My editor of choice is currently SciTE, so let's see how it compares 
against this checklist...

> Customizable

Check. (If only it didn't take so damned long to configure each time you 
install it...)

> Extensible/Programmable

Well, not so much. You can reprogram the syntax hilighting to handle 
some unknown language if it matches a known one closely enough. And you 
can program it to run external commands for you (e.g., compile my 
program, run this through LaTeX, open XDVI...)

> Ported to many platforms

SciTE runs on both Windows and Linux, and that's all I need.

> Internationalization

Not important to me.

> Runs in both text terminals and GUI environments

Could be useful...

> Many editing modes

...and?

> Self documenting with built in tutorial
> Detailed and well written manuals

Nice, but secondary. It's good to know a tool is easy to learn, but the 
question is whether it's *worth* learning in the first place.

> Free and open source

As is SciTE.

> AFAIK notepad is/has none of the above.

Agreed. Notepad fails in many, many basic ways. But SciTE is quite nice 
in general.

On the other hand, nobody rants on about how amazing SciTE is, but Emacs 
is considered the One True Editor. I'm just trying to figure out why - 
and if it's worth trying to use it.

> Try it for a while - and I bet you won't regret it.

Well, I don't know. IIRC, last time I tried to use it, I had to reboot 
the computer to exit it.

(Of course, had I known about virtual terminals back then, I could have 
just killed it from another vterm... Presumably on Windows it would be 
even simpler.)

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