a good programming text editor (not IDE)

[BartlebyScrivener]

re soft word wrap

>I have advocated seeing lines (with a CR and/or LF) as paragraphs, and
> making the display of lines a matter of the particular display, not the
> original data. That is much more natural for wrapped text, i.e. real
> text rather than computer-parseable files.

I agree.

Meanwhile I wrote a friend who is a vim aficionado, and he advises it
IS possible to achieve soft word wrap in vim.

When editing a text file, if you want word wrapping, but ONLY want line
breaks inserted when you explicitly press the enter key:

:set formatoptions=1
:set lbr

lbr tells vim to word wrap visually, but formatoptions=1 tells vim to
not insert hard newlines when you edit the middle of a 'paragraph.' 

rd