Joe, the Joe's Own Editor, has the feel of most PC text editors: the key sequences are reminiscent of WordStar and Turbo C editors, but the feature set is much larger than of those. Joe has all of the features a Unix user should expect: full use of termcap/terminfo, complete VI-style Unix integration, a powerful configuration file, and regular expression search system. It also has six help reference cards which are always available, and an intuitive, simple, and well thought-out user interface.

Joe has a great screen update optimization algorithm, multiple windows (through/between which you can scroll) and lacks the confusing notion of named buffers. It has command history, TAB expansion in file selection menus, undo and redo functions, (un)indenting and paragraph formatting, filtering highlighted blocks through any external Unix command, editing a pipe into or out of a command, and block move, copy, delete or filter.

Through simple QEdit-style configuration files, Joe can be set up to emulate editors such as Pico and Emacs, along with a complete imitation of WordStar, and a restricted mode version (lets you edit only the files specified on the command line). Joe also has a deferred screen update to handle typeahead, and it ensures that deferral is not bypassed by tty buffering. It's usable even at 2400 baud, and it will work on any kind of sane terminal.