Microsoft has announced a new text editor for Windows, called Edit. But it's not like Notepad, Edit is a command-line text editor.
The app was unveiled at the Microsoft Build conference, and while it may seem designed for developers, it remains accessible to users who are not familiar with terminals.
The interface looks modern, with controls similar to those in Visual Studio. Microsoft says its motivation was to bring a CLI text editor to 64-bit versions of Windows.
Edit is a lightweight text editor, less than 250kB in size. It supports mouse functionality, allowing users to click on menu options and highlight text.
However, there is no right-click menu in the application. However, like traditional CLI applications, Edit supports various keyboard shortcuts, such as the ones we commonly use Ctrl Z, Ctrl V, Ctrl R for finding and replacing text, etc.
It supports Word Wrapping, which can be activated with the Alt+Z shortcut.
In addition to these, there are some advanced options, such as Case Matching and Regular Expression support. Edit does not support tabbed browsing, and simply runs in the Windows Terminal.
Microsoft has released the source code for Edit under the MIT license. The command-line text editor is written in the Rust programming language. Microsoft's official announcement says that Edit will be released to the Windows Insider Program in the coming months, which means that the app will not be immediately available on the stable channel of Windows 11.
However, you can download Microsoft Edit from the project page on GitHub. It's a portable application, so you can simply extract its contents to a folder and run edit.exe.
https://github.com/microsoft/edit/releases
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
Let me remind the (very) old-timers that there was once a legend that with the old MS-DOS edit, Elvis would write response letters to his fans from beyond!