There are certain things in life that I wish I had: a Porsche 911 turbo, a two bedroom brownstone in Hoboken, and a full featured vi text editor. My love for vi started sometime around the Spring semester of 2001, when I was a sophomore in college. The phrase 'Pico makes you dumb!' was constantly thrown at me by my squeaky-voiced unix guru of a professor. Ever since then, I've found myself to be much more productive using the vi keybindings. This wasn't a problem for the rest of college and grad school, as this practice was acceptable and even encouraged by my professors and peers. Then came the real world I am now stuck in, full of WordPad using, vi hating (or vi oblivious,) point and click loving co-workers.
These people wouldn't learn vi if they were paid double time to do it. 'It's so cryptic, how could you ever use that' they say, as I shake my head in disagreement. 'Where's the tabbed interface?' they ask. Now I'm cornered. I start to explain how the editor can handle multiple buffers at the same time, but then I realize that they're right. I would like a tabbed interface. I would like to have multiple vim windows running under OS X (without having some stupid helper application that sits on my Desktop where I drag files to.) I wouldn't mind a file browser with a native view of the file system.
It doesn't seem likely for a application like this to emerge, even with the seemingly endless number of hardcore programmers that would rather die than use a different editor. Maybe some of these programmers don't need or even want the cute bells and whistles I'm hoping for. Or maybe the real world is turning me into a softie. One thing is for sure: If I ever become a WordPad user, then I'm taking up a career in art.