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If you need an editor, use notepad.exe, nano, or an equivalent.

You run emacs / vim / sublime / atom exactly because it's much more than a simple text editor, it's a development environment of sorts.



Why wouldn't use simply use the editor you leave open on your desktop for the "small editor" tasks?

What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?"


> What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?"

Me, I use nano for quick edits over SSH and a different editor/IDE for everything else (which is done locally and pushed, I (incredibly) rarely edit anything on the server.


> What kind of person says "this is a job for nano, while this is a job for emacs?"

Depends on what you're used to. Even I as a seasoned die-hard Emacs user who is aware of both TRAMP and emacsclient will still fire up VIM (or vi) for various reasons: because it's what I grew up on, because I can't remember how to use TRAMP to edit that file remotely or as root, or the system is really not up to the task of running emacs.


I have a very specific example of jobs for nano vs vim. When I need to copy paste some code into a server and I don't have clipboard access over ssh, nano is better for that than vim, because vim tends to keep tabs indented, so I'll use nano to paste the file into, and then go into vim to edit it. I'm sure there are other examples.


Use ":set paste" before you paste. (Disable with ":set nopaste".)

See also: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Toggle_auto-indenting_for_code_pas...

Or, if your terminal emulator supports "bracketed paste", use something like this: https://github.com/ConradIrwin/vim-bracketed-paste


Indeed, if you use emacs, you just keep it open forever and use it for everything. Such is the culture.

(Some people even try to use emacs as their entire desktop environment.)


Maybe we disagree about scale :-)

Vim is my "little" editor; JetBrains (and the like) are my "big" editor (albeit with vi[m] plugin to avoid the mental context switch).

Somewhere an emacs user is laughing at me, but I'll get over it.




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