Gedit Review (Softpedia.com)

Gedit Review (Softpedia.com)

The standards (as in user expectations) have not fallen.

The standards (as in the previous apps which were considered "standards") have indeed fallen. Mainly by refusing to adapt to the modern FOSS desktop, and falling far short of what users require nowadays in terms of UTF-8 handling, desktop integration and all the other things FOSS OSes acquired during the recent years.

That's their authors choice. As the XFree86 case has shown, being the king one year does not means you'll be the king forever, especially if you consider yourself too good to change.

And don't serve me crap on "optional eye candy" and "real men do not need AA". The emacsen are full of vanity code without actual use, which any sane user will put far lower on its priorities than the features I listed before.