[oclug] Seeking GUI text editor that works

[Charles MacDonald]

I know that among real UNIX Geeks, that the real men use VI and for 
everyone else there is  EMACS, (or is it the other way around?) but I am 
not a UNIX geek.

I have been editing my web pages using a program called PFE (Programmers 
File Editor)  http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/  which is a 
free-as-in-beer text editor written by a university professor at 
Lancaster.ac.UK on my old AMD K-5 133 (486) Windows 3.1 machine.  The 
hard drive has started to make funny noises, so before it starts with 
the magic smoke I am finally moving my web updating to the AMD K6-2 500 
Linux box I bought last year to play with, in the process probably 
removing the last user of Trumpet Winsock from AJH's dialup server.

MY question is what sort of editor can I use to productively do my web
updates.  My procedure for updating my web pages is to save suggested 
sites and changes to text files, either from my research, or from E-mail 
I have received.  I edit these text files to conform to the standard for 
the page as appropriate, add notes to myself when I verify the 
information, and save them in a directory.  When it is time to update 
some of my pages, I load  the previous version of each page into one 
editor window, and start going through the suggested changes.  Much 
cutting and pasting later, I have new pages saved in a fresh directory 
named for the date of the update ready to  upload
to the webserver.  The suggestions I have looked at get "draged and 
dropped" into a "done" directory in case I need to refer to them.  Being 
visualy oriented, I tend to interact with the computer using the mouse, 
I tend not to use too many hotkeys - except for control C, V and X.. 
(and alt-tab)

The system originally was loaded with SuSE 6.3 and I have upgraded it to
latest version.  (7.3  Personal edition) When I open the "editors"
menu there are besides Vi and EMACS several others including Kword and 
Kedit.

Kword, AKA "advanced text editor" looks impressive, happily loading the 
web page and showing each element in a different colour.  When I try to 
make a change however it will not apparently let me type a "-" dash. 
the key press does not show up and if there is already one in the file, 
it is not shown, even as a blank space on the screen.  Needles to say 
the first time I tried to use this I was trying to change a listing for 
http://www.skatebuys.com/ to the new address of http://www.skate-buys.com/

I imagine that the problem may be simple like a configuration file set 
up for a German keyboard or some other incorrect option  but I am not 
wanting to waste a great deal of time troubleshooting unless I can get a 
hint at where the problem may be hiding.  If anyone can suggest where to 
look, I would of course be happy to try to make a fix. In my brief look 
before I gave up on it, the program seemed to have a lot of thought put 
into it.

The next one I tried was Kedit.  It has a annoying feature, if you 
highlight a URL, (which when I am doing webpages it is normally either 
with the intention to delete, move or to copy the link) Kedit helpfully 
(not) pops up a window asking if I want to open the link in my choice of 
three different web browsers..

Kedit also had the nerve to lock up on my when I had three windows open, 
and had spent almost a hour on making changes to the as of yet unsaved 
files.  A short time later after I had restarted it and re-did the work 
it locked up again, although I had been doing Paranoid mode saving of 
the files I was working on the second time arround.  I don't even recall 
normally having that many problems with several windows being edited 
with Win 3.1 and PFE.  Kedit just went away, when I was trying to do a 
"find",  leaving a window border that would not even respond to the 
"click here to close" icon.  "ps aux" and "kill" were needed to clear it 
out of the desktop.

I am not discouraged.  I have switched to Linux for freedom, not 
free-beer.  but I am wondering what the replacement for PFE is on my 
SuSE system.  I am running KDE as it is the SuSE default, and I am 
riding the learning curve on a few other things at the same time so I 
don't want  to jump to a Gnome solution, although I believe that the 
Gnome libraries are also installable so a Gnome editor that will run 
under KDE is a possibility.

I am mainly doing Web Pages and NO I don't want a WYSIWYG web editor, my
pages are heavy on external links, and any of the WYSIWYG editors that I 
have tied all seem to like to change them to local links.   Many of them 
seem to make assumptions that I want fancy formatting or the use of CSS 
on the finished pages (I don't) The web pages are also used to generate 
a Usenet FAQ posting so I am very careful in what I do and do not change 
on then, (and after the OLS I will take a go at trying whatever dyork 
says about using docbook, but not for a long while on a production page)

Anyway, sorry to ramble, what I would like is a drop-in replacement for 
PFE.  I particularly am looking for what PFE calls a macro, where one 
can go to a menu and paste in something from a table of selections like

E-mail: <a HREF="mailto:<**>"><**></a>

And then use a function key to automatically find and select the <**> 
fields and do a control V to replace them with a value that has been 
copied from another document.  Syntax highlighting is nice, as for that 
mater would be a warning / check to tell me when I have typed something 
like http;//foo...

Stability is assumed to be vital.  Since I am moving information from 
one document to another, cut and paste MUST work, including the Ability 
to highlight old information and paste new information in place of it. 
While I am getting to like the "middle button paste" feature, many of my 
updates are of the  "we have a new web address,  could you change it on 
your FAQ"  kind, where the ability to  delete the old information while 
at the same time adding the new is a real timesaver.

Being able to save by default in a different directory than I am opening
documents from, and remembering where I went for the last document are 
also high on my list, as would be the making of automatic backups of 
previous versions in a sub-directory.   (ability to browse the recently 
used directories would be a bonus)  A lightweight program that will not 
make me wait for it to keep swapping is also an important feature.

The ability to automaticaly strip trailling spaces off of lines would 
help in actually posting the text version of the FAQs, as if I try to 
e-mail a posting to the posting server at MIT, a single trailing space 
on a line results in my e-mail getting MIME encoded in transit, and 
threfore being rejected by the posting server.  Likewise, a "find any 
non-7-bit-acsii character" function would be helpful for the same reason.

I am navigating with both the mouse and the find command, and I don't 
like to remember a lot of cryptic codes to get things to work.  I want 
all features to be findable in drop-down or right click menus. 
(preferably both)

I am a hopeless LUSER are can someone suggest what package I should tell 
YAST to install?  I would of course like to keep to official SuSE 
packages if possible as I don't want to have a confused system. And with 
a 28.8 Modem, I would rather not have to download a large package.

Another concern is that my wife is still looking for a replacement for 
the IDE from  Visual C before I can get her to give up on WIN95, so 
getting this problem solved is a prerequisite for my next Linux 
demonstration for her.


-- 
Charles MacDonald  Stittsville Ontario
  cmacd at achilles.net      Just Beyond the Fringe
            http://www.achilles.net/~cmacd/
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