Text editors: can't teach an old pigeon new tricks

["Pigeon" <jah.pigeon@ukonline.co.uk>]

I am looking for a text editor that meets my personal prejudices!

First may I say that I hope this doesn't turn into another vi v. emacs
war!!! I have an approximately equal loathing for both of them. When I
am forced to use the "standard tools" I prefer to use ed. (No, really, I
do.)

I want the editor primarily for programming, and I have done a lot of
programming in environments like Borland Turbo C for DOS and the HTDC C
compiler for PIC microcontrollers, also for DOS.

These editors provide, AT THE SAME TIME, Wordstar-like control-key
commands AND alt-key-activated pulldown menus like those provided in
DOS's EDIT. There is, of course, some duplication of functionality here.
Personally I find it convenient.

I have pored through the text editors provided on my Debian CD and can't
find anything that bears more than the vaguest resemblance to this
model, although it seems that it may be possible to customise most of
them, with a lot of pain and grief. jed seems the least painful so far.

I think it would be a lot easier to install something that already works
the way I want it to, so that I can get on with writing number-crunching
software. The important features are:

- TEXT BASED (and compatible with SVGATextMode)
- Accepts Wordstar-style commands, and
- AT THE SAME TIME has DOS-EDIT-style pulldown menus
- Ability to call one's own shellscripts by adding entries to the
pulldown menus

Does it exist?

Oh, and to any university people etc. reading this: have you anything I
can download (a set of course notes perhaps?) about programming
numerical solutions to differential equations, esp. wrt. thermodynamic
simulation?

Thanks,
Pigeon