ed(1)-like line editor designed to leverage APL as its macro-language
Author: Aaron W. Hsu Homepage: https://github.com/arcfide/ALE Family: LineEditorFamily, BellLabsFamily, TinyEditors Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, AIX License: ISC
The ALE editor takes the core editing language of the Ed and reimplements it as a set of editing functions in APL designed to be used inside of an APL session. It is a general purpose editor designed around the ideas of bespoke "interface customization" as seen in the ACME, by exposing the entire APL session during an editing session, as well as all the underlying data structures and state of the editor. This allows for custom editing commands to be written and used like normal commands. Because the editor is distributed as a small APL workspace, customized copies of the editor are intended to be copied to various project directories and used as custom editors for each project, much in the same way that ACME script files allows for custom commands for editing a project to be saved in the project directory.
The editor follows in the same line as the Ed editor because of its explicit focus on implementing the same features as ed with the same basic interaction paradigm, except that the ALE editor utilizes the APL function syntax as its core syntax instead of the ed(1) syntax.
The editor itself is a member of the TinyEditors family since the whole implementation consumes less than 40 lines of code in APL.