Best Python Editor (under Linux)

[Paddy]

I have done most of my programming on Solaris workstations, ib which I found that there 
were simple text editors - usually graphical point and type that were developed as part of 
GUIs, and more complex text editorswere you had to invest the time to get results, but 
which rewarded your investment with increased capabilities.

I had used many different Unix boxes and so was introduced very early on, to the vi 
editor. Vi initially did take effort just to do simple editing tasks, but what I have 
found is that lessons learnt in vi were also useful when learning other tools, for example 
the sed command replacements are similar to vi text replacements. Later on I found elvis:
   http://elvis.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/whatiselvis/
This is a vi clone, so I could still use my vi knowledge, but it has expanded 
capabilities, including a GUI mode, syntax highlighting for many languages, (inclding 
python,perl, tcl, verilog, VHDL, HTML), the ability to save syntax highlighted text as 
HTML, viewing simple HTML files as HTML so you can see what is bold or in tables or follow 
links etc, and the ability to interpret man pages and view them as you would after using 
the man command i.e. bold text as bold etc. I also use (g)vim, another vi clone. Gvim 
comes with the excellent gvimdiff  command for viewing file differences (it can highlight 
changed words within a line whi can be very difficult to spot in some files).

As you can see, I am comfortable with the vi family of editors.

Others are comfortable with emacs, another non-simple editor that repays the initial 
steeper learning curve by giving a rich environment. ( I hope I've succeeded in mentioning 
emacs without playing it down - I don't want to continue that war :-).

Hope this helps,

Paddy.