Console editor with 'linebreak'

[jessejazza]

Is there an editor apart from Emacs and Vim that does 'softwrap' or 'linebreak' (as vim calls it). I want to use a console editor for editing text words (as opposed to code). Despite hundreds available it seems that emacs and vim are the only two that offer this.

My preference would be for wordstar bindings (yes i'm that old!) Joe does all i want other than coping with long lines. 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. Using nano/pico ^W^J justifies the entire file and saves it in that form... like Joe and others - which isn't what i want.

I don't really want to have to learn either vim or emacs as they are too complex for my more basic uses but it seems i don't have much choice.

So who's experimented and can advise on the many editors available.

thanks

[Slim Odds]

My bad, you already mentioned nano

[jessejazza]

Thanks for the reply. I like nano (well pico as i use alpine email client). I actually asked them why they developed it that way and didn't get a reply.

I'm hoping some folk will reply but it seems that emacs and vim as the #1 editors are so for a reason. Only negative.... a load of reading!

[PaulW2U]

You could try Cream.

Cream is a set of scripts that make vim a lot easier to use and gives vim/gvim a conventional GUI with comprehensive menus. You can break out of Cream to use native gvim and then jump back in at any time. I've been using it for quite a few years now.

See http://cream.sourceforge.net/.

You can download Cream from the repositories. I'm not sure what OS you're using but a program icon is installed to start Cream.

[jessejazza]

Forgot to mention. Nano does have an option --softwrap but it doesn't do 'linebreak' like vim. It's a shame it just chops in column xx... so 'plane' can become 'pla' with the 'ne' on the next line.

Which makes one wonder why they chose to do that instead of proper 'linebreak'.

[jessejazza]

You could try Cream.

Cream is a set of scripts that make vim a lot easier to use and gives vim/gvim a conventional GUI with comprehensive menus. You can break out of Cream to use native gvim and then jump back in at any time. I've been using it for quite a few years now.

See http://cream.sourceforge.net/.

You can download Cream from the repositories. I'm not sure what OS you're using but a program icon is installed to start Cream.

I have used cream but i did really want to stay with a console editor as i use alpine for email and so i want to stay with one for all uses. I didn't think cream was much of an advantage on gvim really... i did find it 'notchy' in the sense that the scripts seem to take a while to load which is irritating. I'm using xubuntu on a newish machine so it may be better on there.