I want to send resumes to online job banks and also for email. I would like to know how much editing I can do with plain text, because I won't always be able to use a Word or Office document. Can I use things like indents or centering of text.

I prefer to use Vim for a text editor.

Can I choose which font to use with Vim or do I need to use something else?

Can I choose the font when I send email?
I use Hotmail at present.

Thanks.

I'm afraid you'll have to give up on the idea of using
formatting in ASCII text; the problem will be that you
have no influence on what the receiving end will use to
view your text. If you choose formatting based on character
width for a specific font you use in your editor it may
look rather horrid on the receiving end.


Check whether they'll accept HTML - then you have SOME
impact on the looks (using CSS or even plain HTML tags
to enforce some formatting).



Cheers,
Tink

Is there a reason you can't use OpenOffice? What I'd do for this sort of thing is create the document in oowriter, then export to PDF. It's a pretty good bet that any potential employer will have Acrobat Reader on their PC, and with a PDF document you can be pretty sure that what they see is what you meant.

However, if you are set on using a text editor for creating the documents, you could look at pdfTex (convert Tex sourcecode to PDF).
You can, if Hotmail is able to send HTML emails. However, some people (myself included) hate HTML emails with a vengeance, and will have their email clients set to display plain-text only.

A personal favorite of mine is AbiWord. It parallels Microsoft word and OpenOffice writer with many of the same functions. If space is an issue or you don't need all he programs OpenOffice uses, it is incredibly lightweight and has a small footprint. You can install it using urmpi/yum/apt-get from almost any distro. If not, here's the source:

http://www.abisource.com/

I have to agree with the above remarks. If you want fonts, formatting you have to use OO or Word or equiv.
IME, most companies insist on .doc format (avail from OO as well) or plain text at a pinch.
They'll read it with Word anyway ...
What I'd recommend is to create your resume on a system that has OO/Word, then email to yourself. You can fwd it from there if you later need to send it urgently and can't get to your orig machine.