BBEdit parallels (was Re: Good HTML editor for debian Linux?)
> Is there anything Linux-friendly with anything approaching the feature
> set of the program that I am used to, BBEdit on the Power Macintosh...
BBEdit is just about the best text editor for the Macintosh, at least
it was about 2 years ago. IMO, it's best strength was that you can
use real regular expressions. Looking back, I'm sure it borrows
heavily from different UNIX-based editors.
It's my impression that the most similar editor in terms of raw
capabilities is vim. However, its interface is significantly
different. Vim does syntax highlighting for multiple languages, and
can be made to do lots of things automatically. Vim with embedded
scripting languages (Perl, Python, tk) gives it even greater
potential. Plus, it's faster than most of the alternatives. But the
nice thing about Emacs is that tons of that automatic customization
stuff is already done -- no need to spend hours writing a .vimrc in a
half-Perl, half-ex language. It also allows you to use editing
keystrokes that are similar to what you'd be used to from the Mac.
The biggest downside is that it's HUGE. Of course, both editors have
good support for regular expressions, though their interpretation of
those expressions differs slightly. Once you get used to either, I'm
pretty sure that you'd say, "hey, this is even *better* than BBEdit!"
Jesse
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