Hello Mike,
You don't have to use "vi" with visudo.
You can set EDITOR or VISUAL environment variables to point to the editor
you want to use. visudo will honor that.
If your X allows root to run X apps, then you could try:
VISUAL=kate visudo
(I don't run gui editors as root myself though.)
Jeremy C. Reed
http://bsd.reedmedia.net/