Elvis (text editor)
Elvis
|
|
| Original author(s) | Steve Kirkendall |
|---|---|
| Stable release |
2.2 / October 21, 2003
|
| Written in | C |
| Platform | Cross-platform,including Unix, Linux and Microsoft Windows |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Text editor |
| License | Clarified Artistic License |
| Website | elvis |
Elvis is a vi/ex clone, i.e. it resembles the Unix text editor "vi" very much but adds quite a few commands and features. Elvis is written by Steve Kirkendall and is distributed under the Clarified Artistic License which is used by Perl and is a GPL-compatible free software license.
Elvis is the version of vi that comes with Slackware, Frugalware, and KateOS.
Elvis was the pioneering vi clone, widely admired in the 1990s for its conciseness, and many features. It influenced the development of Vim until about 1997.
It was the first to provide color syntax highlighting (and to generalize syntax highlighting to multiple file types), first to provide highlighted selections via keyboard.
Elvis's built-in nroff (early) and (later) html displays gave it unusual WYSIWYG features.
Elvis recognizes binary files, as well and provides a split screen for editing them.
jelvis, a Japanese variant, is available, based on work by Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino up until 1998. His more recent work in this area has been distributed as patches against nvi. A Korean variant helvis is also available, originally by Park Chong-Dae. These variants were modifications of elvis 1.8 (July 10, 1994). The nvi editor is based on an older version of elvis 1.5 (April 2, 1992).
Elvis is an enhanced clone of vi. To understand the full context in which Elvis was created, readers should consider the history of vi. In this section we examine the version history of Elvis almost exclusively.
Steve Kirkendall posted the first version of Elvis to the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix in early January, 1990, intending it to be a more complete and faithful clone of Vi than Tim Thompson's Stevie (ST editor for VI enthusiasts), released three years previously. Kirkendall outlined several ways in which Elvis was different from Stevie, namely:
...
Wikipedia