Are the EDITORS EMACS and VI commands and style worth bothering to learn or are these items history.Please genuine estimation

In my experience (limited as it may be), vi has almost always been present. I think every major distribution I've used (SUSE, Debian, Mandrake, Knoppix) has included vi, and it's commands are simple enough that it doesn't take too long to get good at. I don't use emacs, so I really don't know how present it is. In addition to vi, most distributions include pico or nano. This is more like you're average text editor, arrow keys move around, typing types directly on the page, no need for any crazy commands. It's very simple to use. In many distributions the "editor" program is a soft link to the default text editor. Give it a try and see what they're using. Personally, I'll use nano/pico if it's there, and vi if it's not. I've never seen a system that didn't have one of those two.

I hope they're not becoming obsolete. I do all my text file editing with vi. I don't use emacs, but it IS quite feature-rich. I don't think they are going away, but, at the same time, there are plenty of other editors out there for Unix/Linux, so it's up to you whether or not to learn to use vi and/or emacs. In my experience (10 years in Unix/Linux), vi has been indispensable. Although, for the uninitiated, it can be quite an uphill battle getting used to, when compared to other text editors - good luck.

I took the plunge and started learning emacs, stuck with it learning just the commands I needed like opening and closing files, switching buffers etc and now I use it every day! Try using xemacs at first as you can use your mouse for most of the commands until you remember the keyboard shortcuts. I don't use vi but do at least know how to edit a file with it, useful for me when emacs is not available. See if you have vimtutor installed....

xemacs is not emacs and emacs proper has a gui interface too, as does vim - gvim. The cvs emacs I use is built with gtk and is very nice indeed. There's no need to give an estimation about whether emacs and vim are history or not - any serious programmer would laugh at the idea, as would other kinds of user who are aware of just how powerful vim and especially emacs are - maths users for example

True xemacs != emacs, I only suggested it as some things like its scrollbars may be easier for a newbie to start with. Both come with tutorials so either will do.

Well I don't know what xemacs scrollbars are like but I really like the gtk crux theme scrollbars I've got now. With their metallic looking trackways and 'rattly' green bars, they seem very real. They're so good I never even needed to read the scrollbar tutorial you mention... ;-)