Text editors
From Mandrivausers Wiki
A text editor is a program for editing plain text. It is an essential tool for any computer system, although it can come in a variety of forms. It is different from a word processor in that it does not handle formatting information, like bold or italic text, or page breaks, it just handles the text. A text file created by one text editor can almost always be opened by any other text editor.
On Linux systems a lot of the configuration files are stored in plain text, so a text editor can be used to modify them. Text editors can also be used for editing web pages or program source code, although often these are done with more powerful, integrated tools.
Text editors, like many other types of program, come in two main varieties - command line editors and GUI editors. Both can offer a variety of functions and can colour-code the text according to syntax rules.
[edit] Command line editors
The simplest variety of editor is run directly from the command line, which makes for a small, portable program but often a steeper learning curve. Some common command line editors include vi and nano. Knowing the basics of one of these is useful as it allows the editing of configuration files from a failsafe login or a full screen terminal. For example, if X won't run because the config is wrong, then it is useful to be able to edit the file without a GUI.
[edit] GUI editors
GUI editors are generally easier to use for beginners, and offer toolbars and menus in addition to the keystroke commands. In Mandriva, the default desktop is KDE so the default text editors are Kate and KWrite. Other editors such as emacs and scite can be easily installed as well.
This article needs a screenshot to illustrate it. As soon as file uploads are enabled, please add a screenshot here.
