On Fri, 16 Nov 2012, MJ Ray wrote:
(Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@wlandres.net
"Point is i want to save in long line form but view and edit in wrapped form - just like one does in gedit or leafpad." [James Freer, Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:35:23 +0000]
The use of 'sed' may well be fine for the stated viewing purpose. But I would *not* recommend using 'sed' for general editing!!!
Sure and I did ask "Why?" (why save in long line form and edit in wrapped form,) as I didn't understand why not just edit it wrapped and then convert it when unwrapped is needed. Maybe there is a reason, but it seemed like a preference rather than a functional need. I wasn't advocating sed for general editing!
Why? For my uses the text editor is for text in words and not programming code. So i wanted to use a console editor (as mentioned above from earlier post) that saved like the graphical editors gedit, leafpad, bluefish to mention one or two.
Saving in nano, Joe and others put a hard return at the end of each line. Which is an absolute pain if i then transfer what i've written into Scribus (although i like to keep the original doc as text). So for me i'd say it was functional need... my attempt at sed didn't work which was a pity but i'll have another look.
You could say you're just a pain, use gedit and you've got what you want. But it's slow and i prefer console editors (easier on the eyes i find over long periods)... and also use the alpine mail client (mainly because it's the only one i've found that's fast without any bugs and problems - being a corporate app if one gives a Uni that accolade).
Ideally for me a CUA console editor with 'linebreak' and cursor repositioning mid screen when one comes to the bottom of a page. When typing a long article cursor repositioning is very useful... and a boon when replying to emails. It's a shame nano's softwrap doesn't work... it's keybindings are so quick and easy to learn.
To the best of my knowledge there is one CUA console editor Diakonos but that doesn't do softwrap. What do you use in a word processor, forums, email client - mostly CUA so it makes sense to stay with it for productivity. But for coding i can see why most like vim... it has almost every function/capability one could dream of - but too sophisticated for my uses really.
james