ed can do a lot more than people think -- conditional tests,
buffers, branching, etc.

It's not pretty, but it gets the job done, and usually in many fewer
keystrokes than most WYSIWYG editors. And while I wouldn't want to go
back to line-mode TECO (which is what I used before vi), I'd rather go
"back" to ed than be forced to use any GUI-based editor for writing
code.

AdamM