Most Votes
- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 11121 votes
Most Comments
- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Textpad! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've always liked SciTE. it works on linux and windows, has context highlighting, and tabs. Everything I need, native operating system shortcuts work, and it looks like the OS theme its on.
Re:Textpad! (Score:4, Informative)
I second SciTE and Notepad++ on Windows.
Re:steroids+ed (Score:4, Funny)
I used to use BBEdit, but with version 8 they removed features I needed. When I requested that they be put back I was told they were trying to make BBEdit "more like other text editors". AKA, the ones the BBEdit users chose NOT TO USE!
So the morale of the story is... never hardcode your (current) favorite editor in your ./ name?
Re:Textpad! (Score:4, Informative)
notepad2 [flos-freeware.ch] is my favorite editor by far.
Simple and rather useful.
Re:Textpad! (Score:5, Informative)
As an alternative, Notepad++ [sourceforge.net] I like nearly as well and has the advantage of being available [portableapps.com] for the PortableApps [portableapps.com] suite. Kate [kate-editor.org] workswell for my needs as well and there is always Vi for CLI enviroments.
While there are issues of feature set and capability, for the most part I think text editor choice is all about personal preference. Much more so if you leave CLI usage out of the debate. For example the three primary applications I list above have very little to differenciate between them. They are all perfectly capable and do the job. I use Textpad mostly because I already have a plugin for it that supports syntax for an obscure language I use regularly, I am familiar with it, and I like the default color schemes for syntax highlighting. Though the defualt color scheme when run under wine is horrid, not sure why that is.
Re:Textpad! (Score:5, Interesting)
TextPad is a pretty good editor. It's a shame that it's been all but abandoned by its developers. I'd wish they'd release the code and let the community keep the project strong.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I had Textpad crash (for the first time ever) the other day, and as requested, I reported the error to Helios support. I got a response within a day and they say the error will be fixed in the next point release.
However, the one feature that TextPad is missing (that means I occasionally need to open vim in cygwin) is non-greedy regular expression matching [textpad.com]. (More 'votes' on the forum thread welcomed; not that I hold out a lot of hope. They might gain interest again...)
Re:Textpad! (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, I might be missing something, but why would you possibly even NEED 1GB text files?
Log data from apps that I didn't write... it seems a LOT of people like logging straight to a plain text file and have no concept of making sure it doesn't get too large (falling over to new file, whatever). I quite often get plain ASCII files of well over 1GB sent to me at work.
Generally, if I know what's in the file, I'll have something to parse it out for me (or can make something very quickly to do so), and never need to open it in a text editor, but if I don't know what's in it, I do like to have an editor on hand that can read it without choking violently.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
logrotate with copytruncate helps :)
Re:Textpad! (Score:5, Funny)
if i see a huge logfile, i use head or tail to get a sense of what's in it
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Me too, but only if it's text-based (as we're discussing here).
If it's a binary file then I can't make head nor tail of it ;)
Re:Textpad! (Score:5, Informative)
It really tells you a lot about ever evolving Slashdot demographics when this comment is modded funny.
Ok, kids, fire up your terminals and type
man tail
and
man head
They are real commands. tail -f will open the "end" of log file (even while the original process is still writing to it) and show it to you as it's being updated. This is immensely useful for watching live log of your server.
Re:Textpad! (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't there a text editor that reads the text directly from the HD without having to load it all into RAM first?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Database dumps sometimes, though I try to do anything I might need with them using sed. I voted, vi / vim. I can do amazing things with them that I can't do with most editors. I also have to do a write-in vote for Kate [kate-editor.org] which is an exceptionally good text editor, but much kinder to newbies than vim. I don't know how anyone can bear using a text editor without a quick and easy way to use regular expressions. I even prefer a text editor for writing prose. It really is true what has been said about not having
Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Really hitting the bottom of the barrel on poll ideas eh?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, I think not, This is _the_ old time classic poll!
Do we need any other polls at all?
It got the options we expect, and the question is unterstandable by far the most around here.
I think it rocks. (like vi/vim)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
keep asking the same question slightly differently and providing minimally different options. The audience will feel as if their needs are being addressed, the anal combative types will get to argue, and the pollsters can submit an outrageous invoice and get paid for doing nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
One where vi is beating emacs, and rightly so.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
http://lca2srv30.epfl.ch/sathe/data/emacs_learning_curves.png
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Some people these days even have rm aliased to 'rm -i'.
Hey, I have emacs aliased to 'rm -i'.
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Wimp. Real men use the front panel switches.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It may be dated (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ed's regular expressions make vi useful (Score:5, Funny)
It turns out vim and emacs can edit each other's files.
BLASPHEMER!
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
The next /. poll will surely be what the poll after that should be.
- Poll dupes
- Favorite game genre
- Most hated company
- Meta-references
- Most missed "Missing Option"
- All Cowboy Neal all the time?
- Obvious flamebait poll (What politician does Jesus hate the most?)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot Poll dupes.
Notepad++ (Score:5, Interesting)
Textpad is OK, but Notepad++ is always open on my desktop. The XML support is just what I need.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Notepad++ runs perfectly in Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Just download the Notepad++ installer and install it for your preferred user:
wine npp.5.1.4.Installer.exe
I have not had any issues so-far.
Emacs! (Score:5, Funny)
M-x slashdot-poll-vote <enter> emacs <enter>
can vi/vim do that?!?
Actually, no (Score:5, Funny)
If you try typing "emacs" in a vi session then it checks for a USB face-stabbing peripheral, activates any it finds, deletes all files in the working directory, and hangs. vim has improved this to the point that it uses a library of known privilege escalation flaws to get root, trash the MBR, and reboot.
Re:Actually, no (Score:5, Funny)
Which is pretty classic, if you think about it, since the intended target of all this cleverness is a person who NEVER USES VI!!! :')
Re:Actually, no (Score:5, Funny)
checks for a USB face-stabbing peripheral
Dammit, I KNEW buying that USB face-stabbing peripheral was a mistake, but it was on sale!
Re:Actually, no (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Emacs! (Score:5, Insightful)
can vi/vim do that?!?
Well, it thought about it for a little while, then it said to itself, "You know what? I'm a text editor. Let Firefox do its job and I'll do mine."
And the both lived happily ever after.
Re:Emacs vs two mouse clicks? (Score:5, Informative)
That's why there is "It's all text" Firefox extension that allows you to use editor of choice to edit text areas (Vim for me).
That way if the form fails to submit, you still got a copy of your text in your favorite editor.
Kate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Kate (Score:5, Interesting)
Another vote for Kate, especially given KDE's built-in network abstraction layer. I love that from my desktop I can edit a file that's on my phone using bluetooth, or on a remote server using ssh or ftp, just as if it were local.
(Out of curiousity, how easy is that to do in Gnome, OS-X, or Vista?)
+1 (Score:4, Insightful)
As the "default" text editor for KDE, and my favorite, I wish it was an option in the poll (though I'm not surprised it's not, there needs to be at least one obvious missing option...)
Emacs shouldn't be an option (Score:5, Funny)
Emacs isn't a text editor, it is an OS that is able to run as a guest under Unix.
Re:Emacs shouldn't be an option (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, emacs is a nice OS and everything, but what it really needs is a good text editor.
Re:Emacs shouldn't be an option (Score:4, Insightful)
emacs, emacs, emacs... (Score:5, Informative)
I think I've just spent the last 14 hours in Emacs, and barely noticed the day is over. Emacs is so great for so many reasons. The number one reason is, of course, Emacs Lisp. Having access to all of the functions that Emacs is built out of, plus decades' worth of user contributed packages, really makes it easy to come up with new ways of combining things. (And it's Lisp!) A great video that explores this theme is found at http://www.vimeo.com/1013263 [vimeo.com] . The author compares Emacs to Textmate, and decides that "Rich, composable systems are the way to go--in programming languages, libraries, and interface metaphors." I couldn't agree more.
As a statistician, R is one of the best programs to do almost anything. R and Emacs work together perfectly thanks to ESS, a package that interfaces with many statistical systems.
Then, I just discovered org-mode a few months ago. This software has changed how I work in almost every way. You can see the Google Tech Talk here: http://orgmode.org/GoogleTech.html [orgmode.org] . I'd say it's worth learning enough Emacs just to be able to use this package.
Finally, AUCTeX with latex-preview...
I'm sure vi is going to win this poll, but I've spent the last 6 years of my life using Emacs daily, and am learning more about now than ever before. The fact that its inner workings are completely exposed via the Lisp language is where the power really lies. If you're just editing text, I suppose vi is just fine. But I think of how much I do in Emacs, and I just can't imagine enjoying anything else as much.
Re:emacs, emacs, emacs... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:emacs, emacs, emacs... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:emacs, emacs, emacs... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:emacs, emacs, emacs... (Score:5, Funny)
I think I've just spent the last 14 hours in Emacs
I had a similar experience in which I spent the last 14 hours in vi but eventually I figured out how to quit the damn thing.
Re:emacs, emacs, emacs... (Score:5, Funny)
That's easy. Switch to another console, log on as root and type "killall -9 vi"
Other (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
jEdit is an example of how not to write a good editor. That thing starts a damn headless server running in the background. WTF? And when it finally starts you still get a shitty editor that's slower to edit than plain vi invented in 1975, let alone VIM.
Notepad++ is far and away one of the best (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been writing code, and editing numerous other types of text documents, for more than 15 years. In that time I have used IDEs, KEDIT for Windows, PN, vi/vim, and a host of other less well known editors.
Notepad++ is certainly one of the best text editors for all-around use. The number of plug-in modules, the text conversion utilities, synchronize vertical or horizontal scrolling, cloning to new tabs, syntax coloration, brace-matching, the list of features that I find useful on almost a daily basis is very long.
If you haven't used it, you should give it a try.
edlin for the win. (Score:4, Funny)
Edlin was lamer and later than ed (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I've used edlin. Not in production, because we didn't use DOS systems for production when there were perfectly good Unix machines around, but after having used ed since V6 Unix, it was annoying to have all the clumsiness and none of the power.
I forget the name of the editor I used on IBM3270s, which was also ed-like, didn't have regular expressions but was better than edlin. And there were various editors on CMS and RSTS-11 that were no worse than edlin.
The DOS editor I really liked was TED. It was
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Notepad++ works perfectly under WINE.
Glaringly omitted option (Score:3, Funny)
CN (Score:5, Insightful)
Scribe's Note: Actually I use notepad.
NEdit (Score:5, Interesting)
I probably use vi/vim more frequently since it's more than sufficient to just make a few tweaks to a config file or something but I roll out NEdit when I've got some serious coding to do.
Cheers,
Dave
Mcedit (Score:4, Interesting)
Joe, anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, am I the last joe user, other than maybe by Joe himself?
That depends (Score:5, Interesting)
Why use one editor for everything when there are tasks better suited for specialized editors? You probably wouldn't want to be editing config files without a GUI with the same editor that you use for general note taking and writing. At least in my own experiences, Nano seems to be a pretty useful text editor for editing config files without a desktop environment and Gedit works for notes, quotes etc.
Re:That depends (Score:4, Informative)
Because the really good editors are good for pretty much everything.
Whyever not? Both the really good editors (by which I mean emacs and vim) are equally at home in a console or GUI session.
Personally I use emacs, which is vastly preferable to nano for editing config files: it has syntax highlighting for all the common types of config file, so I make fewer mistakes, and it has built-in browsers for all the standard documentation formatts, so I can have the manual right there on the same screen as the editor, without having to constantly switch to another virtual terminal. For XML config files, emacs even gives me on-the-fly validation. I'm sure vim has equivalent features. Nano simply doesn't.
Notepad++ (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Notepad++ (Score:5, Funny)
*i*Yeah, and anyone can just pick it up and use it! Vi is the most user friently*(esc)X3i*dly text editor known to man!
All you have to do to use view ports is type ":sp", then move between them with "[ctrl]"+the usual arrow keys--you know, h, j, k, and l, obviously. And if you forget how to do that, just look it up to refresh your memory. It's so much faster than those silly menus!.*(esc):x*
Re:Notepad++ (Score:5, Funny)
Who's a new user? (Score:5, Interesting)
After nearly 16 years of daily vi use, I've actually had to install the keyconfig plugin in Firefox, so I can use vi key bindings to navigate, and I'm totally incapable of using a standard word processor without inserting random letters and colons all over the place.
Drives me nuts when applications think "escape" means cancel... no! It means "I'm done."
That said, yeah, there's a steep learning curve to vi. It took me almost a week to get used to it, using a cheat sheet someone had printed out and stuck on the lab wall. But after so many years, my hands just automatically convert my most transient thoughts into reality with alarming speed.
When I have to use a modern text editor, it's like suddenly finding the car in front of you stopped on the highway. Crunch! To my own benefit, I do know the keyboard bindings for many other ubiquitous text editing tools... but vi is like my favorite blanket... nothing like coming home and wrapping myself in it after a long day of suffering through someone else's crap.
Re:Who's a new user? (Score:4, Informative)
After nearly 16 years of daily vi use, I've actually had to install the keyconfig plugin in Firefox, so I can use vi key bindings to navigate, and I'm totally incapable of using a standard word processor without inserting random letters and colons all over the place.
Some things I use to bring vi bindings to more places... Vimperator (Firefox plug-in), "set -o vi" (bash option).
Ed, man! !man ed (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me always of GNU fun jokes
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html [gnu.org]
---
From: patl@athena.mit.edu (Patrick J. LoPresti)
Subject: The True Path (long)
Date: 11 Jul 91 03:17:31 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs,alt.slack
When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.
Ed, man! !man ed
ED(1) Unix Programmer's Manual ED(1)
NAME
ed - text editor
SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.
---
Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed /usr/ucb/vi /usr/bin/emacs
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990
Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:
golem$ ed
?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello?
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
?
---
Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.
"Ed is the standard text editor."
Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.
ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!
When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!
TEXT EDITOR.
When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a Unix standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.
Ed is for those who can *remember* what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!
IDM UltraEdit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IDM UltraEdit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:IDM UltraEdit (Score:4, Insightful)
I still haven't found anything I like as much as UltraEdit,
I've been an UltraEdit user for over a decade. It's one of the few software packages that I "upgrade" every year, even though I don't necessarily use/need the new functionality. I consider it money well spent.
even if the author is a bit of a whack job.
Do you declare anyone with religious beliefs contrary to your own as a "whack job"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Upgrades... (Score:3, Insightful)
It (upgrading) was the thing I disliked most about UltraEdit, the fact that "free" updates to a new version (say from 9->10.00) did *not* mean that you could get small updates to version 10.00 (e.g. 10.10). This was considerably irritating, as it often meant that bugs in the version you received for free would not be fixed. I am glad they provide the unlimited upgrades now, which prevents this issue.
Not to start a 'holy war'.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not to start a 'holy war'.... (Score:5, Funny)
You laugh, but I would kill for stone tablets. At the school where I teach, we're still using clay tablets with a stylus to write homework assignments in cuneiform. Some of the younger teachers fresh out of college are experimenting with something called papyrus. The students, on the other hand, seem to all have iPhones.
I use Gmail to write text....hear me out... (Score:3, Interesting)
The programs I use the most to type are Celtx, an open source screenwriting program, and Gmail, my preferred web mail client.
I've actually typed out entire episodes and scripts into Gmail, saved them as drafts, and then once done, formatted them properly in Celtx.
With Gmail, you can write in blank text or html, spell check your work, it constantly saves your draft work, the data is stored on a reliable server, and you can access the file anywhere that has the internet.
http://www.celtx.com/ [celtx.com] http://mail.google.com/ [google.com]
Depends (Score:3, Interesting)
General text: notepad2
Source code (depending on language): VC# or Netbeans
LaTeX: Winedt
Math: Mathematica
jEdit (Score:3, Informative)
Options (Score:5, Informative)
emacs - The editor for l33t speak Linux users who know with 100% certainty that linux is the best at everything.
vi / vim - The standard editor for unix/linux users.
pico - The standard editor for windows users forced to use linux.
notepad - The standard editor for unix/linux users forced to use windows.
BBEdit - The mac answer to vim.
MS Word - The standard editor for soulless minions of the church of Micro$oft.
Other - nvi or elvis
the ubiquitous vi (Score:4, Insightful)
I use vi a lot - not so much for it's advanced features (which I struggle to remember) and certainly not it user-friendliness or ease-of-use, but for the fact that I can do the basics of editing a config file on ANY platform - my laptop, workstation, server (ubuntu server or openBSD, both sans gui), router (cracked linksys), phone system (asterisk), firewall, alarm clock (chumby), palm top (nokia - although I still haven't figured out how to enter an 'esc' - still working on that), OSX (occasionally - there if I need it), and hopefully someday my cell (open moko or android). It works just as well tunneled through a couple ssh hops without fighting with remote desktop or X through firewalls, and is always there without worrying about installing extras. THATS the feature that keeps me coming back. I'd rather spend the extra effort to learn ONE convoluted editor well than trying to learn 15 different 'easy' (and feature-limited) editors on every different thing I have to deal with. :wq
nano (Score:3, Insightful)
EditPlus (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EditPlus (Score:4, Informative)
I third that!
Awesome editor, very lightweight, powerful and one can download/develop personal syntax files to add support for other languages. E.g. Unreal script or other lesser known languages.
cat (Score:4, Funny)
"Editors" are for the weak. "Editing" implies that you can make a mistake in the first place. I use:
cat >file
Re:Let's get these out of the way (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Must be a Windows-centric poll? Or some kind of rejection of the popularity of Gnome?
Today's metacomment: I think they should run a series of polls on the stupidity, uselessness, and various other negative attributes of the recent polls. This particular poll might be a moderate contender in the "Who Cares?" category poll. Oh wait. That seems to cover almost all the recent polls.
Pretty obvious the pollster was just desperately hoping to stir up some interest with a deliberate revival of the vi versus emacs w
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
/usr/bin/ ??? *blinks*
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
First, there's a new version of BBEdit being advertised on Barebones Software's website right now (BBEdit 9.0). Somebody needs to check the facts of 21st century.
Second, it's still the best all-purpose editor on the platform. I'm still using BBEdit 6.5 (I don't do HTML any more), but if I were still doing web work, I'd have the latest version.
Re:Who cares about favourites (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you know how your text editor behaves when the file system is full?
Having witnessed an entire .ac.uk DNS zone being wiped from the Internet by an editor whose authors had NOT considered such things, and which happily wrote out a zero-length file over the original (which then merrily propagated), I would strongly suggest that you stick to truly reliable editors when editing critical files.
And that means vi.
Re:Who cares about favourites (Score:5, Informative)
Stallman's actually an emacs guy.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Glad to see Slashdot is still full of real programmers using vi and make... :-)
Well, I'm an old-school edit 'n' make guy (emancs, not vi, though), but I have to object to notion of real programmers using vi, and not for the usual reason of it not being emacs!
vi really became popular not because it was a great editor but because it was universally available on Unix systems and you'd learn it anyway to edit scripts etc from the command line. The fundamental problem with vi in terms of productivity is that it'
Re:Wot, no IDEs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, by the time you move your hand to the mouse, find you mouse pointer, move it to the text you want selected, good VIM user will already be there never leaving the home row.
VIM has well over 1500 commands, and a LOT of those are motion commands.
Modal editing is where all the power comes form. Because when you are not in insert mode (which should be almost all the time) what you type are commands (usually one letter long). General form of command is: execute an operator on text over which the motion command moves the cursor or more formally: nOm where n is the number of times to repeat the operator O and m is any motion command. So for example 5d) deletes five sentences (because d command deletes and ")" moves to the next sentence). Similarly 5d} deletes 5 paragraphs, di{ deletes everything inside { } code block etc.
Because commands are one letter long, proficient touch typists can type commands as fast as they can think (and sometimes faster because of muscle memory, you just do things without even thinking). This is not unlike using CTRL+v CTRL+c in other editors, except in VIM there are hundreds of commands they are mostly not multiple key combination.
I have tried lots of editors, but nothing yet comes remotely close to speed and power of VIM. And when I say speed I mean speed of editing a proficient user can achieve (and not speed at which the editor starts or anything, even though it's hard to beat vim for that too).
People who claim they chose Notepad++ after presumably using VIM for years are just kidding themselves. They never really learned even the basics of it, let alone became proficient.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No mouse support; the mouse is an asset
No, the mouse is not an asset. You might be surprised how many keystrokes you can fit in the time it would take a person to grab the mouse, select the text, scroll to the destination, click, and finally paste. I am confident that anyone who is truly competent in vi (without mouse support), and not just a wannabe like your aforementioned "Unix guy", could comple
Re:gedit (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know what desktop you're using, but in Gnome, it's the default text editor. I used to use emacs, but now I use gedit unless I'm working in console mode, when I use nano. Nano may not be the world's most advanced editor, but if you're stuck in a console, you can use it for everything you're likely to need to get X working again. And, unlike vi/vim/emacs, there's no need to memorize the commands because the most common ones are at the bottom of the screen, including ^G for help, which gives you the rest. Even a Linux newcomer can find their way around, as long as they understand that ^G means Control-G.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, brief. Much C was written in that jewel. It is the reason many of my text editors have been configured with blue as a background and white foreground.