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Nano 5.7

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Re: Nano 5.7

#71

Post by jolmg »

jejones3141 wrote: post #69
fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

One thing I've found nano useful for: git commit messages. If the commit file is empty, that cancels the commit. Nano will tell me how many lines it actually wrote, so if I have second thoughts I can cancel with certainty. Nano may well not be unique in that regard, but I tripped over another editor that saved what I thought was an empty file as a single line with just the EOL character.

You can have a bunch of comments and empty lines, even with spaces, and git will still abort if you don't have anything else in the commit message. An EOL/newline character shouldn't cause the commit to continue.

Re: Nano 5.7

#72

Post by hidden_sheepman »

Nano, is great, very light weight, and easy to compile from source. Usually available on pretty much any unix system.

I love the fact that it doesn't try to do anything more than edit text.

Re: Nano 5.7

#73

Post by hajile »

mettamage wrote: post #27
ngcazz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't mean to hate on Nano, but after all these years gaining inordinate vim muscle memory, an unexpected `VISUAL=/usr/bin/nano` default feels to me like a vim prompt must feel to a newbie.

Not to me, currently a vim user and irritated by nano. Back in the day when vim would open it felt more as if my whole computer broke and nothing in the universe made sense anymore. Nowadays with nano, I simply feel and think: ugghhh soo SLOW! I wonder how other people experience it :P

I find nano a bit frustrating to arrow around in.

Maybe someone could add vim binding support...

Re: Nano 5.7

#74

Post by noir_lord »

Ekaros wrote: post #61
fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

I personally prefer nano over vi, ed or emacs. But when I do some programming or bigger work I use proper IDE like Visual Studio Code or Eclipse. It's decent enough for times when you want to do something quick on cli. And then spend rest of the time with graphical IDEs...

Same - I use nano for quick edits on remote boxes or locally but for programming I use intellij.

I totally get why people use vim (and emacs) in fact I use vim for one specific thing I can not do in intellij (highlight closing parens in docblocks - intellij doesn't do it and if you are writing annotations it's a major pita that it doesnt).

Re: Nano 5.7

#75

Post by kstrauser »

bear8642 wrote: post #70
blueblob wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, how could you hate on anyone who uses the standard text editor?[0] [0] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

you joke, but ed is great if have tiny change to make given compiler output simply just to how fast it loads

I got a local login on a machine so busted that I couldn't mount /usr, meaning I couldn't read /usr/share/terminfo, meaning no screen editors would work. I knew just enough ed that I was able to fix /etc/fstab and bring the system up.

I wouldn't wanna use it every day, but it has its time and place.

Re: Nano 5.7

#76

Post by ponow »

marcodiego wrote: post #58
fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

More than that, Benno Schulenberg, nano's main developer, is actively against changes turn nano into anything close to a mini-IDE. He rejected patches that could nano have code completion from external tools, multi-pane/screens, source code navigation and many others. I respect his lead, but that discourages contribution. Disclaimer: I'm a very sporadic nano contributor.

In other words, Schulenberg doesn't want nano to slide on a slippery slope towards emacs.

Re: Nano 5.7

#77

Post by xfer »

blueblob wrote: post #38
fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

Yeah, how could you hate on anyone who uses the standard text editor?[0] [0] https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

This is what i used to edit configurations in plan9 console if you don't have graphics support(over serial console) or to fix issues before starting rio. It is surprisingly pretty decent experience.

Re: Nano 5.7

#78

Post by aflag »

edoceo wrote: post #62
aflag wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm intrigued. How do you search and replace in nano and how can it be better than `:%s/ / /gc`? I thought search and replacement was one of the killer features of vim.

I can't remember how but nano has the bottom two lines showing common actions and their key-commands, so the answer is on screen.

Nano is definitely more friendly for the untrained user, but I thought they were saying it was better for a user that is well versed in both.

Re: Nano 5.7

#79

Post by kijin »

Ekaros wrote: post #61
fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

I personally prefer nano over vi, ed or emacs. But when I do some programming or bigger work I use proper IDE like Visual Studio Code or Eclipse. It's decent enough for times when you want to do something quick on cli. And then spend rest of the time with graphical IDEs...

Same here. I like nano because it's a simple and intuitive editor that doesn't do much (though it does have some surprisingly powerful features once you know the shortcuts). I already have a full-blown IDE running on another screen and I don't want to spend any energy trying to stay on top of another one.

In other words, I would not use nano as my primary editor, but it's perfect as a secondary. If I need to edit more than a few lines, I'll just load up the file on my usual IDE.

Re: Nano 5.7

#80

Post by hiq »

jejones3141 wrote: post #69
fouric wrote: post #31

As a vim and emacs user, I don't give nano any hate. I'm surprised when programmers use it, sure, but that's because if my profession was going to require editing text files for hours a day (which it does), I would be happy to trade a steeper learning curve now for a less unpleasant job experience later. I totally understand why non-programmers don't use it. If your job does not involve you editing text files for hou…

One thing I've found nano useful for: git commit messages. If the commit file is empty, that cancels the commit. Nano will tell me how many lines it actually wrote, so if I have second thoughts I can cancel with certainty. Nano may well not be unique in that regard, but I tripped over another editor that saved what I thought was an empty file as a single line with just the EOL character.

I rarely write commit messages until they're ready, so I usually :q! when I realize I actually don't want to commit just yet.
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