Installing MySQL - Learning MySQL - page 19

processors save additional formatting instructions that only other word processors un-
derstand. Word processing programs also tend to use proportional fonts, which makes
it hard to read and write files of scripts and commands. It is possible to use a word
processor to load and save plain-text files, but it's rather inconvenient and error-prone,
and so we don't recommend you do this.
So, what should you use? There are hundreds of text editors available, and most people
find one they prefer to use. You should try out several different programs and settle on
one that you're comfortable with. Let's look at some options:
Linux
Under Linux, popular text editors include pico , gvim , vim , emacs , joe , kate , gedit ,
and xedit . You can often find these listed under the Editors group in the main
menu of most Linux distributions. If you're curious, you can also type the com-
mand apropos "text editor" at the shell to see a list of programs that have the
phrase “text editor” in their description.
Windows
Under Windows, use Notepad; you can also download and install free text editors
such as gvim , or commercial editors such as EditPad and TextPad .
Mac OS X
Under Mac OS X, you can use the included editors pico , vim , or emacs , configure
the TextEdit program to behave as a text editor, or install and use other editors
such as BBEdit or Smultron.
To start an editor from the command line, type in the name of the program followed
by the name of the file you wish to edit; for example, you can open the file myfile.txt
with the pico editor by typing:
$ pico myfile.txt
You can also open files from the graphical user interface; double-clicking on the text-
file icon will generally open the file in a text editor. You can modify the program that's
used to open text files by right-clicking on the text-file icon (in Windows, depress the
Shift button while clicking) and work your way through the program options. We won't
go into detail here.
Under Mac OS X, you can also configure the TextEdit program to act as a text editor.
Start the TextEdit program, and then choose the Preferences option from the TextEdit
menu. In the dialog box that appears, select Plain Text under the Format heading. To
open a file with TextEdit from the command line, you should type:
$ open -a TextEdit myfile.txt
You can instead select the plain-text mode for individual files one at a time by selecting
the Make Plain Text option from the Format menu, but this approach is likely to be
tedious and error-prone over time.