Text editors in Linux

If I were to choose one of the main reason why people use PCs, I would definitely say for writing. With a computer and a word processing program, cross outs, white out and crumpled up paper has disappeared forever. All those old Smith-Coronas got put away.

Linux is just as well suited for word processing as any other operating system.There are several excellent word processing programs for Linux like AbiWord, KWord, part of the KOffice suite and the OpenOffice.org suite's word processor. We'll talk about these kinds of programs in a later lesson. First, we should talk about the terminal mode text editors that are available for Linux.

Why use a text editor?

A text editor is just like a word processor without a lot of features. All operating systems come with a basic text editor. Linux comes with several. The main use of a text editor is for writing something in plain text with no formatting so that another program can read it. Based on the information it gets from that file, the program will run one way or another.

The text editor "vi"

The most popular text editor for Linux is called 'vi'. This is a program that comes from UNIX. There is a more recent version called 'vim' which means 'vi improved'. The problem with 'vi' or 'vim' is that a lot of people don't like it. You have to remember a lot of key combinations to do stuff that other text editors will do for you more easily.

We should go through some basic 'vi' commands, because I have found that 'vi' is good if I want to get into a text file quickly and change something or I want to write a short note to myself. I generally do not use "vi" for anything that requires more than about 30 seconds of work, but there are people who swear by 'vi' and do all kinds of things with it like designing entire websites.

Working with 'vi'

Let's make a text file. Type:

vi tryvi

You'll see a line of tildes down the left side and the name 'tryvi' at the bottom and [new file].

To write something, you have to press ESC and the 'i' key (i for insert). Even if you don't press 'ESC-i' it usually gets the idea that you want to type something and lets you do it after a few keystrokes. You should get used to the 'ESC-i' keys so you don't end up writing 'ar John' instead of 'Dear John'.

Press ESC + 'i' then type:   hello vi

If you wrote   jello vi   or   jello bi   or something I don't want to know about, you can always erase your mistakes with the backspace key.

To save this file, you would press ESC then the colon key ':' then 'w' (write)

To save the file and quit vi, you would press ESC, ESC the colon key ':' then   wq   (write, quit)

To quit without saving, press ESC, ':' then 'q'. Vi may protest if you've written something and you don't want to save it. If you press ESC ':' 'q!' with an exclamation point, vi will accept it and not save your changes.

That's vi in a nutshell, or more like a sesame seed. There are a lot of commands in vi - and you may explore those on your own at a later date, on your own terms and in the privacy of your own home.

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