that would be EMACS... emacs is THE EDITOR.
I was just curious if this was the best solution
Well best here is personal preference. emacs is well lets say BIG, if you can not do the editting in emacs then you can not edit it with a textual editor period.
However it may not be the best editor for you. It depends, something like vi, vim, emacs is very good IF you know how to type with a keyboard, ten fingers and so. Because it relies on keyboard shortcuts for everything. However you may not have the time to invest in learning to use emacs, but certainly if you do intend to code on a *nix machine learn its versatile beyond belief (emacs is probably the most complex piece of editor code you could find, its more like a operating system within a operating sytem, and what emacs doenst do today it does when you type in the extension in meacs dynamaically during your need.)
But really no one can say what best is it depends on what YOU think a computer program should be. Me, well i think emacs is good, a bit top heavy tough. Which is why i tend to not use it as much as i should.
anyone familiar with writing shaders.
What does rib files have to do with writing shader? Rib is teh scene description language, shaders are wirtten withe different type of file.