On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 10:47:43AM +0000, samwise wrote:
Hey,
We touched on this briefly last night after the question was asked about the best Linux replacement for UltraEdit, but we didn't really get into it as we were all getting ready to stuff ourselves with Hoi Sin sauce.
I thought it'd make an interesting thread. So, suggestions for favourite editors.
Without getting into a flame war between vi and emacs ... what editor do you prefer for light-weight editing? i.e. not a full IDE like eclipse or KDevelop, but just for the little jobs of editing small text files.
I use a vi clone called vile for *everything*, it's not that different from vim but I have got used to it over the years (I first started using it on Solaris) so I have stuck with it.
A *big* advantage for me is that at work I very often log in to test systems and customer systems that only have 'real' vi available so I don't have to re-learn the editor there.
I use nano on my very old gentoo box, which is a nice console based editor that is more user friendly than vi/emacs (tho, naturally, less feature rich). I generally rely on vi for console-based editing on other machines.
Seems odd to me that using two different editors can be 'easier' than knowing one (possibly more complex) one in depth.
As for the GUI-based ones, I tried gVim but just found it too much hard work.
I use the GUI vile which is called xvile. Again I don't see the problem, xvile is just the same as vile with a few GUI addons like mouse awareness etc. Just using the same editor *everywhere* means that it's never 'hard work'.
I have run Crimson Editor under WINE for a while because ithas lots more features than Kate or KWrite. I'll accept that Crimson Editor is somewhat stagnant (the replacement Emerald Editor appears to be stuck in development hell) and Notepad++ under WINE might be a better choice, but I haven't taken the time to play with it properly.
So, anyone got any other favourites worth trying? Does anyone know of a native Linux GUI app that can compete with UltraEdit et al?
I still think my philosophy of using the same editor *everywhere* is the best approach. You need to choose one that's available on every platform you use of course, that's what led me to vile/xvile. I use it in all the following situations:-
At work as my programming editor, Solaris with a Config management system that launches the editor via a gnuclient type mechanism (my original reason for choosing xvile, a vi clone that worked in server mode).
As my mail editor, I use mutt for mail and thus can choose what editor I use for writing mail.
As my newsgroup posting editor, I use tin and, like mutt it uses whatever editor I specify.
For all my editing of scripts, python, pearl, etc. on Linux. Vile has syntax colouring for just about every language you can think of and quite a few that you can't!
For editing textareas in Firefox, this is done via a neat little extension called mozex. Whenever a textarea asks for input I can hit CTRL/E and the contents of the textarea can be edited using my favourite editor!
On Windows I have the windows version of vile which is called winvile so even there I can feel at home (and avoid notepad!).
Nowadays I could probably replace most of the above by using vim/gvim and starting now I probably would. I'm not sure if there's a server mode in gvim though.