Alternative Editors (was Re: Debian vim weirdness)

[Levi Pearson]

On Feb 24, 2006, at 10:51 PM, Steve wrote:

> Ok, so /me puts on flame retardant suit...
> I use neither vim nor emacs, I've been pretty happy with nano thus far
> for text editing, but I think I would like more out of my editor.
> I am starting to get into shell scripting, as well as a few other
> kinds of scripting after spending a few years doing "real" programming
> in C/C++ etc.
>
> I really don't want a full fledged IDE since I have Kdevelop for that,
> but just something to quickly change a line or two in a script would
> be fantastic.  Hopefully something that can show me line numbers like
> Kwrite, so I can quickly find and edit offending lines of code.

You know, as passionate as people tend to be about vim and emacs, if  
you're not looking to invest a lot of time and effort learning a  
complex editor, sometimes simpler alternatives are better.  I've  
always liked an editor called jed, which can emulate emacs or a few  
others, like Wordstar and Borland editors, and also standard Mac/ 
Windows/KDE sort of bindings.

It's more powerful than nano, doesn't have the gigantic size and  
bewildering options of emacs, and doesn't have the weird modal  
interface of vi-clones.  It's got a scripting language with C-like  
syntax to extend it, too.

Anyway, it's worth a look, at least.

		--Levi