I agree with your "too much fragmentation" argument. Although I think a better solution would be this: 1. Define a common API to text editors. It would have st

I agree with your "too much fragmentation" argument. Although I think a better solution would be this: 1. Define a common API to text editors. It would have stuff like "change text at" and "highlight line" and so on. Going the other direction there would be a set of well defined events like "text changed" and "do X", and so on. 2. Convince tool makers to write to this api rather than a specific editor. 3. Enjoy awesome source tools from any darn editor you want. (Also, IDEs don't go away, they become the gui layer in editor/plugin interaction. This is not a small role!)