Have you seen this? https://github.com/microsoft/edit

Thanks, I haven't. I am not sure it builds into a DOS EXE though, rust and all the cool stuff that is.
E: Found this fairly recent discussion elsewhere, so trying some of the recommendations there...

Just in case anyone else would find this useful:

Back in late 1970s-early80s I was doing a LOT of work on DEC VAX systems, and
became very familier with their EDT visual editor which I liked more than any
other editor I'd used. So much so that I wrote my own "EDT" which became (and
still is) the primary text editor I use:

1Use: edt <file> [c=initial_cmd -interactive_help -video_inhibit]
2
3for interactive help:   F10 'H' F10

It is *NOT* a "fancy" editor and does not have a lot of on-screen prompts or
fields. It just shows a section (25 lines) of text exactly as it will appear
in the final file - like writing on a piece of papar!

Here is the content of it's Help screen - '{}' denote key codes I had to add
for certain systems where ^(control) of special keys was not available:

1Special keys                     Commands                 Line ranges
2------------                     --------                 -----------
3PgDn  =Page forward              C =Copy line(s)          * =Current line
4PgUp  =Page backward             D =Delete line(s)        / =Entire file
5^PgUp =Start of file {F11}       F =File info             n =line # (1+)
6^PgDn =End of file   {F12}      nH =Set Htab size         0 =End of file
7Home  =Start of line             I =Insert new line(s)    = =Tagged lines
8End   =End of line               L =List (unformatted)  r,r =range to range
9F8    =Redraw screen             M =Move line(s)
10^Left =Word right    {sF3}       P =Print (formatted)
11^Right=Word left     {sF4}       Q =Quit editor
12INS   =Insert/Overwrite         QQ =Quit with no save
13DEL   =Delete character      Rfile =Read & insert file   Examples:
14BKSPC =Delete previous   S/old/new =Substitute text      ---------
15F1    =EOL display               T =Tag lines             D
16F2    =Cursor position           V =Visual mode       1,10C
17F3    =Move line to top    W[file] =Write file           =M
18F4    =Tag line(s)         X[file] =eXit/write file      0Rmy.fil
19F5    =Del to end of line    ?text =Search for text      /Wmy.fil
20F6    =Del end of line      $[cmd] =Execute OS command
21F7    =Insert deleted line  (null) =Move to line range
22F10   =Line mode command
23F9    =Re-execute command

I have ported this editor to DOS(16-bit), Windows(32-bit), various flavors of
Unix/Linux, my own DVM virtual machine, my own CUBIX (6809) OS, and others.
The source code is in C, and I've kept it very portable.

Compiled DOS/Win32 versions as well as the source code are available on my
site. There is of course much more complete documentation.

It may take a little "getting used to", but IMHO well worth it - I can't tell
you how wonderful it is to have the SAME (and capable) text editor on all the
systems I work on!

The DOS version is 11k - more capable/smaller than EDLIN(12k) and *much*
smaller than DOSs std EDIT/QBASIC(200k) - makes it very suitable to include
on test/diagnostic boot floppies. (I just looked an W98 EDIT.COM is about 70k
- presumably doesn't need QBASIC like the DOS one)

BTW/FWIW - I wrote this posting (and most of my others) in DosBox using EDT
and copy/paste it into VOGONs

In the end I settled on @boeckmann 's fork of EDIT.EXE from FreeDOS, which is a much more stable version compared to what's shipped with the OS. After running it for a few month I got used to it very much, but still was finding the color theme somewhat busy.
Luckily I was looking for a ready to use text mode UI framework with compact distribution to produce launcher for Bernewfie, and decided to look into DFlat+. As a "by product" of forking @boeckmann 's repo for that I got a new build of EDIT.EXE which sports familiar colors of MS editor, but also add couple more color themes.
Sharing for those interested: https://github.com/drivelling-spinel/dflatp-a … s/tag/edit-2026

I was thinking whether a fdos edit fork existed the other day that made it more edit.com like (after seeing slop "notepad"). Thanks!

The other new MS EDIT posted was in Rust and meant for windows10+/linux and has huge problems and isn't like Edit at all (and not very compatible with those PxPlus VGA fonts). Just MS retro clouting i felt, and as it's Satya M$ it's probably copilot slop too.