Yeah that adds up with my experiences. I also read your reply about an external editor, might give it a go, thanks for the suggestion!
For the curious, the text editor I used was Atom and this is what the layout looks like (https://i.imgur.com/jGgl9SM.png). The theme is not the default theme, but it's close to the default layout
Depending on which editor you use, it's also totally possible to make updates to your site while offline (should not be confused to mean your Neocities site while offline). Atom has a live server package that does just this.
New artwork, yahoo !!