My 5-1/2 y.o. son is starting to use a computer and one of the things he likes to do is to type stuff into an editor. He has used TuxPaint before and is familiar with the idea of a "canvas" for painting stuff (where painting anything anywhere on the canvas is fair game).

When he opened the text editor (this was gedit on Qimo Linux), he attempted to do the same thing -- he pointed the text cursor to an arbitrary location within the editor window and expected to be able to type there (like a "text canvas", if you will). I had to explain to him that he would have to press Enter a few times to create new lines, as well as press Space a few times to create columns before he could do that. This is sub-optimal.

My question: are there any free-form, canvas-like text editors that I can have him use? Almost like hex editors of yore. I am not interested in getting him to create "text areas" in a paint program.