What is the easiest and most accessible editor?

Linux for blind general discussion blinux-list at redhat.com
Mon Nov 29 21:31:32 UTC 2021


Unless you are running a text-only installation, installing from scratch, 
editing configs before you have a desktop environment installed or working 
remotely, your best bet is going to be whatever editor comes with your desktop 
environment. Usually that will be either pluma on the MATE desktop, gedit on the 
GNOME desktop, or you may have leafpad or mousepad installed. Any of these give 
you very easy cut/copy/paste functionality, easy to use find/replace pop-up 
windows and a fully accessible menu system for doing other things. All these 
editors are fully accessible to Orca and are found in your accessories menu or 
its equivalent depending on your desktop.

If you are looking for a terminal-based text editor, usually for installing a 
system manually or working remotely via ssh, the best and easiest to use by far 
is nano, although I usually like to use pluma even over ssh, since sshfs mounts 
my servers as if they are on the local disk, so I get access to every file on my 
servers just as if they are right on the computer I'm using to access them. I 
have edited server configs and even websites in this way.

Forget EMACS. I gave up on that crap after 5 minutes of mucking about in it, and 
emacspeak didn't make it any better. A text editor should make it as easy as 
possible to edit text, and that is all. It shouldn't require a computer science 
degree, nor should it try to be a complete desktop that tries to turn every 
application into an editor. The editors I mention here are mostly 
straight-forward, with the possible exception of nano, which is mostly 
consistent with pico, but not so consistent with any other desktop editor, and 
they all do what they should and nothing extra or overly complicated. If you 
want complicated text handling and word processing, LibreOffice Writer is the 
way to go, as it's a sophisticated word processor, not a text editor.
~Kyle




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