I have used and abandoned more text editors in the last decade and a half than I can count. Most of them were great editors but none met all of my needs.
- XyWrite – way cool for its time, but not free and now defunct (or at least nearly so)
- vim – I am still a huge fan and regular user, but I am not proficient enough to use it for my heavy duty coding.
- jEdit – Super powerful, does almost everything I need, but is slow, requires java (ick) and is no longer being actively developed.
- Geany – Fast, light, outlines my code, has column editing, but doesn’t have the plugin base to support everything I want.
- leo – A novel and useful approach to programming, but lacks the necessary text editing tools like column edit.
- Sublime Text – This was my most recent try and I thought it was “the one.” Until I found a minor bug. “I’ll just pop open the source and fix that” I thought. Oops! Not free (as in speech)!
So I need one text editor that will do everything I could ever want, is free and still being actively developed. That only leaves on choice that I can think of: emacs
I have avoided learning emacs all this time, because the learning curve is just way too scary, but now I am diving in. My internet here is to summarize what I learn. Mainly for my own reference but also I hope it may also aid some weary pilgrims treading this same torturous path behind me.
