- - basically i want to be able to ssh onto my server and write from a number of remote locations. I know Debian is blessed with a plethora of programs that can do this, what I'm after is a recommendation for something that feels good to write with. in a perfect world I'd like decent cut and paste, command characters for end of word/start of word, and export to a human readable open format.
Not to start a flame ware here or anything 8-), but I use vim. It does everything you ask (you just need to learn the command shortcuts). I have also used emacs, but found it to be much less intuitive than vim. Also, vim has a gui version (coincidentally called gvim) for when you are at your home terminal.
The way I learned all the commands (I don't like to RTFM) was by going into gvim and navigating the menus and mentally associating menu-type commands with their text-base counter parts (like, file->new is ':e new<CR>').
vim also has some neat search features, syntax highlighting (if your prose happens to be C, Lisp, or some other code), online help, and a bunch of others.
One hurdle I had to overcome was mode confusion. vim has two primary modes (and probably several others I don't know about), which are command mode and edit mode (or something like that). Basically, in command mode, anything you type in, vim takes as a command (quite obvious). In edit mode, your typing effects chages the current file buffer. Remembering which is which can be challenging at first. But I like it a lot.
Just my opinion. -Roberto Sanchez _________________________________________________________________STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail