Comparison: Linux Text Editors

jrepin writes: Mayank Sharma of Linux Voices tests and compares five text editors for Linux, none of which are named Emacs or Vim. The contenders are Gedit, Kate, Sublime Text, UltraEdit, and jEdit. Why use a fancy text editor? Sharma says, "They can highlight syntax and auto-indent code just as effortlessly as they can spellcheck documents. You can use them to record macros and manage code snippets just as easily as you can copy/paste plain text. Some simple text editors even exceed their design goals thanks to plugins that infuse them with capabilities to rival text-centric apps from other genres. They can take on the duties of a source code editor and even an Integrated Development Environment."

Comments

You're welcome to them.

[jeffb (2.718)]

It may not have been wise for me to spend years training vi into my muscle memory, but it's done now, and I'm not especially interested in giving up that advantage.

Re: You're welcome to them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you used Vim lately? With its multitude of plugins, it's hard to make the point that it's an editor from the Stone Age. I sometimes switch to editors like Sublime and always find myself coming back to Vim. It's extremely powerful, allows me to do complicated edits and movements, and it has all the features I'd expect in any GUI editor.

Stop being a prick. Not everyone uses vi/vim because it's "cool". Many of us use it because it's simply more productive to do so.

Re: You're welcome to them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Vim is not a pig. I started using it 3 years ago, not because it's cool, but because many programmers recommended it to me.
I've been a programmer for more than 20 years, and during the past years using Vim I regretted many times that I hadn't take the time to make the switch sooner.
All other editors I tried (but I never tried Emacs) helped me a lot at the beginning, but eventually I would hit a top and stop improving. With Vim I feel like there is no limit to the productivity gains I can achieve. It's user interface is a language and I speak it more fluently every day, and I can extend it with customization.

Re: You're welcome to them.

[Em Adespoton]

I use Sublime with vim bindings turned on. It has features I use every day that vi/vim doesn't have, and doesn't get in the way of my vim muscle memory. It also doesn't get in the way of my ed muscle memory, nor my Mac muscle memory. In fact, pretty much whatever legacy text editor my muscle memory thinks I'm using, Sublime will interpret the commands correctly and let me get the job done.

I've used all the listed editors, and eventually settled on the vim/Sublime combo, as they accomplish everything the others do, and then some.

And to think that 20 years ago, I was a diehard emacs user. I liked my macros, but Sublime can do all that too; it just prefers python over LISP.

Re: You're welcome to them.

[dcollins117]

Or Kate, if it's a girl. And Emacs if you're not quite sure what the hell it is.

Re: You're welcome to them.

[TheRaven64]

Code duplication is not free either. Even if execution time is the only thing that you care about, on anything that's vaguely like a modern CPU (GPUs and microcontrollers are somewhat different), instruction cache space is the most scarce resource, with data cache the second. A function call will likely be branch predicted and in an out of order system the prolog and epilog are mostly handled by the register renaming infrastructure, so the function call is almost free, but the cost of an instruction cache miss from having too many copies of the same code is quite measurable.

Pfft

[relisher]

You can do all of this in Emacs and Nano. No need for some shiny new text editor...

Re:Pfft

[Stele]

Okay okay I'll get off your lawn!

Re:Pfft

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Nano has gotten me out of a jam more times than I can count when I couldn't get X working. It's simple, easy to use, and works great.

Re:Pfft

[Darinbob]

Ya, I'm surprised by the summary. Apparently the author has not actually used emacs or vim, and instead listed the BARE MINIMUM set of features that any editor should support. Maybe the author came with a pre-existing bias against emacs and vi as "tools for old farts" and assumed any new tools must automatically be better.

What's there to compare?

[qw(name)]

none of which are named Emacs or Vim

What's there to compare? Everything else is just Notepad.

Re: What's there to compare?

[LocutusOfBorg1]

Exactly! --- sent from emacs

Re:What's there to compare?

[zAPPzAPP]

But Notepad(++) is pretty good...

Re:What's there to compare?

[Arker]

So they did a text-editor roundup that excluded every serious contender in favor of 5 third-string also-rans.

I actually tried to read the text but it was too brain-numbingly stupid to get through. He's trumpeting all these wonderful features that... vi and emacs had in the 80s.

It's so true - 'those who do not remember Unix are condemned to re-invent it, poorly.'

What the fuck happened to gedit's UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to use gedit on Linux a lot a few years ago. I then used OS X for a few years, but I recently moved back to Linux. One of the first things I did after getting Linux installed was try to edit some files using gedit. And my first reaction was: JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL DID THEY DO TO GEDIT'S UI?!

It used to have a good, traditional UI. There were useful menus and a toolbar, and it all worked very well. But now, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, it looks stupid as all hell. There are no menus any longer, and the toolbar has been castrated into having like 4 buttons. The icons are pathetic, and don't indicate what the button actually does. Whoever the hell reworked the UI managed to break what was once a very usable text editor. Now it's rubbish.

It's like they took the idiotic UI design of Chrome and brought it over to gedit. And now gedit is useless to me! So I've moved on to Kate. At least the KDE crew hasn't gone completely fucking stupid like the GNOME dipshits apparently have.

Why the fuck did they have to ruin gedit's UI?

Have you seen Gedit lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen Gedit lately? Its new user interface is even less usable that vi's is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gedit#mediaviewer/File:Gedit_3.11.92.png

The Gnome designers just keep making Gnome's user interface worse and worse to use. I guess that's why so few people use Gnome these days!

depends on what you're doing

[roc97007]

Sorry if this is stating the obvious, but if you're a programmer who does lots of editing on a few machines, then pick the editor that best fits the job.

However, as an admin, I have long ago standardized on VI for the simple reason that it's included by default on every single *nix variant out there. (At least, in my experience.)

My cunning strategy breaks down with Windows, though. Notepad is so nasty to use that I find myself installing textpad or cygwin on the machines where I do most of my work.

Ed man! !man ed

[kuzb]

( obligatory, credit to: https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/... )

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
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs
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!!!

Re:Geany

[sayfawa]

Agreed. Without geany there, this comparison is not very useful. Whenever I was using Linux, I missed notepad++, until I found out about geany.

But EMACS has butterfly mode...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

http://xkcd.com/378/

Who else makes this mistake?

[rossz]

I have a few text files on my Windows box with :wq scattered around in random locations.

Stop mentioning vi and emacs

[Art3x]

Okay, y'all can stop mentioning how vi and emacs do everything these do plus come preinstalled on Linux systems. From the article:

Two of most popular and powerful plain text editors are Emacs and Vim. However, we didn’t include them in this group test for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if you are using either, congratulations: you don’t need to switch. Secondly, both of these have a steep learning curve, especially to the GUI-oriented desktop generation who have access to alternatives that are much more inviting.

This is for people moving to a text editor from Word.