c-li hands down is vim
GUI'fied editor is Sublime Text2, a rocking file editor.
The only down-side to it is that it does NOT print.

I paid for my copy, but I believe it really is "Conscience-ware" (it has a nag feature for unregistered copies).

Lots of features.

These are all pretty interesting replies glad to see the feedback. I have used Notepad++ on my Windows machine. Emacs and Vim users always seem to be in competition. I know Emacs has a huge learning curve, but from fellow programmers and here as well it is said that if you master it, the time is well spent. I think I am going to try and learn Emacs. I use a live edition to do my development when I have to do it at remote or on the move. I have often tried to find one that is more feature-rich than Gedit(which is great). Thanks for all the feed-back again.

I like Kate, it is better than Gedit in every aspect and have a good number of plugins. Good completion for some languages when used in kdevelop. Vim is insane by default, but it is extensible, so it is easy to bring some sanity back. As an example of insanity, having to switch mode twice to move forward or save. Vim freak somehow managed to think it is good practice, it ain't. Fortunately, it can be fixed with some .vimrc lines. Too bad it is not portable. Still, Kate support Vi input in a sane environment. I don't use KDE as a DE, but like many of the apps.

Real programmers use cat*

--- well, if they are incredibly accurate typists as well as programmers they might, I suppose!

No doubt 'best' depends on the kind of person you are and the kind of work that you do ... and what you meet for first. For me it was vi, and emacs, by comparison, seemed impossible, but I guess it could easily have been the other way around.

When I just want something to cut and paste into and from, I click on the gedit icon. Because it's there, and it is easy for easy stuff


*Obligatory link to xkcd: Real Programmers. One of the best!

Why do people love making comments about the known and obvious. Let me quote my post again if it's not clear.Obviously it's not made for Linux, and is meant to run on Windo$e. And before you try to contradict my post again, consider the word 'if'. Also don't assume what you consider is what the OP would consider.

Well, vi has been the default built-in almost-guaranteed-to-be-there editor on most (all?) forms of *nix for many years, so its definitely worth knowing at least the basics, even if you generally use something else.
Its often got a stripped down version baked into rescue disks and the like.
I 'grew up' on it, so I tend to use that (or vim where available).

People think they're hardcore, people think they're real men because they use Vim; because they use pure software; because they play around most of the time in Linux's CLI, well try Edit.com and DOS.

I've known and became technical with DOS, I'm a real advanced user in Linux's CLI. I was able to build an environment from a CLI LiveCD of Gentoo that's good enough to run a lightweight desktop for playing games on a 256MB machine. Did it only with console without a hard disk and only with a CDRW drive. Hacked the scripts of LiveCD, and made my own scripts on the fly - offline and without the aid of online forums and online documentations. Hacked SDL to make it work well with my video card in SDL_VIDEODRIVER.fbcon. Editing in VIM is fast enough. Also used VIM to create the project before. VIM is my preferred editor in CLI. All these stuffs yet I don't even find them worth the boast with respect to voting for VIM as the best text editor around.

For those who think they're -special- because they use VIM and only VIM. Consider this list of editors I used.

Edit.com (DOS, Fast user, Used it to create batch files)
Notepad (Windows)
Write (Windows)
VIM (Linux) (More than just an advanced user, Fast user, Built a project and lots of things using it, Preferred editor in CLI)
Nano (Easily got used to it, Rarely use it though)
Emacs (Find it not necessary to use and master. I already have VIM)
Gedit (Used it once in web development, when I had no choice but use an installed Ubuntu)
Kwrite (Preferred editor in GUI before I was able to run Notepad++ with Wine)
Kate (Better than KWrite but I still chose KWrite, There are times where I used it over KWrite though)
Notepad++ (Windows/Wine) (Loved using it since 2004 (2.x)) Great with doing many things quickly and cleanly. At least, is powerful with pattern searching and replacing - both with single and multiple documents. And that's not even the best of it. Checkout its styles, checkout its TextFX plugin, Compare plugin, checkout its clean verbose (show all) characters mode, encoding conversion, Light Explorer, etc. And please don't think I really need a mouse to navigate through it.

Now tell me that I'm one-sided or biased.

konsolebox, chrism01 wasn't replying to you (I don't think) and it certainly wasn't intended as any sort of personal attack or implication that you're biased. E was replying to the OP's original question...

I like Bluefish for making web pages.

My post was not a reply to him either.

Besides I agree with him learning VIM with respect to knowing the basics at least.

To be fair, "what's the best text-editor" is a quintessential troll-question and so very likely to be treated as such.

You simply have to be very careful with certain questions ...

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No, nothing special about using vi[m]. As several of us have said, it was our first editor, and likes ducklings following the first moving thing they see, we followed it! (we? OK, yes, I'm speaking for myself only).

During my entire working life I never had anything but a terminal with which to manage Unix machines, (even when it became a terminal window under Windows) which was my job, and everything was CLI. As I did quite a lot of work with sed and awk, I probably wouldn't have found ed impossible, but I would never choose the line editor when a full screen editor was available. I remember pre-Notepad editing in DOS, and I didn't enjoy it. Well, I didn't enjoy anything about DOS, but that that's another story....

At one point, installing and supporting WordPerfect (Yes, the Unix version!) was part of my then job. There were a couple of us in the department that were so used to vi, even for correspondence, we had to formally told to use the WP product we were supposed to be supporting

Perhaps, I should have posed the question as follows "What is your favorite text-editor." I didn't mean to strike a fight over it. I was just curious. Vim vs Emacs is sort of a waste of breath. The text-editor is really only a tool. It doesn't make a programmer better.

Just noticed we're still in the programming forum...

Reported for a move into general.

Again, it depends on your definition of 'better'. If goodness is measured by productivity, a better text editor can help make a programmer better. It can help prevent certain classes of mistakes, and can make it easier and faster to maintain source code. As in any occupation that uses tools, a poor tool may limit the capability of the user, although simply having a good tool doesn't necessarily make a better user.

--- rod.

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