Text Editing / Historical Stub
Text Editor History
The useful distinction here is not only "old versus new" but what the editing surface exposes. Line editors worked one line at a time, usually under terminal or teleprinter constraints. Screen editors made the visible page directly manipulable. Visual editors shifted the emphasis again toward rendered form and lower command overhead.
That history still matters because current writing tools keep revisiting the same question in new clothes: how much raw structure should stay visible, and when should the interface hide it? Obsidian is one current case because it keeps local Markdown files intact while also offering backlinks, graph views, and richer projections around them.
Editor Families
Line editors
These belong to a world where editing commands and document state were not continuously co-visible. They made text modifiable, but with strong terminal and display constraints.
Screen editors
Once text could be edited directly on a display, the speed and feel of editing changed. Cursor movement, immediate verification, and whole-screen awareness became part of the craft.
Visual editors
Visual editing lowers the barrier for many writers, but it also raises recurring questions about source fidelity, reversibility, and whether the visible surface still tells the truth about the underlying text.
The immediate use of this page is comparison: if two tools feel different, what editor lineage explains the difference in speed, visibility, reversibility, or programmability?
Reference points
POSIX ed
A stable reference for line editing and command-driven text modification.
POSIX vi
A stable reference for screen-oriented modal editing and a useful midpoint in editor lineage.
Vim user manual
Helpful when you want the living continuation of vi rather than only the standard utility description.
GNU Emacs manual
Useful for editor-as-environment thinking, programmability, and the other major long-running editor culture.