I agree with gezley, you should not reject vim or emacs from consideration. In fact I would suggest topping your list with those and then trying to decide which best meets your needs. I am a seriously old guy with, what was it... oh yea, increasing memory problems, but long time Vim user who learns new tricks with it regularly!

I think the learning curve problem is more of a mental block than a real impediment to using either (especially Vim). Frankly, learning the mode control and basic editing keystrokes with Vim is really no more complex than learning the corresponding keystrokes with any of the "simple" editors, and with vim or emacs the online help available has great depth.

I also second use of rxvt-unicode. I was a long time konsole user but switched to rxvt-unicode and tmux about a year ago, very nice!

1 members found this post helpful.

There are many vi tutorials online and I recommend that you do your own search to find something more complete. And of course use vimtutor on your Slackware box.

But I have recommended Vim as a good choice for you, so I want to be as helpful and encouraging as possible to get you introduced to it as painlessly as possible. To that end I hope that you will find the following notes helpful - they assume that you have not previously used Vim so I hope they are not too simplistic.

First, make sure that you are using Vim!

There are several common Vi clones, and on most Linux systems when you invoke vi you are actually running something else.

On a clean Slackware installation vi is actually a symlink to elvis, another vi clone. Elvis is a fine vi replacement, but it has enough differences from Vim that the first thing I do when installing Slackware is change the symlink to point to Vim instead. As root...

You could also simply invoke it as vim, of course. But if you are going to learn and use vi(m) changing the symlink is worthwhile.

Next, get oriented quickly!

I think the most difficult thing for people who simply open vi or a clone is that they see the blank page and begin typing - and weird stuff happens! Then they can't get out of it and they leave in frustration thinking the learning curve is too steep!

So to get past that point as quickly as possible note the following:

1. Vi(m) has two modes - command mode and insert mode (also called normal mode and edit mode respectively).
2. When you first start vi it is always in command mode, so key presses are interpreted as commands, not text.
3. To enter insert mode from command mode simply press i, then begin typing your text.
4. To return to command mode at any time simply press the ESC key.

You will see helpful status messages in the lower left corner of the terminal window as you change modes.

To leave vi you must be in command mode (pres ESC if not sure) then try one of these:

ZZ (shift-zz) - writes (saves) the current edits and exits.
:wq - writes (saves) the current edits and quits (same as ZZ).
:q - quit, prompts you to save any unsaved edits first (:w will write the to file)
:q! - quits without saving edits.

Now use it as simply as any plain text editor!

Open a new play file to edit...

Enter insert mode...

Type a few lines as with any other editor. ENTER for line breaks, BKSP and arrows for moving around, most everything will work just as you expect it to.

Return to command mode, save and exit...

To modify your new file simply open it again, return to insert mode, change and exit.

Now what is difficult about that? If you learned no other commands this will allow you to use it as the proverbial "plain text" editor... but of course, you really want to do a little more than that so now the way is open for you!

Learn more...

Now that you know the way in and out, and how to toggle between command mode and insert mode, use vimtutor to learn a few more keystrokes and expand your horizons.

Granted there are MANY more things that you can learn - that is what makes it so powerful! On the other hand, you only need to learn the things that you need to use, so the learning curve is only as steep as your intended usage!

A few quick and useful commands (in command mode of course...)

/something - Search for "something" forward in the document. ENTER to move to the first occurance.
/ENTER - Repeat previous search, move to next occurance.
?something - Search backward...
?ENTER - Repeat previous search backward, move to previous occurance

(Searches are actually full regular expression matches)

dd - Delete the current line
x - delete the current character
yy - Yank (copy) the current line
p - paste the last yanked line at the current position

Learn what you need and don't feel as if you need to learn it all just to get started! I think it will grow on you!

Good luck!

6 members found this post helpful.

I agree that Vim is a great editor and it would be my suggestion as well, but if the guy wants to use joe then that's fine too..

I had a Uni lecturer tell me once that a persons editor of choice is a very personal choice, and for some reason that stuck with me.

2 members found this post helpful.

Emacs has a vi-mode so you don't have to learn new keystrokes.

One of the fastest coders that I ever worked with used emacs with vi-mode.

First of all, I apologize to all who thought (appropriately) I was being too narrow-minded. I acknowledge (to my chagrin) that my message(s) were more emotional than rational, probably because of my frustration at being unable to find information I had wanted, and this probably because I did not know the correct search terms needed to find it.

To close this thread happily, I found a site yesterday morning that was pertinent to my need and, after following leads all day, I had found more than I had even hoped for. This covers not only my question about editors, but also about creating custom keymaps.

To astrogeek: "Thank you" is hardly enough. Many people comment with praise about the level of mutual help available in the linux community. And now I have experienced that for myself. My hope is that, sometime in the future, I will be able to provide such help to others. I will feel driven to do so, whenever I am able, by your example. Thank you.

4 members found this post helpful.

Would you share the link to this site? I am trying to learn VI Improved a bit better, currently, myself.
Thanks!

gargamel

Sure thing, Gargamel. I don't remember the first site; it just gave me a lead to another site. Here are the three sites that I bookmarked. If you do not already know the most important one, it is:

www.vim.org

If you do a search for < vim editor >, you will find many additional sites that may offer the help you want.

Secondly, my post was tagged with "unicode", and I found much help here:

www.duganchan.ca/writings/slackware/fonts/

Thirdly, I wanted to learn how to write a custom keymap file, and this site provides an example:

http://www.computertechdoc.org/os/li...eymapfile.html

HTH, Good luck!

Added comment: I see that the third url is too long to be displayed fully in the forum message. When I click on the url in the message, I get a TimeWarnerCable search page; the failed url is shown at the top of that page; but the url as shown there is missing an underscore; so,I will try to reproduce the correct url here on separate lines:

computertechdoc.org/os/linux/
howlinuxworks/
linux_hlkeymapfile.html

Another note to avoid possible confusion: my former ISP was bought by TWC last year, and the switch-over began at my location on May 1, this year. That's the reason I get the TWC search page.

For learning and customizing Vim I would add these links:
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki
http://vimcasts.org/
http://www.derekwyatt.org/vim/vim-tutorial-videos/
http://usevim.com/

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the links!

Of course, I knew the VIM homepage, and I had also come across Dugan Chen's very well-designed pages, but like the Computertech site they seem to be currently unreachable (at least, from here, but I cannot reach some other pages, too, today). I'll try again by the end of the week.

Best regards,

gargamel

Linux keyboard drivers are quite simple. They are actually compiled on the fly after log in from C source! The ingredients are /usr/share/X11/xkb (or that might be /etc/X11/xkb on Slackware).

If you use the command "setxkbmap -print" you'll see the files, like
xkb_keymap {
xkb_keycodes { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)" };
xkb_types { include "complete+caps(internal_nocancel)" };
xkb_compat { include "complete+ledscroll(group_lock)" };
xkb_symbols { include "pc+gb+gr:2+astro:3+inet(evdev)+group(shift_caps_toggle)+terminate(ctrl_alt_bksp)" };
xkb_geometry { include "pc(pc105)" };
};

evdev translates keycodes to designations and the symbols files exchange these for characters and actions. Thus by altering evdev I've put group shift <GPSH> (change drivers) where the scroll lock <SCLK> used to be. By changing the symbols scripts, I've altered the third and fourth levels:
key <AC01> {[ a, A, schwa, SCHWA ]};

You can also customise the compose key sequences by using your own file in .XCompose and setting your input module to xim. I've added things like
<Multi_key> <underscore> <t> : "ṯ" U1E6F # Latin small T with line below

1 members found this post helpful.

I use Joe myself for a lot of console edits. It helps to have used Wordstar in the DOS days though to find it easy as it is a clone of Wordstar. It is easy enough to learn though without Wordstar experience as you can just do ctrl-K H to pop up a Wordstar like help menu for the key strokes and ctrl-K H to turn it off again. Also Midnight Commander has a very easy to use text editor as well. I also use this one a lot when I am in Midnight Commander.

Working with Linux/UNIX without having at least some basic Vi skills is like learning to drive a car without knowing how to shift gears.

It's possible, but hey.

Maybe this will help, I think it's a typo : http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/...eymapfile.html

1 members found this post helpful.

Much better, thanks!

gargamel

The most important vi skill is memorizing the key sequence of...

:q!

...