Joe, although often described as a "simple" editor is anything but that. True, it is easier to use than virtually any other editor, such as Vim or Emacs, but it is much more powerful than either Pico or Nano. Joe, unlike the others, is an "intuitive" editor, similar to Pico, but more powerful. It is great for new users and old Unix heads alike. With it, you can avoid the lumbering bloat of Emacs and the esoteric incomprehensibility of Vim.
I also recommend downloading both the GNU .sit file and the tar.gz provided by the Apple site. You will see why below. Now the reason I recommend the newer version is because a problem in the sourcing of the ".joerc" file, which could potentially allow a user with malicious motives to execute arbitrary commands, especially in a "world writable" file. Of course, this is less of a problem in OS X.2 than it is in Linux, as OS X is inherently more secure. Nevertheless, I recommend the newer version from GNU, not only for the security update, but also because it is simply better than the older version.
There is only one tweak you may have to do to get the option keys to work properly. Joe requires a ".joerc" file to run. This joerc file is usually installed into "~/" or into "/etc/joe/joerc". Sometimes the installer does not install this file. So the user must create this file, normally in ~/.joerc. Now here's the fun. Let's say you have just created an empty ~/.joerc file.
The next step after the installation of v2.9.7, if you find that the key options in Joe do not work, is to download the other Joe, provided by Apple and to untar it with OpenUp or whatever. You will be presented with a series of folders to place on your system. We are only interested in one item in the "usr" folder. In the usr folder is the lib folder, and in that is the "joerc" file we are looking for with all the great options scripted nicely. Open that with TextEdit then paste it "as-is" into the ~/.joerc file you previously created. Now all should work like a charm.
For further information, type "man joe" in a terminal window after the installation. Believe me, you won't regret having installed this editor, especially having used the head scratchers like Vim.
[Editor's note: I installed Joe through the package installer and all went fine, although I did have to create the .joerc file using the Apple package.]

