>Is there something like “Brief” available for the windows environment today?

I know this is an old thread but I couldn't resist... I cut teeth on brief and went to a product called Codewright which had same features as brief that would also let you use same key shortcuts. I don't use it anymore so not sure if it is even available.

My text editor of choice nowadays is called Textpad (http://www.textpad.com/). It has (believe it or not) an option to use BRIEF key commands.