Ubuntu® Linux® Secrets

Chapter 6. Working With Text

Secrets in This Chapter

• The gedit Editor

• Adding Special Characters

• Using vim

• Using emacs

• Tomboy Notes

Working with text files is a necessity in just about every computer environment. Tasks such as viewing system logs, modifying configuration files, and writing programs require the ability to work with text files. Ubuntu offers a few different ways to work with text files. This chapter walks through two graphical text editors, the gedit text editor and the emacs editor, as well vim, an old-fashioned text-based editor you can use when working in a command line session. The chapter ends by discussing the Tomboy Notes application, which, although not specifically a text editor, allows you to organize your world by creating text notes that do much more than just sit in a folder.

The gedit Editor

If you're working in the Ubuntu GNOME desktop environment, there's a graphical text editor that supports most of your text editing needs already installed. The gedit program is a basic text editor with a few advanced graphical features thrown in for fun. This section walks through the features of gedit and demonstrates how to get the most out of it for all your text processing needs.

Starting gedit

You can access the gedit text editor in the Ubuntu desktop environment using three different methods:

• Select the Text Editor entry in the Accessories menu, under the Applications Panel menu item.

• Double-click a text file from the desktop or within Nautilus (see Chapter 5, "File Management"). ...