Debian Reference
Chapter 11 - Editors
11.1 Popular editors
Linux offers many alternatives for console text editors. Among them:
-
vim: Powerful and light BSD-heritage editor. VI iMproved.
-
emacs: Ultimate and heavy GNU-heritage editor. RMS (Richard M.
Stallman) original.
-
xemacs: Emacs: The Next Generation, originally from Lucid.
-
mcedit: Newbie GNU editor. Identical to mc internal
editor. See
Editor in MC, Section
4.2.5.
-
ae: Default small editor (Potato). Avoid this.
-
nano: Default small GNU editor (Woody). Emulates
pico.
-
joe: For WordStar or TurboPascal old-timers.
-
jed: Fast, full-featured menu-driven editor with Emacs key
bindings.
-
jove: Very small editor with Emacs key bindings.
-
nvi: New vi. Bug-for-bug compatible with the original vi.
Use update-alternatives --config editor to change the default
editor. Also, many programs use environment variables EDITOR or
VISUAL to decide which editor to use. See Editor in MC, Section 4.2.5.
Also a few X-based text editors are noteworthy:
-
gvim: Vim with GUI (vim and vim-gtk
package)
-
emacs: The One True Emacs (auto-detect X).
-
xemacs: Next generation Emacs (auto-detect X).
These xclient commands take standard options such as -fn
a24, which makes life easy for older folks like me :) See X clients, Section 9.4.4.
