I agree with you in that emacs isn't ideal for starting out (though I've been using it in the past few months and I'm not going back). But may I recommend gean

I agree with you in that emacs isn't ideal for starting out (though I've been using it in the past few months and I'm not going back). But may I recommend geany instead? Its a pretty good GUI text editor. Alternatively Kate...it is quite awesome too.