You know what, I don't really disagree with what you are writing.
I'll repeat that we're partly talking past each other, but you are correct that the kind of (valuable! useful!) innovations you list tend to happen by an upstart and then are copied into other programs. So it is healthy to have a field of contenders rather than two dinosaurs.
You're also pitching this as some kind of argument, which I think is your mistake.
Never did I say that people shouldn't make new text editors. I remarked that some problems seem to attract developers, and some don't. I think that structural issue is more interesting than editor feature evolution.
I'll repeat that we're partly talking past each other, but you are correct that the kind of (valuable! useful!) innovations you list tend to happen by an upstart and then are copied into other programs. So it is healthy to have a field of contenders rather than two dinosaurs.
You're also pitching this as some kind of argument, which I think is your mistake.
Never did I say that people shouldn't make new text editors. I remarked that some problems seem to attract developers, and some don't. I think that structural issue is more interesting than editor feature evolution.