I spent years using other editors including CygnusEd (which is very nice) but nothing comes close to the flexibility of Vim (except possibly Emacs, but it has nasty multifinger keyboard shortcuts -- Vim uses modes which mean you rarely have to use the control or alt keys). Although it has a very steep learning curve and is just plain weird, I use it for everything on every platform I have to code on. There is an OS4 version at
http://os4depot.net/share/utility/text/edit/vim-bin.lhaIt can be set up to do everything you describe except open on a public screen
Basically, I need:
- Automatically open the files I'm working on at startup
Vim has sessions that allow this
- Ability to set and go to 'bookmarks' without using the mouse
Vim comes from the days before mice. Everything can be done without a mouse. Vim has two bookmark modes. The first is two letter combination that allows 26 quick-access bookmarks. The second is for named bookmarks
- Ability to open a duplicate window (of the current file) without using the mouse
Vim allows any number of duplicates and allows you to arrange them side by side, one above the other or a combination of them both
- Hopefully some automatic window arranging
I'm not sure what you mean by this
- Runs on it's own *public* screen (so I can run a shell on that screen too)
Okay, it won't do this but it does run in a console so you can have a shell in another window
- Lots and lots of keyboard shortcuts! Especially good text manipulation ones.
Vim is the king of keyboard shortcuts. I would say that is one of the things fans like the most and non-fans hate the most
- Ability to jump to a line by line number
simplicity
- Line number/character number display
Vim has a mode line that shows this
- Automatic indenting
Vim can automatically indent for a bazillion languages
What I don't need: Special C source code functionality. I don't code in C, C+, C++, C#, C*, C-, whatever.
