Geany

[InfoLibre]

Why not replacing xed by Geany and contributing to Geany? It would be better than continuing to waste time on xed. Geany is installed by default in Raspberry Pi OS. It’s a very more performant text editor than xed and can be used as easily as xed if you parameter it with minimalist menus.

[Jopp-gh]

Admitted, I'm not into Linux app development but use vsCode almost daily.

Geany is, as far as I can remember a very old app, so I'm wondering why people sticks to these oldies instead to switch to much better tools like the latest and much better Vscode?
There's also a telemetry free version of vscode.
Vscode offers all kind of extensions so you can code anything with ease.

Anyway I agree, Geany would be a better app than xEd. Probably xed is the default, because it's so generic and ideal for simple and very quick edits or previews of text files or similar.

I answered more for curiously than to give an answer. Still, vsCode is great.

[Secret-chest]

VSCode's UI is not native, it is web-based. The interface often behaves confusingly unlike all other apps, like with the command palette.

[Jopp-gh]

Vscode might be confusing at first, but you don't have to use all of its commands. The more you use this IDE, the more you want to learn more, mastering Vscode, step by step.

Also, its web-based services aren't mandatory, except for downloading plugins. So it's basically a local app and there's a telemetry free version too, otherwise I'd refrain to suggest this tool.

Finally, it shouldn't matter if its framework is web-based but that's my opinion. The interface is the same on multiple platforms, which is a bonus too.

[mtwebster]

It will be a cold day in hell before we replace any default app with something that uses Electron.

I think we looked at Geany years ago and found it difficult to turn off enough of the UI to have it default as a simple editor. I haven't tried it lately, however.