Softwarenetbsdtext-editorsviunixbsdopen-source
NetBSD Adds atto, a 48 KB Modeless Editor, to Its Base System Beside vi, and Its Man Page Says "atto Is Not the Standard Editor"
NetBSD-current now ships atto(1), a small Emacs-keyed text editor written mainly by Hugh Barney, as an alternative to vi for people who never learned modes. The project calls it small enough for the rescue system.
NetBSD’s announcement on October 28 opened with “To ease the transition for new users.” The project’s base system, the part every install gets, now has a third screen editor next to vi(1) and xedit(1), and this one doesn’t have modes. The post compares it to “nano, pico, xedit, or emacs” and says “It is only 48 kilobytes, making it suitable for inclusion in the rescue system.” Then it winks: “This is real, but I’m honestly missing an opportunity by not posting it on 1 April.”
The man page, dated October 15, 2026, sells it in one sentence. atto “serves as an alternative to vi(1) for users who are not accustomed to text editors with separate insertion and editing modes, and includes support for editing UTF-8 text.” Then it gives the survival kit: “holding the control key, pressing x, then pressing w will write the currently open file,” and control, x, then c “will exit the editor.”
The key table underneath is Emacs muscle memory. C-a and C-e jump to the ends of a line, C-k cuts to the end of it, C-y pastes it back, C-s and C-r search, and C-x C-s saves. There are multiple buffers, a mark-and-region cut, and a two-way split screen, with the page’s advice that for anything fancier you should “consider using tmux(1).” The one option, -C, turns on “basic language-unaware syntax highlighting.”
The credits trace it back a long way. “atto was written primarily by Hugh Barney, and was originally based on public domain code from Anthony Howe’s editor (commonly known as Anthony’s Editor),” and NetBSD modified it “for inclusion in NetBSD, including with enhanced option handling.” The page’s SEE ALSO lists ed(1), ex(1), vi(1) and xedit(1). The STANDARDS line answers the old Unix joke that ed is the standard text editor, and the announcement doesn’t say whether atto has made it into the rescue system yet or only fits there.
Editors in base systems are a strange kind of politics. Nobody fights over which compiler is in the rescue image, but every admin has an opinion about the editor they get dropped into at 2 a.m., and the project knew it, which is why the post ends on the editor wars. What’s notable is the direction: for decades the answer to “I don’t know vi” was “learn vi.” NetBSD added a different answer and kept the old one, and the man page’s last joke makes clear nobody’s being demoted.