Revision 26 as of 2004-02-29 00:36:09

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A note: There used to be a very large discussion on software projects which lack vision, application frame works, python, various arguements, and shows of support for both editors mentioned. Unfortunately, very little of it was of any use in the subject of "Emacs Vs. Vi". So I deleted it. Perhaps someone will revert this page, perhaps they won't. At any rate, I think this page would be more useful of put on its original course. If this revision stays, it would be appreciated if the next editor would delete this explaination. I merely added it because I didn't wish to alarm any wiki gnomes who stumble upon a drasticly altered page.

Vi (and its popular variant vim) is a small text editor which does a few things, mostly relating to editing text. If small editors with a single purpose and enough features to satisfy most text editing needs appeal to you, then you might want to consider using this editor.

Emacs is a large text editor which does quite a lot of things, not all of which are related to editing text. If you find yourself interested in an application which does many things, but may require more learning to explore its potential, then you might find this editor to be of interest to you.

Both of these editors support many fundamental virtues of text editors such as extensive syntax highlighting, collapsable functions, spell checking, macros, undo-redo, mutliple document editing, and a large support community. They are both free, Open Source, mature software. They them both and choose the one that best suits you.

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