A tutorial for the Sam command language (1986) [pdf]

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • sam

    An updated version of the sam text editor. (by deadpixi)

  • deadpixi's sam port[1] includes a "ssam" command, but it's just a shell-script that writes standard input to a temporary file, launches sam to run commands, then copies the temporary file to standard output - it's not really a "stream".

    "Plan 9 from User Space" has its own ssam command, whose implementation is basically the same, except as an rc script instead of a shell script.

    I don't know if there's an actually-streaming sam implementation anywhere.

    [1]: https://github.com/deadpixi/sam

  • plan9port

    Plan 9 from User Space

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  • kakoune

    mawww's experiment for a better code editor

  • And while it doesn’t use the sam language precisely, I think in the broader “postfix Vi with visual feedback” category Kakoune[1] also warrants mentioning. The command language, in my experience, feels much more logical than that of Vis coming from a blank slate (things might be different if you come from Vim, but even when I used Vim regularly I never used the editing language that much exactly because I could never remember the damn thing).

    And having mentioned Kakoune it’d probably be unfair to then not mention Helix[2]. It has a very similar editing language, but it’s a fairly anti-Unix everything-bolted-in affair on the inside (“everything works out of the box” being the advertising take) compared to Kakoune’s Acme-inspired no-scripting scripting (there’s an ex-style command to exec a user program that can then drive the editor over stdio RPC, a set of hooks, and that’s it). So if you’ve come for the Plan 9 feels, I don’t expect Helix to be that appealing. It’s still a good editor, nevertheless.

    [1] https://kakoune.org/

    [2] https://helix-editor.com/

  • helix

    A post-modern modal text editor.

  • And while it doesn’t use the sam language precisely, I think in the broader “postfix Vi with visual feedback” category Kakoune[1] also warrants mentioning. The command language, in my experience, feels much more logical than that of Vis coming from a blank slate (things might be different if you come from Vim, but even when I used Vim regularly I never used the editing language that much exactly because I could never remember the damn thing).

    And having mentioned Kakoune it’d probably be unfair to then not mention Helix[2]. It has a very similar editing language, but it’s a fairly anti-Unix everything-bolted-in affair on the inside (“everything works out of the box” being the advertising take) compared to Kakoune’s Acme-inspired no-scripting scripting (there’s an ex-style command to exec a user program that can then drive the editor over stdio RPC, a set of hooks, and that’s it). So if you’ve come for the Plan 9 feels, I don’t expect Helix to be that appealing. It’s still a good editor, nevertheless.

    [1] https://kakoune.org/

    [2] https://helix-editor.com/

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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