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GNU Nano 4.0

nano-editor.org

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Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#61

Post by Too »

pantalaimon wrote: post #39
nicoburns wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would recommend micro. It's simple like nano, but has full mouse support. The only real downside is that it's not installes by default.

Nano also has mouse support, it's just disabled by default. /etc/nanorc is worth a look, at least on Debian it's well commented

I'm confused. The only reason one uses nano is because you ssh'ed into some random machine and you are stuck with whatever is on it. If you got enough bother to install micro or fiddling with the settings of nano you might as well setup something more proper.

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#62

Post by spudlyo »

simias wrote: post #12
mmastrac wrote: post #3

"nano" is an interesting creature - it was originally developed as a replacement for the "pico" command that shipped with "pine" (an amazing curses-based email client) because the license on pico was just not really clear. I still use nano 50% of the time because it's so easy to jump into a file, make some quick changes, and jump out. Plus the mark/cut/paste keystrokes are seared into my memory after years of use.

Being an Emacs user I use Zile for that since it's effectively a trimmed-down version of Emacs. Of course unlike nano it's not usually installed by default on most distros, so I still have to use nano or vi from time to time, but I can't say I enjoy it very much.

If I want a light version of emacs (like on OpenWRT, or a constrained embedded device) I reach for JOVE, or Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs. JOVE was actually the version of emacs I first learned on back in the late 80s.

JOVE is tiny, and has implemented a huge amount of emacs. After you spend 15 minutes or so tweaking your .joverc file you won't even notice it's not GNU.

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#63

Post by coldtea »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #32
geuszb wrote: post #29

I'm sure nano/pico and the like are nice but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for? EDIT I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe tha…

Vi is ubiquitous. Vim is not.

Nope. vi almost doesn't exist. Most distros just use vim in a vi mode (or vim.tiny, same thing).

Just because the command is "vi" to invoke doesn't mean anything.

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#64

Post by coldtea »

nemetroid wrote: post #21
tyingq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sane defaults still have value.

The old behaviour is the sane default, at least for editing text files. POSIX defines a text file as a file consisting of a number of lines, each terminated by an LF character.

sane is what the user expects, not what POSIX demands.

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#65

Post by dunnevens »

mamcx wrote: post #57
geuszb wrote: post #29

I'm sure nano/pico and the like are nice but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for? EDIT I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe tha…

Why nano? nano is sane. With Emacs/VI you need to bring a HUGE mental framework to just use it. And maybe, with luck or some years of pain training, to just EXIT it :) --- Vim/emacs are powerful. Nice? Never. Easy? never. Good for most common editing task in the terminal?. Nope. Claim that Vim/Emacs are good is like say "why people use Sublime Text when Eclipse is so much better?" Except, with eclipse, you know how e…

Vi's not too bad. 'i' to edit text. ESC to get out of editing. ':w" to save changes. ":q" to quit. ":wq" to do both. ":q!" to quit without saving. "hjkl" for navigation in case the arrow keys don't work.

That's enough to get by for quick edits. I haven't used vi a ton in my life, but I've managed to remember that much.

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#66

Post by ChrisSD »

tyingq wrote: post #31
geuszb wrote: post #29

I'm sure nano/pico and the like are nice but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for? EDIT I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe tha…

Nano is somewhat ubiquitous in that it's the default editor on many Linux distros, including both Debian and Ubuntu. I often run "crontab -e" or "git commit" and end up in nano because I forgot to set $EDITOR on a new Linux box. Edit: I suspect it's the default because it launches with visible instructions on how to exit. Launching Vim or Emacs strands a lot of new users.

Indeed. Never underestimate how important exiting is: https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/05/23/stack-overflow-helping...

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#67

Post by thom »

Serious question: how often do you log into a box where it would be impossible or considered rude for you to install a proper editor? I feel like I must have been blessed by the sysadmins in my life (them often being me) but it's never happened in 25 years of logging into *nix boxes.

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#68

Post by mamcx »

dunnevens wrote: post #65
mamcx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why nano? nano is sane. With Emacs/VI you need to bring a HUGE mental framework to just use it. And maybe, with luck or some years of pain training, to just EXIT it :) --- Vim/emacs are powerful. Nice? Never. Easy? never. Good for most common editing task in the terminal?. Nope. Claim that Vim/Emacs are good is like say "why people use Sublime Text when Eclipse is so much better?" Except, with eclipse, you know how e…

Vi's not too bad. 'i' to edit text. ESC to get out of editing. ':w" to save changes. ":q" to quit. ":wq" to do both. ":q!" to quit without saving. "hjkl" for navigation in case the arrow keys don't work. That's enough to get by for quick edits. I haven't used vi a ton in my life, but I've managed to remember that much.

Yeah, but you NEED TO KNOW THAT before use it.

With nano, all is straight in the UI. That is powerful, and so obvious.

Why Vim/Emacs not have that?

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#69

Post by jonah-archive »

copperx wrote: post #46
mmastrac wrote: post #3

"nano" is an interesting creature - it was originally developed as a replacement for the "pico" command that shipped with "pine" (an amazing curses-based email client) because the license on pico was just not really clear. I still use nano 50% of the time because it's so easy to jump into a file, make some quick changes, and jump out. Plus the mark/cut/paste keystrokes are seared into my memory after years of use.

What happened to pine, by the way? It was absolutely fantastic because it was minimalistic. I like mutt, but it's not the same.

The UW no longer wanted to support Pine but they were unable to release it under the existing license. It was mostly rewritten as Alpine ( https://www.washington.edu/alpine/overview/story.html ), and is now sort of maintained by other folks: http://alpine.x10host.com/alpine/

I still use it regularly and it still works well, but I should probably be looking for something else.

Re: GNU Nano 4.0

#70

Post by Ologn »

stevekemp wrote: post #55
copperx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to pine, by the way? It was absolutely fantastic because it was minimalistic. I like mutt, but it's not the same.

There was a fork/successor called alpine, I recall having to setup for my wife. But beyond that I think that mutt eventually "won". (Especially when development started picking up again with mutt-ng, etc.) I wrote a console-based mail-client with lua-based scripting, over at https://lumail.org/ but I don't think I have more than 50 hard-core users. It seems like most people use mutt, and work around its annoyances, o…

I was used to pine and pico so I migrated to alpine and nano. Alpine works fine for me, alpine is very much like pine. I have spamassassin tagging mail as spam, and I have an alpine filter that moves those tagged messages to a possible spam folder.

I was used to pine when mutt came out, so I always used pine or alpine. You can check both out and see which you prefer.

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