i learned vi because it was the only editor installed on 99% of our machines. while some have pico -- none have emacs. odd.

since then i have grown to really enjoy vi. it is a small-footprint wysiwyg editor and appears to be what i was looking for during my windows years. no wonder i used to like notepad.exe so much!

i think i'll have to reset my nethack.cfg to the vi-style config.

can't beat VI.

I have added nedit to the poll. Now you nedit guys can vote too.

I know I should use vi, everyone says it's good for me; but like the ugly-flavored cough drops of my childhood, I cannot stomach it. I've learned it's basic usage at least 5 times, but it's so alien it never sticks.

I prefer pico-like shell editors, especially nano since it has syntax highlighting, text-replacement, searching, regex, and other stuff I'd always wished pico had.

I started using vi when I had an AT&T Unix PC (68010 with attached monitor, 20 Mb hard drive, SVR about 2) and vi was the only (reasonable) game in town. When I got a job using VMS (the Very Malevolent System) in about 1992, I asked on comp.editors what was workable as a vi clone. (Eve vi emulation was a travesty, but then, I was using VMS anyhow.) One reply came from Paul Fox telling me about vile, which had been ported to both VMS and DOS.

I started using vile and loved it. It was based on microEmacs, and still had the same extension language. I then spent about 1.5 years on the Dark Side (GNU Emacs ), but decided I most needed an editor, not a complete user environment.

In my idle time, I started tinkering with vim, which is what I use now. Even after over 10 years with vile, vim seems a little more natural now.

BTW, I usually keep copies of wily and sam around --- they are irritatingly useful at times. And I occasionally use emacs when I need a more interactive debugger for Perl or Ruby.

Sorry if I voted twice (feeble memory ), but I use Nedit since it's a feature rich, plain text editor. It runs on nearly every platform, has good mouse support, syntax highlighting, search and replace, runs or gets the result of CLI commands, recent document list,..
Give it a go, if you have not done so recently.

< poop! page 2. I need more coffee. subtract 1 vote from nedit results >

I discovered something called "Kate" that came with my Suse Linux installation.

It is very close to what I am used to seeing with EditPlus (I have used EditPlus on Windows for 6 years and think it is excellent - How can you use EditPlus it on Linux, besides resorting to "wine"?) Kate supports syntax highlighting, key sequences that allow convenient navigation, copying/pasting and deletion, directory browsing and more. I am really not sure, though, what OS it comes packaged with, and whether it is Open Source (I just haven't had the time to investigate!) If anyone knows these answers, please let me know too (and don't forget the EditPlus question!)