(translating by runningwater)
Compact Text Editors Great for Remote Editing and Much More
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A text editor is software used for editing plain text files. This type of software has many different uses including modifying configuration files, writing programming language source code, jotting down thoughts, or even making a grocery list. Given that editors can be used for such a diverse range of activities, it is worth spending the time finding an editor that best suites your preferences.

Whatever the level of sophistication of the editor, they typically have a common set of functionality, such as searching/replacing text, formatting text, importing files, as well as moving text within the file.

All of these text editors are console based applications which make them ideal for editing files on remote machines. Textadept also provides a graphical user interface, but remains fast and minimalist.

Console based applications are also light on system resources (very useful on low spec machines), can be faster and more efficient than their graphical counterparts, they do not stop working when X needs to be restarted, and are great for scripting purposes.

I have selected my favorite open source text editors that are frugal on system resources.

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### Textadept ###

![](http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/reviews/Editors/Screenshot-Textadept.png)

Textadept is a fast, minimalist, and extensible cross-platform open source text editor for programmers. This open source application is written in a mixture of C and Lua and has been optimized for speed and minimalism over the years.

Textadept is an ideal editor for programmers who want endless extensibility options without sacrificing speed or succumbing to code bloat and featuritis.

There is also a version available for the terminal, which only depends on ncurses; great for editing on remote machines.

#### Features include: ####


- Lightweight
- Minimal design maximizes screen real estate
- Self-contained executable – no installation necessary
- Entirely keyboard driven
- Unlimited split views (GUI version) split the editor window as many times as you like either horizontally or vertically. Please note that Textadept is not a tabbed editor
- Support for over 80 programming languages
- Powerful snippets and key commands
- Code autocompletion and API lookup
- Unparalleled extensibility
- Bookmarks
- Find and Replace
- Find in Files
- Buffer-based word completion
- Adeptsense autocomplete symbols for programming languages and display API documentation
- Themes: light, dark, and term
- Uses lexers to assign names to buffer elements like comments, strings, and keywords
- Sessions
- Snapopen
- Available modules include support for Java, Python, Ruby and recent file lists
- Conforms with the Gnome HIG Human Interface Guidelines
- Modules include support for Java, Python, Ruby and recent file lists
- Support for editing Lua code. Syntax autocomplete and LuaDoc is available for many Textadept objects as well as Lua’s standard libraries

- Website: [foicica.com/textadept][1]
- Developer: Mitchell and contributors
- License: MIT License
- Version Number: 7.7

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### Vim ###

![](http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/reviews/Editors/Screenshot-vim.png)

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set.

This editor is very useful for editing programs and other plain ASCII files. All commands are given with normal keyboard characters, so those who can type with ten fingers can work very fast. Additionally, function keys can be defined by the user, and the mouse can be used.

Vim is often called a "programmer's editor," and is so useful for programming that many consider it to be an entire Integrated Development Environment. However, this application is not only intended for programmers. Vim is highly regarded for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files.

Vim's interface is based on commands given in a text user interface. Although its graphical user interface, gVim, adds menus and toolbars for commonly used commands, the software's entire functionality is still reliant on its command line mode.

#### Features include:  ####


- 3 modes:
- - Command mode
- - Insert mode
- - Command line mode
- Unlimited undo
- Multiple windows and buffers
- Flexible insert mode
- Syntax highlighting highlight portions of the buffer in different colors or styles, based on the type of file being edited
- Interactive commands
- - Marking a line
- - vi line buffers
- - Shift a block of code
- Block operators
- Command line history
- Extended regular expressions
- Edit compressed/archive files (gzip, bzip2, zip, tar)
- Filename completion
- Block operations
- Jump tags
- Folding text
- Indenting
- ctags and cscope intergration
- 100% vi compatibility mode
- Plugins to add/extend functionality
- Macros
- vimscript, Vim's internal scripting language
- Unicode support
- Multi-language support
- Integrated On-line help

- Website: [www.vim.org][2]
- Developer: Bram Moolenaar
- License: GNU GPL compatible (charityware)
- Version Number: 7.4

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### ne ###

![](http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/reviews/Editors/Screenshot-ne.png)

ne is a full screen open source text editor. It is intended to be an easier to learn alternative to vi, yet still portable across POSIX-compliant operating systems.

ne is easy to use for the beginner, but powerful and fully configurable for the wizard, and most sparing in its resource usage.

#### Features include:  ####


- Three user interfaces: control keystrokes, command line, and menus; keystrokes and menus are completely configurable
- Syntax highlighting
- Full support for UTF-8 files, including multiple-column characters
- The number of documents and clips, the dimensions of the display, and the file/line lengths are limited only by the integer size of the machine
- Simple scripting language where scripts can be generated via an idiotproof record/play method
- Unlimited undo/redo capability (can be disabled with a command)
- Automatic preferences system based on the extension of the file name being edited
- Automatic completion of prefixes using words in your documents as dictionary
- File requester with completion features for easy file retrieval;
- Extended regular expression search and replace à la emacs and vi
- A very compact memory model easily load and modify very large files
- Editing of binary files

- Website: [ne.di.unimi.it][3]
- Developer: Sebastiano Vigna (original developer). Additional features added by Todd M. Lewis
- License: GNU GPL v3
- Version Number: 2.5

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### Zile ###

![](http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/reviews/Editors/Screenshot-Zile.png)

Zile Is Lossy Emacs (Zile) is a small Emacs clone. Zile is a customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor. Zile was written to be as similar as possible to Emacs; every Emacs user should feel comfortable with Zile.

Zile is distinguished by a very small RAM memory footprint, of approximately 130kB, and quick editing sessions. It is 8-bit clean, allowing it to be used on any sort of file.

#### Features include:  ####

- Small but fast and powerful
- Multi buffer editing with multi level undo
- Multi window
- Killing, yanking and registers
- Minibuffer completion
- Auto fill (word wrap)
- Registers
- Looks like Emacs. Key sequences, function and variable names are identical with Emacs's
- Killing
- Yanking
- Auto line ending detection

- Website: [www.gnu.org/software/zile][4]
- Developer: Reuben Thomas, Sandro Sigala, David A. Capello
- License: GNU GPL v2
- Version Number: 2.4.11

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### nano ###

![](http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/reviews/Editors/Screenshot-nano.png)

nano is a curses-based text editor. It is a clone of Pico, the editor of the Pine email client.

The nano project was started in 1999 due to licensing issues with the Pine suite (Pine was not distributed under a free software license), and also because Pico lacked some essential features.

nano aims to emulate the functionality and easy-to-use interface of Pico, while offering additional functionality, but without the tight mailer integration of the Pine/Pico package.

nano, like Pico, is keyboard-oriented, controlled with control keys.

#### Features include:  ####

- Interactive search and replace
- Color syntax highlighting
- Go to line and column number
- Auto-indentation
- Feature toggles
- UTF-8 support
- Mixed file format auto-conversion
- Verbatim input mode
- Multiple file buffers
- Smooth scrolling
- Bracket matching
- Customizable quoting string
- Backup files
- Internationalization support
- Filename tab completion

- Website: [nano-editor.org][5]
- Developer: Chris Allegretta, David Lawrence, Jordi Mallach, Adam Rogoyski, Robert Siemborski, Rocco Corsi, David Benbennick, Mike Frysinger
- License: GNU GPL v3
- Version Number: 2.2.6

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via: http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20141011073917230/TextEditors.html

作者：Frazer Kline
译者：[runningwater](https://github.com/runningwater)
校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)

本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创翻译，[Linux中国](http://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出

[1]:http://foicica.com/textadept/
[2]:http://www.vim.org/
[3]:http://ne.di.unimi.it/
[4]:http://www.gnu.org/software/zile/
[5]:http://nano-editor.org/