Targhan wrote:
pico -w
It rules. However, there are basically two Unix editor camps. Emacs, and then, there is everyone else. :-P
I belong to the "everyone else" grouping. Although, a simple printed "cheat sheet" is about the most helpful thing in the world for either VI or EMACS.
'vi' seems to be the 'everything else.' Which is annoying if you're an ex-MS-DOS moron, and expect everything to be at least as straightforward as VDE was.
If you want to use 'pico,' you may as well use 'nano.' Systems intended to support people who like 'pico' may have one or the other installed. (So remember both names.)
http://www.nano-editor.org/A working knowledge of 'vi' - and 'ed,' its precursor - will probably save your posterior at least once, since nearly every *NIX maintains at least the latter in /sbin or some other place you'll have access to when you're stuck in single-user mode with none of your other partitions mountable.
When it comes to everyday use, I'd say there are four camps - those in the ever-ongoing vi vs. emacs "war" (both fit different niches); those getting by with nano, pico, or other 'niche' console-based editors that fit different people's opinions of 'usability'; and those who prefer to work from the GUI, and use editors that can only be used from within X (of which there are quite a few, many of which seem decent enough, especially in comparison to the mess that is console-land).
If you do decide to pick between emacs (a 20-40MB text-editing operating system) and vi (available in many flavors, most extremely-to-relatively light in comparison), keep in mind that both the 'real' GNU emacs and 'vim,' the most popular vi variant, can work in both X and console modes. This doesn't mean either are point-and-click simple within X, of course, just that they have their own window-dressings available.
If you come across something called 'Xemacs,' that's a project that forked from the original GNU emacs years ago, and doesn't have much to do with X11 support anymore. (In other words, the original 'GNU' flavor has long since caught up in that regard.) Emacs fans swear by either, in practical terms there isn't much difference, but I have it on authority of one XEmacs fan that you're best off sticking with the straight GNU flavor until you develop any reasons to hate it.