[PLUG] Text editors

[Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com>]

Thanks to everyone for helping me with my disaster. Unfortunately, it
was a hardware problem, so I must send the media off to a disaster
recovery service.

Now I have another question. I don't want -- really! -- start a
religious war here, but one of the things holding me back from complete
commitment to Linux is -- drumroll please! -- lack of knowledge of a
text editor.

I have lots of tiny SGML/XML and Python files that create and manage
with a text editor, and since I bill by the hour, when I'm not billing,
I'm wasting my time. That creates some negative requirements:

    -4 Incredibly truncated learning curve
    -3 No complicated macro language
    -2 No new metaphors. I want a GUI, with GUI-style cut and paste
      (with the accelerator keys typical to a GUI environment)
    -1 No complicated installation procedures

In fact, my requirements could be stated like this:

    0. Be like UltraEdit on Windoze or BBEdit on the Mac

Failing that, my have-to-haves are:

    1.  Search and replace through multiple files with GREP 
    2.  Text wrap style under my control
    3.  GREP through multiple files
    4.  Simple templating macros
    5.  Automatic indentation
    6.  Use of spaces instead of tabs for indents if required 
    7.  Control over size of indent
    8.  Make whitespace visible (6-8 are key for Python)
    9.  control over font and font size
    10. multiple files open at once

Some nice-to-haves are:

    10. Edit in columns
    11. Sort selected text

So, what text editor meets these requirements? For the EMACS partisans
who will insist that EMACS can be configured to meet them, please see
requirements -4, -3, and -2 again.

Thanks a lot!

Sam



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     "To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life."
     - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations -->

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