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Microsoft Edit

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Re: Microsoft Edit

#72
post #10
post #2

Fun. I must admit I don't really know who this is for , but it seems fun.

It's for people that want to use the Windows Terminal to edit files. The old `edit` command has been unsupported on Windows since 2006, so there was no Microsoft-provided editor that could be used in the command line since then. It's impressive to see how fast this editor is. https://github.com/microsoft/edit/pull/408 > By writing SIMD routines specific to newline seeking, we can bump that up [to 125GB/s]

Probably more like need to use it. Basically nano for windows

Re: Microsoft Edit

#73
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a reasonably secure fashion It's trivial for a remote server to hand two different versions of a script with the traditional `curl | bash` pipeline. https://lukespademan.com/blog/the-dangers-of-curlbash/ There is 0 validation that the script that you are piping into bash is the script that you expect. Even just validating the command by copying and pasting the URL in a browser -- or using curl and piping into mo…

>> Except curl | bash definitely executes code by the author controlling the URL you put in, and if the URL is HTTPS, in a reasonably secure fashion. > It's trivial for a remote server to hand two different versions of a script with the traditional `curl | bash` pipeline. I’m confused by this; it seems to be written in the tone of a correction but you both seem to be saying that you get whatever the server sends. (?)

> you both seem to be saying that you get whatever the server sends

Yes, but I am also saying that you can't verify that the script that is run on one machine with a pipe is the same script that runs on a second machine with a pipe.

The key part of the original statement is the server can choose to send different scripts based on different factors. A curl&bash script on machine 1 does not necessarily mean the same curl&bash script will be run on machine 2.

The tooling provided by a `curl | bash` pipeline provides no security at all.

With winget, there is at least tooling to be able to see that the same file (with the same hash) will be downloaded and installed.

There are ways to do this better, for example, check out https://hashbang.sh. It includes a GPG signature that is verified against the install script, before it is passed to curl.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#74
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it should not. `edit` doesn't even support syntax highlighting (atleast, out of the box when I tried it).

I think you missed the point of edit.

I think not. Edit is to edit files in the terminal. What kind of files do you expect people to edit in the terminal? Most certainly files that would benefit from colors, not prose.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#75
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah ... I don't think there's any overlap between "users largely unfamiliar with terminals" who want something easy to use, and 'Linux users who are sufficiently technical that they would even hear about this repo'.

Here's a scenario. You're running a cluster, and your users are biologists producing large datasets. They need to run some very specific command line software to assemble genomes. They need to edit SLURM scripts over SSH. This is all far outside their comfort zone. You need to point them at a text editor, which one do you choose? I've met biologists who enjoy the challenge of vim, but they are rare. nano does the job…

> You need to point them at a text editor, which one do you choose?

mcedit ?

Re: Microsoft Edit

#76
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah ... I don't think there's any overlap between "users largely unfamiliar with terminals" who want something easy to use, and 'Linux users who are sufficiently technical that they would even hear about this repo'.

There's no shortage of less technical people using nano for editing on Linux servers. Something even more approachable than that would have a user base.

Midnight commander comes with mcedit.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#77
post #74
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point of edit.

I think not. Edit is to edit files in the terminal. What kind of files do you expect people to edit in the terminal? Most certainly files that would benefit from colors, not prose.

A lot of authors, myself included, want a "distraction free" editor. Its a whole over-populated market segment.

Prose thrives in the terminal. Ice and Fire was written in WordStar, as just one popular example.

Re: Microsoft Edit

#79
post #16

I used to recommend micro[1] to people like those in the target audience of this editor. I wonder if that should change or not. -- 1: https://micro-editor.github.io/

IMO it should not. `edit` doesn't even support syntax highlighting (atleast, out of the box when I tried it).

It might in the future, though, as the main developer has opened an issue about it: https://github.com/microsoft/edit/issues/18

The trick is doing it while keeping the binary size small, so tree sitter is not an option.

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