a good programming text editor (not IDE)

[John Salerno]

I know there's a request for a good IDE at least once a week on the ng, 
but hopefully this question is a little different. I'm looking for 
suggestions for a good cross-platform text editor (which the features 
for coding, such as syntax highlighting, etc.) but not a full IDE with 
all the fancy jazz (GUI developer, UML diagrams, etc.).

Ideally, it would be something I could even put on a flash drive and 
move from computer to computer, but this isn't necessary. Just something 
I can immediately use in either Windows or Linux (or Mac, if necessary).

Based on another thread, I tried out Scite, but no matter what I do it 
doesn't seem to remember the window size and position, or any options I 
choose (like showing line numbers). It seems to always reset itself each 
time I open it.

And naturally there are Emacs and Vim, but I just don't know if I need 
to invest *that* much time into learning one of them (probably Vim, 
since I hear it's lighter and faster).

I've tried a few others, like TextPad and Crimson, and right now I use 
UltraEdit, which I love actually, except for minor issues here and 
there. But it'd be nice to make the move, as much as possible, to free, 
open-source, cross-platform software.

Thanks for any suggestions, and again I'm sorry if this feels like the 
same question as usual (it's just that in my case, I'm not looking for 
something like SPE, Komodo, Eric3, etc. right now).