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My opinions on text editing

updated 2020/04/17, proofread 2020/05/26


I write prose/poetry in Rich Text Files (RTF) and everything else in plaintext.

When it comes to RTF editing, I normally use Microsoft Wordpad on Windows and (prefer it to using) Libreoffice on everything else. I like RTF because editors handle everything for me - changing the font and indentations and everything is very easy - and because despite its proprietary-ness it's well supported and converts to plaintext relatively easily.

When it comes to code, I only use Linux/UNIX/something with a console. I've tried coding in IDEs many times and every time I've been disappointed. I'm not used to using my mouse when I code and even when I acclimate I still don't like it. Lately I've been writing C and Python (I'm writing this HTML document on Windows 7's Notepad but I don't consider HTML to be "real" code) and when I write both I use "ne", the Nice Editor. It's simple and it uses a lot of common keyboard shortcuts. I avoid (but don't prohibit myself from) lines of code longer than 80 characters. I use tabs for indentation and I use a tab length of 3. I never use hard word wraps on plaintext if I can catch it and I don't normally use soft word-wrapping in code. I grew up on Microsoft DOS's EDIT.COM and it's still my go-to editor on DOS.

My preferred encoding is UTF-8. I don't have a particular reason why, it's just a common standard. I disagree with emoji's inclusion in Unicode (and *especially* disagree with how the emoji being added). ASCII will always hold a place in my heart (and a chart will always hold a place on my wall) but I write enough Japanese to rarely use it. (This document is (probably) in ASCII.)

I like Emacs for its use of Lisp (which I think is very fun to work in) and I respect Vim but think it's a little weird. When I use stock systems I use nano until I install ne. I'm not yet sure how to use ed.

These are just my opinions if anyone's wondering, none of which I'm particularly passionate about. Edit how you want, produce what you want.