Vi vs Emacs vs ?

Whats in an editor...?

functionality, simplicity, flexibility? what is it that is most crucial...

I spent the morning looking for an editor, and i wound up simply enabling extra features of the same editor ive been using since i first touched linux. Nano, with syntax highlighting... It works, i know the few keys i need to, and its simple.

Vi is amazingly powerful and simple, its fast, it doesnt need meta keys and lets you keep your fingers moving as fast as you can. Emacs ... well what cant be said of emacs, it does everything, including Vi with its viper mode. it seems that the editor world is polarised, you have Vi, and you have Emacs, but what else is there?

Nano, JOE, Pico, and a host of others, as well as the graphicaly incumbent windows notepad and its relatives, but all these are minor players arent they, mere mortals no higher than the ankles of the 2 great ones.

Why must things be so binary, The right tool for the job as the Vi croud say, shouldnt there be others that do things better?

why is there no simple way to work out what your doing, why cant i just have a command, vim --python --folding

alas this sort of thing is always left up to someone else, the core userbase of these programs not caring for such features as they have either mastered the nature of their editor or been forced to become competent.

Long story short, I need a good editor, simple command keys, decent features, but without the nearly cryptic simplicity of Vi, or the dauntingness of the sheer size of Emacs OS and its nearly infinite capability. perhaps some time ill wind up making my own...

Nah, its to much effort, 'real' programers get it right first time with cat.