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ed vs Editra

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When comparing ed vs Editra, the Slant community recommends ed for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” ed is ranked 55th while Editra is ranked 73rd.

Specs

Column selectionNo

PlatformsWindows; OSX; *nix

Collaborative editingNo

ScriptableYes

Supported remote file editing protocolsNone

Column selectionYes

PlatformsWindows; OSX; Linux

LicensewxWindows

Supported keybinding stylesVi

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best programming text editors?

Pros

Pro
Tight control over what's displayed, within terminal window

Pro
ed is the standard text editor

As the standard text editor, ed is available on multiple systems.

Pro
Consistent UI

ed has a consistent user interface and error reportage.

Pro
Very customizable

Pro
Small and portable

Editra's small size makes it extremely fast and portable. It can be uploaded in a USB drive and be used on the go.

Pro
Powerful

Editra can open more than 60 different types of source code, each with syntax highlighting and many other features. It also has many widgets that can be installed to make the user experience easier (you can download them from the main site).

Pro
Cross-platform and open source

Editra can run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Its sources are easily available from the site.

Pro
Simple

Editra has a simple and very customizable UI.

Pro
Python IDE

It's written in Python and can also be used as a Python IDE. Just by extending it through the installation of additional features and widgets, Editra can become an IDE for any programming language it supports.

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Cons

Con
Obsolete

There's absolutely no need for ed when you have sed and ex.

Con
Not a lot of features

While extremely fast and simple, Ed is simply not for programming for a long time because it lacks a lot of important features. It should be used instead for quick edits.

Con
Not a persistent UI

You can only view portions of a file through search or regular expression commands. You cannot scan or scroll through a file using the available screen real-estate.
It's not too dissimilar in use to command-line tools (such as grep and sed) for editing a file. In fact, both grep and sed are based on how interaction is performed with Ed.