have you tried mcedit? It's the editor mc (Midnight Commander, a Norton Commander clone) brings along, looks and feels like the old DOS editor, but has more features

I don't think so, though remember Norton and this clone. Don't believe I knew it had an editor. As I once said to a relative... "information useful twenty+ years ago." ;-)

Just checked, key bindings are similar but largely wrong... focused on the Function keys.