fav text editor?

[ewdi]

Which text editor in linux you use the most, especially when it cvomes to edit config files and etc.

i use pico or nano.

[sailor]

I like to use Midnight Commander...since it is a file manager and text editor, I can backup the file and move it ...it also makes it easier to find files...
nano is also easy to use...

[micha]

I use vi for config files, gedit for C++ development, and sometimes mc.
Sometimes I use nedit on SGI machines.
My favorite text editor is still gvim.

[kbradl1]

vi for console and gedit for gnome

[Ug]

I've yet to master any console text editors. (I'm so not hardcore). But when I use a text editor I use gedit.

[David]

I use vim pretty much exclusively.

[ghaefb]

emacs straight up ! :)

[Jman]

The Midnight Commander is my favorite becuase it's built right into the console file manager.

gedit is nice too. I like the syntax highlighting in both.

[Ug]

Originally posted by ghaefb
emacs straight up ! :) I never figured how to use that one. ;)

I've just played around with Nano, and found it surprisingly easy to use. Which is a very good thing in my opinion.

[Bana]

Vim is my preciousss... Gedit is cool too.

[fjleal]

vi or nano if there's no GUI available. Otherwise, I always use Gedit because of the syntax highlighting.

[crackers]

Vim - has syntax highlighting, as well. Just my pref since my fingers learned the commands 20+ years ago on Wyse 50 terminals. (For programming, I use Eclipse - Java weenie that I am.)

[h4d]

emacs or vi. Depends on the mood

[fjleal]

Originally posted by crackers
For programming, I use Eclipse - Java weenie that I am.
Programming is a lot different: Quanta for HTML, PHP, etc; Anjuta for C/C++; and NetBeans forJava. I find Gedit to have a serious problem when dealing with code: it doesn't indent blocks of text. If you select a few contiguous lines and press tab, it replaces the lines by a tab, instead of indenting them.

About Eclipse: do you find any advantage over NetBeans?

[Jman]

Yay Eclipse! :) I use it to learn about Java. It automates a bunch of tedious things, and of course highlights the syntax.

But it seems even more feature filled than emacs and takes a while to load. Oh well.

I haven't tried NetBeans.

[STiAT]

Eclipse + Plugins for java development
Gedit for C/C++ and PHP
MonoDevelop to play around with C# / GTK#
MC for console things where i want syntax highlighting
Nano for config files
KDevelop for having closer looks in KDE-Projects, wich often ship with kdevelop project files.

I just had stability and serious performance problems with NetBeans, therefore i never used it.

Anjuta always was for ages in the unstable gentoo portage tree, and i never had a serious intention to use an IDE, because all the crap they use to spam my "yet another simple project to get something done" directories.

[ewdi]

for c++ and PHP i use slickedit, pretty nice :p

[Ug]

I've heard you raving about that once before.

[mars_hall]

I like to use gedit.

[crackers]

Originally posted by fjleal
About Eclipse: do you find any advantage over NetBeans?

With the Eclipse 3.x series, I can't type faster than the cursor moves (I've always been able to "out-type" Netbeans, although 3.6 seems snappy enough). Once I got used to it, I like the project management a helluva lot better. Tweaking the code format is something else in Eclipse's favor. The other thing is just the sheer number of plug-ins available for Eclipse. Netbeans just doesn't have that kind of support...

To be honest, it's not a "SWT is better than Swing" issue, though. If I had my druthers (and the money), I'd be using Intellij IDEA (just totally rocks!), which clearly demonstrates that you can do a fantastic GUI app in Swing.

[theurge]

vi


And Ug, I highly recommend you take some time off to learn vi, as it helped me along into understanding other Unix commands and utilities, such as sed and awk.

[Drenon]

For one half - Kate :)

[crackers]

Yah, I've dabbled a bit with Kate. It's a real pain to get configured the way I like, though... "No, dammit - I want 4 spaces, not a freakin' TAB character!"

[jrblevin]

emacs...it is a little overwhelming at first but I spent a few hours going through the tutorial and now I couldn't live without it. One program with modes to edit virtually any kind of code possible. I also just realized that bash and csh allow you to use many of the emacs navigation shortcuts at the prompt!

On a side note, a nice Windows editor is EditPlus. I feel an obligation to plug this one because it truly is an excellent editor if you ever use Windows. It reminds me of the Borland style editors.

[foolish]

I used to be Ug, never using any terminal text-editors and when I needed one I used gedit. Now I have come to love vim, it's just a lot easier, faster and more clever than any of the nano/pico ones, and better than using gedit in most cases I think.

I won't say a bad word about emacs, because then we'll have a fight and that I don't like. But I've never figured out how to even start emacs, and I've never edited anything in there successfully.

[fjleal]

foolish wrote:
I won't say a bad word about emacs, because then we'll have a fight
You can bet... ;)

[David]

why do some people use vi over vim? Is it just familarity or is there another reason?

[ilja]

Originally posted by David
why do some people use vi over vim? Is it just familarity or is there another reason?
Have you ever heard about a "faith-war". You are starting one at the moment. ;)

[Darkmage]

Originally posted by David
why do some people use vi over vim? Is it just familarity or is there another reason?

Aren't both the same because I get the same screen when I type vi, vim, vimx

[jrblevin]

Originally posted by foolish
I won't say a bad word about emacs, because then we'll have a fight and that I don't like. But I've never figured out how to even start emacs, and I've never edited anything in there successfully.

Don't worry, I try to avoid editor wars...that sounds like it could get worse than a distro war.

If you want to give emacs a shot one of these days, just run "emacs" and then go to the help menu and go through the tutorial. It is self guided and interactive and it stores a copy of the tutorial in your home directory so you dont have to worry about messing it up. Just get a scrap of paper and write down the basic commands until you get used to them and soon it becomes natural.

[fjleal]

And if you get frustated, there's always the "Emacs Psychiatrist" (help menu)... ;)

[kimatrix]

i love vi, i only use that :D

[Lindy]

It depends, I usually use vi from the command line, and kedit from the gui. I dabble with emacs when I'm feeling a bit psychotic :D

[Picomp314]

i use vi from command line also, I use gedit when I am running X

[micha]

I also use kile for latex files. It has a bunch of shortcuts for common symbols/environments.

[jrblevin]

Yeah, kile is a great app. There are several dedicated latex editors around but it's probably the best i've seen.

[crackers]

Originally posted by David
why do some people use vi over vim? Is it just familarity or is there another reason?

On Linux, there is generally is no difference. If you install the "enhanced" Vi(m) package, you have to explicily enable the vi-compatibility mode. I actually don't know anyone who does that. Me, I cringe everytime I have to use "vi" on a Solaris server. Fortunately, I convinced the powers-that-be (IT department) to include the Solaris Vi(m) package, so I can have my cursor keys working.

There's not that much "vi vs. vim" - it's the same base commands, after all. It seems to me more about expected cursor behavior than anything else.

[theurge]

To me there's no real good reason not to run vim instead of vi.

Like what was just said, I use vi on Solaris and just wonder to myself how Sun can still charge people to use the letters hjkl to move around when people can use the arrow keys for free in vim.

For real fun, try ex.

Or if you're really feeling daring, ed.

Nothing works better than cat >> filename, type what you want, then CTRL-D to save and exit.

[Darkmage]

When using a shell, I find myself using less and v and i to edit files instead of just vi/vim.
I am kind of used to it now.

[Pegasus]

mc / vi - console mode
mc / emacs - configuring & moving files
SciTE - assembler programming
Quanta - web
anjuta - C

[harlekin]

console:
mc (im 2 lazy 2 learn the whole syntax of vi so i think it's enough when i know how 2 leave the "man xxx" menu (:q) )
gedit (config-files)
bluefish (html)

[ilja]

Who wants to learn vi, a great book is "vi" by o'reilly. I read the German translation and now can't miss vi anymore. I even use vim-X11. So you can call me a vim junky :D

[Die_Lah]

vim and gedit it is!

[Darkmage]

I almost forgot to add my 2 fav editors.......
kate and kwrite

I especially like kate because it allows me to multi-task between mulitple open files with easy access. :D

[David]

Originally posted by ilja
Have you ever heard about a "faith-war". You are starting one at the moment. ;)
You mean, not only are there people pathetic enough to get into fights over whether emacs or vi(m) is better but there are also an even weirder bunch who get into fights over the *same* application?

I sometimes wonder about computer people. Do you think they start off this way or is it something you turn into after enough time? Genuinely it scares me. Is this what happens to people who use linux?

[fjleal]

David wrote:
not only are there people pathetic enough to get into fights over whether emacs or vi(m) is better but there are also an even weirder bunch who get into fights over the *same* application?
David, you don't seem to have understood ilja well. A passionate debate over two different applications amongst those who study them and try to understand the way their algorithms work can hardly be called "pathetic". It's a way to exchange opinions, ideas, theories... The word "war" is figurative, of course. Remeber that 15 or 20 years back we didn't have the Internet and forums like this one to discuss ideas. But we already had e-mail on Unix workstations... Students from all over the world used to discuss their points of view using e-mail, newsgroups, private university networks... Those were glory days! And that's where the Linux community comes from. You see, today is much easier, we have e-mail at home, wide-band Internet access, discussion forums, blogs, webpages... Still, why do people come to these forums? To learn, to share ideas, to help one another. That's the same spirit.

By the way, I used to prefer vi back in the late 80's... It'd run everywhere, graphical or text consoles (dumb terminals, often vt100). :)

[crackers]

These "passionate wars" are also recognized by the "combatants" as a silly way of expressing personal preferences. For example, if I call an Emacs user an "idiot who has nothing better to do with his time but use a program that's got more junk bolted onto it than Rube Goldberg's wildest nightmare" -- they (usually) know enough to not take it seriously.

We all recognize personal perference. THAT is what it's all about: presenting more than enough options for someone to find what works best for them. It just happens that my personal preference (Vim) was formed back in the dark ages of dumb serial terminals -- vi was the only thing that would give you anything close to a screen-based editor without giving the server a nervous breakdown.

(Note I said "screen-based" - I never got along with line-based editors.)

[David]

I see. Clearly the linux user is a complicated species. I guess I'm one of the migrants who have come from across the ocean to start a new life, tired of the old ways, displacing the natives and turning their noses up at their culture :p

Just think, in a few years time, linux will have been customised to behave just like windows. The ways of the command line will be forgotten...

[fjleal]

crackers wrote:
Note I said "screen-based" - I never got along with line-based editors.
Jesus! I didn't even remember those!... Now that was nightmare! :D

David wrote:
Just think, in a few years time, linux will have been customised to behave just like windows. The ways of the command line will be forgotten...
Do you think so? I think you are confusing Linux (a kernel in the heart of the GNU/Linux Os) with the many GUIs available to work on top of it. Many GUIs may look similar to Windows, and some distributions (like Lindows, for example) may even try to take advantage of such resemblance. But some others are very different - have you tried Xfce, Fluxbox, lately? (By the way, the Windows interface wasn't made up by Microsoft, it was an idea "stolen" from Apple that had also "stolen" it from Xerox, so you see... :)

A command line is all that it takes for a user to interact with a process manager, launch processes and threads, and watch their behaviour. You don't need a complex graphical environment for that. But talking about new ways for the old GUIs, have you seen "Project Looking-Glass" from Sun (www.sun.com)? Some ideas for 3D desktops... Very nice! Just think, in a few years time, maybe Windows will have been customized to behave just like a Linux-based OS's GUI, and the ways of the 2D will be forgotten... ;)

[crackers]

Originally posted by fjleal
Just think, in a few years time, maybe Windows will have been customized to behave just like a Linux-based OS's GUI, and the ways of the 2D will be forgotten... ;)

You owe me a new keyboard. Dr. Pepper does not make keys work better...

[neopiper]

to be honest, something 3d like looking glass for sun confuse me :p but maybe in time we all will get used to a new dimension of gui :p

[fjleal]

There are also other 3D studies going on, I've read about a few: things like the file system represented by 3D blocks ("bricks") you simply "pick up" with the mouse and move in a 3D Desktop, being the dimension of each block proportional to the file's size.

A problem: what if you have a 1GB file next to a 1B file?... :)

[repeater75]

Lindy said: "It depends, I usually use vi from the command line, and kedit from the gui. I dabble with emacs when I'm feeling a bit psychotic"

Ditto here...but I'm experimenting a bit more with Nedit. Its kind of like a context-sensitive Kedit. Or maybe a little more than that but not as busy as emacs. Emacs is a "swiss-army chainsaw of coding" after all. More than I'll ever need. And I learned vi back in 1989. Why would I want to reinvent my text-editing skill set on the CLI?

[crackers]

Originally posted by repeater75
And I learned vi back in 1989. Why would I want to reinvent my text-editing skill set on the CLI?

That's very much like me. I don't remember all the Vi(m) commands, but my fingers do. It's kind of scary to watch sometimes, even for me...

[pigpen]

My first encounter with unix editors was sheer nightmare. I guess someone fired up joe for me and I couldn't even find my way out of it!
When I started fiddling with linux myself, I used pico very often. (nano is the GPL'd counterpart, right?)
Since I accidentially got a job as a PHP programmer, I had to start using vim/gvim, and I really *hated* them. The vast amount of keyboard commands really pissed me off somewhat...
But once I got used to it, I began to love it and now I use it on every OS for every task!

GO VIM, GO! :D

[Truthfatal]

(I thought I'd bump an old thread instead of making a new one ;) )

I generally use Arachnophilia (http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/) for anything that dosn't require a word processor. It's pretty and has syntax highlighting like gedit, but it's got some of the functionality of emacs as well.
Unfortunately it's not Open Source.

don't use CLI editors... yet

[IronWolf]

Vim user here....

[codergeek42]

Vim.

It has syntax highlighting for just about everything ( including .spec files, config files, scripts, etc.). I'm also proficient with it enough to be productive, though I would probably be more productive if I spent some time trying to learn its more obscure commands and configurations.

Go Vim! :)