slothbear wrote: 
The order would stay in the file (for later submission to the game), but be
marked as completed.

Each time orders are applied, I'd have to parse the whole file, apply new
orders, and change numbers and text here and there to reflect the new
reality.  The files are relatively short (maybe 5 pages max), so I doubt
performace would be a problem.

Am I overloading the concept of text editing too much?  Too much to do?  Or
just abusing the tool a bit?  Thanks for your ideas!

No reason why you couldn't do it. Since TM commands can execute arbitrary external programs, you could make the processing as complex as you need. Feed the entire document to an external command and replace it with the command's output. Personally I'd use some structured form of text such as CSV or XML, but that's just me.

The only real question is that if you're going to be hand-editing the text (and why else would you want to do this in an  editor?) your processing commands are going to have to be good about malformed input.  It'd be bad to have one typo wipe out your entire space fleet!  I'd also use a version control system to save a history of every move made in case you need to roll back at some point.

--
Steve King
Sr. Software Engineer
Arbor Networks
+1 734 821 1461
www.arbornetworks.com