How about Anjuta? It's a text editor that can be searched at site linux.box.sk. It has line numbering on the side of the editor, syntax highlighting, configurable link to compilers...etc. Heheheheh

vi for text files

emacs for programming

I personally would recommend vi over pico, jed, etc... even for a beginner. Yes you have to figure out :i :w :q :q! but that is enough to get by for simple editing. The advantage is I do not know of any distro that does not have vi available, with the exception of Gentoo. So if you know vu you are usually good for the quick tweak to get the !?$# thing installed.

Gentoo comes with vi.

The 1.2 (i.e. not the current) installer didn't, but once the base system was up vi could still be installed. The current version of Gentoo has vi available for the installer.

vim for everything except LISP (i like emacs better for that)

vim can be a bit hard to start with, but you can save loads of time just by having litle shortcuts like 'o' to open a new line, Ctrl+A to increment a number, etc. Also, not having to have one hand over the arrow keys is a big plus once you get used to the weird hjkl system.

Of course emacs has the same kind of benefits, but i'm not so keen on stretching my hands for Ctrl+[whatever] combinations.

Alex

When I said Gentoo did not come with Vi I meant for the stage one and two tarball steps. I was not clear, sorry. Of course Vi is available though using emerge.

Have they added it to the initial stages? No real reason to, just curious.

> Have they added it to the initial stages?

Yes, I just said they did.

> No real reason to, just curious.

No real reason other then lots of people liking vi a lot, using vi a lot, and not being used to nano with its different key combos and irritating word wrap by default.

I used to use Emacs, but just today i started learning Vim and liking it more than Emacs. Emacs has far too many options that others will surely find useful, but i do not. For example why check your e-mail with Emacs if there are other programs made for especially doing that. Although Emacs is a superb editor, it just bothers me that it tries to be many things at once, and it is one of the rare programs that is actually good at being more than an editor, while Vim is an editor, an advanced editor and just that, and i like that.
Well my thats my humble opanyway..
-NSKL

Ahh, I never really thought of stage 1 and 2 tarballs as an "installer", more like one step up from LFS

Of course if that was not the installer I am not sure what would be. What can I say, not enough sleep last night.

I prefer vi simply because its always on almost every Unix-like system. One time I heard/read someone make a comment about vi and emacs: Vi is a text editor. Emacs is a text editor, a mail reader, a news reader, a browser, an FTP client, ...

Or, Vi is a text editor, Emacs is a operating system with a text editor attached.
-NSKL

vi stands out from all the other editors. it is on every system I have used. Learn a couple and you will be coverd

lisp -> emacs
sql -> emacs
python -> emacs
<==code block execution

+ indent, highlight, redo/undo, block comment/out, regexp, remote file edit via ssh, telnet
+ more

i don't know much about vi, but i am happy with emacs