Open Source

vi editor

I use vim.
The best editor is perhaps the one you are used to. Especially if you;ve really bothered to learn the advanced commands, custommizations, macros etc. The same largely goes with many other things such as languages.

No harm in peeking around though! You could find a better match for yourself.

p.s. I think nano is neat, use it in alpine, even though i can call vim from it.

vi is the best editor with good speed, Editing in vim is really superb and simple.
if you want to highlight the syntax for a specific language, i think there are already lot of wrappers/setup files to support language syntax....

^^ oh yes. there are syntax hiliters for all languages.

Actually all editors today feature that as a basic feature. I believe even nano/pico has that.

The differences in editors is narrowing in terms of what can be done -- so the choice really depends on the person. I instintively type vi keys wherever I go, so I'll probably carry it with me beyond the grave :-) :x!

Although I usually use Kate, I would really like to get into VIM. I have no problem with the modal syntax (I like that) but I do need to have different 'tabs' of files open. Also, I need to browse remote filesystems and bookmark directories on those systems. Kate does this wonderfully.

If you want to use Vim, vim also supports tabs (gvim or google's macvim at least). It splits well too.
People say gvim is not for real men, but if i have long editing sessions and wish to keep a couple of terminals free for running commands then gvim is great. Commands may be run using :! which I do use, but say I wish to keep alpine open for a while, or my ruby interactive shell.

Thanks, that is nice. The tabs are a big help, and I will see what I can do about browsing and bookmarking remote filesystems. I managed to ssh into a remote server and browse the filesystem (!: ssh), but I could not open files in the local GVIM instance from there.