The key here is the `Ctrl-K H for help' part. Help is always in front of your face. Try it now to see what's there. Push and hold the control key while pressing k then release and press h
You can see from the help screen the variety of things available (shown below). Note that many (but not all) commands start with the Ctrl-K keystrokes (the control key is commonly abbreviated as a carat, ^ ). Also note that letters do not have to be capitalized, but that undo (Ctrl-Shift--) and redo (Ctrl-Shift-6) do require shifting. If you have opened a file, play with things to see how they work (most are real obvious). Note that the arrow keys, Page Up/Page Down, and Home/End keys also do what you'd expect. Insert acts like space, though. To change to typeover you have to invoke options (^T).
CURSOR GO TO BLOCK DELETE MISC EXIT ^B left ^F right ^U prev. screen ^KB begin ^D char. ^KJ reformat ^KX save ^P up ^N down ^V next screen ^KK end ^Y line ^T options ^C abort ^Z previous word ^A beg. of line ^KM move ^W >word ^R refresh ^KZ shell ^X next word ^E end of line ^KC copy ^O word< ^@ insert FILE SEARCH ^KU top of file ^KW file ^J >line SPELL ^KE edit ^KF find text ^KV end of file ^KY delete ^_ undo ^&[N word ^KR insert ^L find next ^KL to line No. ^K/ filter ^^ redo ^&[L file ^KD save |
^ is the Control key , ^[ is the same as the Escape key, and ^[L is the same as Escape-L
The big ones to note for joe newbies are ^KD (save) ^KX (save and exit) ^C (exit without save—it will ask you about saving) ^KJ (reformat paragraph after making changes which mess up the line wrapping) and the block commands (operating on chunks of text, e.g. a paragraph).
People used to a system like Windows may begin to feel anxious at this moment. "WHAT? I have to remember all of Those Things??!!" (Shudders going through body... ;-) It's not that hard, and you may already understand how it works. Have you ever hit the F1 key to get help? That key is called a shortcut because it is a lot easier and faster than moving your hand off the keys over to the mouse, then pointing and clicking on the help menu item, often followed by a necessary second choice off that menu. Joe (and many other command line apps) uses shortcuts by default.
When you exit and save changes to an existing file, joe automatically creates a backup of the old file by appending a tilde (~) to the file's name. (This happens when you use the ^KX command, but not when using the ^KD (save, then continue) command.)
Other commands of possible immediate interest are the search commands (^KF and ^L) and the spell checker (Do you have ispell installed??). All others are pretty self explanatory. One thing I certainly recommend is playing with an expendable file for a while, learning how to get the most out of joe. Such a file is easy to get—simply copy a file to a new name and toast that one...