I meant the checkinstall that can be found
here. It is available in both binary and source packages, but I thought that as it's easy to compile it would be a good place to start, as well as coming in handy later. If the command wasn't found on your system, you probably don't have it installed.
Regarding the text editors, all those I mentioned are very configurable (and consequently often difficult to get to grips with), and will almost certainly be able to do anything you could conceivably want to do with an editor. You can download a VERY comprehensive guide to Vim (my personal favourite)
here.