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GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

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Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#141

Post by elsjaako »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #136
elsjaako wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an enthousiastic vim user. I think everyone who spends a lot if time editing text and who doesn't use vim (or similar) is probably missing out (including the author of this article). I think vim is really good. But I 100% agree that vim is a stupid default. In almost every context it's going to confuse more people than it makes happy.

Which vim? I prefer neovim personally, but it is not my default editor. I want JetBrains to get off their butts and implement first-party support for Neovim. They would be able to fully ditch their awful vim emulator, and I'm honestly astounded they still have not done a neovim first party plugin yet, or anyone for that matter (last I looked anyway). It would solidify vim for me permanently, being able to pop it into…

I think vim or neovim are both fine. The only reason I would caution against elvis is lack of Unicode support. They all give you most of the same interface.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#142

Post by p-e-w »

Aperocky wrote: post #132
p-e-w wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pros of modal editing is well documented Finally! Someone who knows where that elusive data is hidden that actually shows why modal editing is better. Wait, did you forget to link to the study?

Like I said, there's no convincing you. On previous tens of discussion surely someone has came up with something, only for you to dismiss it as gimmicky. I am not going to spend much effort on a lost cause, but quick googling came up with this blog: https://eli-rodriguez.com/en/posts/modal-editing-the-superio... Enjoy moving your cursor around when you edit text, but welcome to the club if I am wrong and you can be c…

So no data at all, just anecdotes from zealots.

You're right, that's not going to convince me. Because I apply the same basic standard of plausibility that I do to all claims I hear. When someone tells me I should start using homeopathy, and there's no need for any actual evidence in favor of it because the benefits are "well known" to its practitioners, I don't need to hear any more to make up my mind. This is really no different.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#143

Post by saagarjha »

blackbear_ wrote: post #139
p-e-w wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's straight up bad for linux adoption even if technically superior. I think the idea that Vim is "technically superior" should be challenged as well. I've watched, and participated in, dozens of discussions on text editors, and have never been shown a concrete piece of scientific evidence demonstrating Vim's claimed superiority according to any real-world metric. All we have are artificial comparisons where it ta…

> have never been shown a concrete piece of scientific evidence demonstrating Vim's claimed superiority according to any real-world metric I wonder if you've ever seen scientific evidence of the contrary? Or any kind of scientific evidence on this matter? If not, it seems that you're just using this as an excuse to rationalize your own prejudice, and the counter-argument is really easy: absence of evidence is not evi…

Generally when a discussion of vim comes up the people who use it claim that it's more efficient or whatever. Just look in this thread!

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#144

Post by torstenvl »

palata wrote: post #85
anonyme-honteux wrote: post #4

Using those kind of Unix tools is like having a time travel machine to understand what kind of mistakes you should never do when Iyou design a software. Not having system wide keyboard shortcuts is one of them: vim, emacs, nano etc all have a different shortcut to quit the app Worse still, every software invents his own configuration format. Thinking that being ultra configurable is a good excuse for not doing the ri…

Right. So everyone should use system-wide keyboard shortcuts. Preferably your favourites, right? At least they should work well for your favourite window manager, I suppose? Because those who like different shortcuts and different window managers are weird and don't understand UX. /s My preference is to start with a minimalistic system that works on most platforms, and where I can install what I want. If I wanted a s…

Sadly, you chose sarcastic trolling instead of clearly communicating your point. However, it seems like you're assuming system-wide keyboard shortcuts and consistent defaults means you can't change anything.

On macOS, you can change the keyboard shortcuts, including idiosyncratic ones, of (almost?) any application, certainly any pure Cocoa one. I have Word set up so that CmdV pastes unformatted, for example, and I have to use ShiftCmdV if I want the full suite of paste options.

So I guess I feel confused about why you'd rant in defense of "those who like different shortcuts," and then call out macOS specifically, when that's an area where it shines over all others.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#145

Post by v3ss0n »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #137
pjmlp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used VI in and out since introduced to it on Xenix in 1993. Definitely not missing out.

Neovim is a different beast than vi or vim, definitely suggest looking into it. It's insanely capable, and if major IDE's invested time into supporting it, you wouldn't need to ever choose between Neovim or an IDE, you could just use both together. I think currently VS Code is the only editor that supports Neovim properly, there might be others though. The neat benefit is you get all the editors own plugins + all of…

Neovide is much better editor that natively supports neovim than vscode. All vim plugins in vscode have conflicts with other extension rendering them useless

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#146

Post by giancarlostoro »

elsjaako wrote: post #141
giancarlostoro wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which vim? I prefer neovim personally, but it is not my default editor. I want JetBrains to get off their butts and implement first-party support for Neovim. They would be able to fully ditch their awful vim emulator, and I'm honestly astounded they still have not done a neovim first party plugin yet, or anyone for that matter (last I looked anyway). It would solidify vim for me permanently, being able to pop it into…

I think vim or neovim are both fine. The only reason I would caution against elvis is lack of Unicode support. They all give you most of the same interface.

I'm not referring to Elvis though, at least I don't think so:

https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/UI-architecture

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#147

Post by p-e-w »

blackbear_ wrote: post #139
p-e-w wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's straight up bad for linux adoption even if technically superior. I think the idea that Vim is "technically superior" should be challenged as well. I've watched, and participated in, dozens of discussions on text editors, and have never been shown a concrete piece of scientific evidence demonstrating Vim's claimed superiority according to any real-world metric. All we have are artificial comparisons where it ta…

> have never been shown a concrete piece of scientific evidence demonstrating Vim's claimed superiority according to any real-world metric I wonder if you've ever seen scientific evidence of the contrary? Or any kind of scientific evidence on this matter? If not, it seems that you're just using this as an excuse to rationalize your own prejudice, and the counter-argument is really easy: absence of evidence is not evi…

I don't need evidence to the contrary because I'm not making any claim. I'm simply doubting the folklore claim (made without evidence) that Vim is technically superior / more efficient in practice. I'm not trying to convince anyone (and indeed I don't believe) that Vim is worse than other editors. But I don't see any reason to believe it is better either, and people merely repeating that claim isn't going to change my mind.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#148

Post by palata »

smarkov wrote: post #119
palata wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. So everyone should use system-wide keyboard shortcuts. Preferably your favourites, right? At least they should work well for your favourite window manager, I suppose? Because those who like different shortcuts and different window managers are weird and don't understand UX. /s My preference is to start with a minimalistic system that works on most platforms, and where I can install what I want. If I wanted a s…

> Preferably your favourites, right? System-wide does not imply unconfigurable, it just means that all programs derive some of their behavior from an external source. If I want Ctrl+P to paste text across every single application that accepts text and I only have to configure it once in one place, I see that as a win.

> If I want Ctrl+P to paste text across every single application that accepts text and I only have to configure it once in one place, I see that as a win.

Ok, so let's say I write a video game. Should my game have reasonable defaults, or should it ask you to go to your system-wide settings and setup all the bindings for my game? For instance, I have a "jump" action. Can I bind it to the spacebar, or should I go check in your system settings what you have assigned to "jump"? What if you have not assigned anything to "jump", should I choose a free shortcut somehow (say using the first available from a list like [spacebar, j, right-shift]) or should I ask the player to go setup the bindings first?

Say people are happy having exactly one configuration for all their programs. What if my game has special controls, and instead of using "awsd" to move, I would like to use "qweasd", but "q" is generally assigned to "quit". Should I give up on having a reasonable UX using the keyboard (because the system-wide shortcuts don't work for my game) and sell my game with an external controller then?

That's the whole thing with standards. It's perfect if you want to do exactly what the standard specifies. It's terrible if you don't. Freedom generally doesn't go well with standard, and somehow it feels like a tradeoff: macOS has a better user experience than linux, at the cost of some freedom. And that's perfectly fine IMO: I don't expect macOS to give me more freedom, or Linux to give me a macOS UX. I just choose between them.

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#149

Post by sigmonsays »

Havoc wrote: post #58

For people picking up linux for the first time that initial impression is crucial. Dropping people like that into an editor that requires you to somehow know ":q!" is the answer is utterly insane. Same with beginner tutorials using vi. It's straight up bad for linux adoption even if technically superior. Anyone that is a vi fan likely has the skillset to install it themselves - the reverse is not always true.

why do we care about users who want the easy way out?

Re: GNU nano is my editor of choice (2021)

#150

Post by saagarjha »

imiric wrote: post #54

It's neat to see that nano supports customization at this level, and I can see the appeal for quickly editing files (though there are superior tools for even that nowadays, as mentioned in this thread), or if you're just getting familiar with text-mode editing, but I couldn't take anyone seriously if they _prefer_ it for programming. For one, the modal interface is so much superior to traditional key chords. It allow…

nano has a file browser, and you can have it run actions on save.
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