> what is a good (full screen) editior to use when you are dialing in > remotely.
Nano/pico are small, simple and lightweight (and have Windows versions that are identical to their Linux counterparts, which are VERY fast). Vi works well, but is aesthetically unpleasing as you've already noticed (although vi is also the only full screen editor guaranteed to be actually installed on all Unix/Linux variants, so you should at least have basic familiarity with it). Forget the graphical stuff. It's painful unless you're on a LAN connection, and even then, it's not that much better. Contrary to others, I don't find THE all that congenial. Faking block mode isn't all that helpful (at least to me), and it helps me to actually switch mental gears to the Unix mode if the editing session doesn't LOOK like my normal XEDIT environment. YMMV. > The best thing I've found so far is to ftp a file down to > the pc and then edit it with wordpad and then ftp it back. > I've seen emacs - is this my only alternative? and are there any dangers > in using wordpad and ftp? You have to be careful about line-end conventions -- most DOS/Windows editors assume the DOS line ends, which lose on Unix. You might look around for a copy of MicroEmacs, which isn't quite so 800-lb gorillaish, has a DOS/Windows version, and is supported on lots of different platforms. Also, don't fear Emacs. It's worth the time to learn it. Like XEDIT and SPF, it's enormously powerful, but you don't need all that good stuff to get useful work done. 'emacs -n' is your friend (forces Emacs into text mode). One benefit of Emacs: if your desktop at home is Linux or Unix based and you want the full power of Emacs, you can run Emacs in client/server mode (which is much more bandwidth-friendly than a normal Emacs session). This also allows one to interrupt an editing session and reconnect to it from another location w/o losing editing context if you want to pick up from home. It's also helpful to have language-sensitive editing capabilities -- AFAIK, Emacs is the only text-based Unix editor to have BALR, COBOL, JCL and PL/1 editing modes...8-) -- db ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
