It's a gedit kind of day

I know you all care deeply about which text editors I'm using at any given time.

Generally I use Geany in Unix/Linux, but today I decided to use gEdit (or Gedit, or gedit, depending on your capitalization preferences), the default text editor in the GNOME environment, which I happen to be running (version 2.30) in Debian Squeeze.

Things that Geany allows me to do (that I want to do, that is) include search and replace (with regular expressions) across all open files (I tend to have between five and 10 similar items open that need similar search/replaces). I can change upper case to lower case by highlighting text and hitting CTRL-ALT-u.

I turned to Geany in GNOME and Xfce because I need more than a bare-bones text editor. I like syntax highlighting (gedit does this; I don't think Xfce's Mousepad does), easily changing the case of letters (gedit does it with a plugin and either via the mouse, or the awkward keyboard sequence ALT-e, then h-i), doing the aforementioned search/replace over multiple files (not available in gedit or Mousepad).

However, Geany can be quirky. It doesn't remember my search/replaces the way Notepad++ does in Windows. Yep, the best text editor I've found thus far is a GPL-licensed application, but it's coded for Windows.

Both Geany and Notepad++ have trouble when selecting a large block of text from top to bottom, at least on my machines. You start dragging below the visible screen, and the type doesn't scroll, so you don't know when to stop dragging.

Gedit doesn't have this problem. It does well with regular expressions in search/replace. While its changing-case function is awkward, it does work.

Mousepad doesn't allow multiple tabbed files like Geany and gedit, so it's kind of a nonstarter for my workflow.

in Gedit, I miss the search/replace across multiple files, and I should probably be using shell scripts or Perl scripts to do the text processing I've been relying on text editors to do for me.

But gedit is fast. It has a lot of features in its own right. And I'm comfortable in GNOME right now.

It's been awhile since I've "auditioned" other text editors, and I may do so again. I know I'm not partial to Bluefish, and while I like Kate, I don't want to bring all that KDE into my system. I have run Scite and Nedit but didn't stick with them for one reason or other (mostly that Geany is easier for me to use).

I've always been able to hack around in Vim (or vi, even as nvi in the BSDs), but I've never really gone the extra-geeky mile to do heavy text manipulation like I do in GUI editors. And no, I've never used Emacs.

I'll probably continue running Geany, but let's just say I'm open to new editors at the moment.