Hi Guys,

Quickly to set the context: I am getting pretty comfortable in Vi for work in terminals - configs and what not. However I work with a fair bit of php code and cut all my teeth in Windows with Edit2+ in which I was very comfortable and got to the point where it was not likely to be causing me to make silly mistakes.

Now that I am working purely in Gentoo (having finally let go of a windows dual boot) I have begun to look at how I can do my php/web work without FlashFXP and Edit2+ - this is proving to be quite hard. I do have a VM with those tools on it but I would much rather do the hard yards now and become totally at home in Gentoo for all my needs - so...

I set about getting gFTP to launch Vi as its default editor - I had to emerge gVim and launch it with --nofork - all well - the files come down and edit sweet then upload just fine. However I often work from two or three versions of a file and am used to switching from one window (buffer) to another and doing a lot of cut and paste. I am finding this too intimidating with Vim (perhaps one day I will get there) and tried to get jEdit to launch as the default editor but I can't.

Can I get some advice and some technical help after telling that story?

First, does anyone have any recommendations? (Should I just go the whole 9 and really learn how to do it in Vi - this will seriously hamper my productivity for some time I suspect - but is the ideal end state in my opinion; or should I be looking at a different approach/suite of tools?)

Second, how does one get jEdit to launch with gFTP I can't get the help for jEdit to work (html and java errors that I havn't had time to troubleshoot) if someone uses this combination I would be delighted to hear from them.

Thanks all and sorry for the long story but I really need to make this breakthrough sooner rather than later.

Will

Firstly, try Scite. It's extremely customisable, outrageously lightweight and easy enough for GUI lovers to embrace

Secondly, if you find yourself with some free time, use it to learn your way around Vim. With Vim 7 it supports so much cool stuff it's insane from a CLI text editor and I found my productivity increased with all the keybboard shortcuts, who needs a mouse?

Fantastic, thanks for that - I just dived in and started using gvim - pretty clumsily but it is working for me so far...

I will check out Scite

Will