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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)

#171

Post by MisterTea »

p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

> Replacing Vi(m) with Nano in the standard install was one of the most important UX decisions made by the major distros in recent years

It sounds like you want a unix with the UI/UX of a different OS. If a user is coming from a world where editors have all coped MS-DOS edit and its notepad progeny then nano makes sense. I am sure this goes for whatever default editor comes with Mac.

If a user is coming from a Unix world where ed, xi and vi were defaults since the beginning then vi makes sense.

This isn't arrogance, its history. Ignoring this part and insisting foreign concepts implemented as defaults to accommodate foreign os users from having to learn to use a new platform is arrogance. Unix has a lost a lot of its heritage to this kind of thinking.

Back in the day you learned how to use a computer using manuals: man intro. Today you install an os and blindly bump into walls hoping to learn the os using discoverable ui hints then falling back to google when that fails. Treating the ui as a discoverable manual means ui changes break the manual which angers and frustrates users. See the whole MS ribbon debate.

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

#172

Post by hk1337 »

p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

I would prefer to use vim over nano personally but as a default, I agree nano is a far better choice.

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

#173

Post by Aperocky »

p-e-w wrote: post #159
Aperocky wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering this is a subjective interest, what kind of data are you looking for? A measuring contest that happen to control on individual skills? What kind of data may satisfy your high bar of acceptance? Let's take a step back from vim: what kind of data will demonstrate satisfactory performance over any kind of editor for your liking?

Any published study comparing performance of experienced modal vs. non-modal editor users on common tasks would be interesting already. Basically, standard UX research stuff. Figuring out how to control for differences in skill etc. is literally the job of people who conduct such research. I mean, there are studies examining how the quality of Git commits is affected by blood alcohol levels, so that doesn't seem like…

Does any such academic study exist for any editor comparison? Since according to you these are "literally the job of people" and "standard UX research stuff".

This seems like a classic case of setting the bar arbitrarily high to stifle discussion - I cannot find any, but would love to be proven wrong.

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

#174

Post by unnah »

p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

That is easily solved by configuring other programs to use vi keybindings by default. Shells including bash and zsh can be configured to run in a vi-compatible mode, and so can many other programs - there are even chrome and firefox extensions to enable vi keybindings.

Nevertheless, for some reason no one seems to have created a Linux distribution with pure vi input conventions...

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

#175

Post by emidln »

p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

The convention on modern *nix is readline/libedit bindings in a shell. These default to emacs-like keybindings that nano ignores. It seems that we have a much stronger case for emacs with the menu enabled than for nano.

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

#176

Post by numpad0 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #66
numpad0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple weeks ago I learned hard way that : key just don’t work in certain combination of host locale and VNC client and client locale. C-c didn’t work, Ctrl+Alt+F2 didn’t work, ssh didn’t work because sshd is not up yet, even VM power cycling button was stuck and didn’t work. Maybe a custom VNC client could have worked. I think I ended up rebooting the host once, just to get out of vi . Second time I just changed loc…

ZZ would probably have worked for you for quitting (seems to work in plain vi as well as the vims)

This seems a frequent enough issue, that searching "centos can't type colon" in my language yield bunch of SEO blogspams recommending `Shift+11` and `Shift+ZZ`. But neither of which worked in my case; I think Shift+1 was bugged and the file wasn't writable.

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

#177

Post by _0w8t »

p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

Nano default key bindings are not standard either. They are less different than vi from a typical GUI input controls and having a menu at the bottom of the screen help, but they force the user to get used to yet another convention.

I was considering at some point to create a patch to nano to have a simple option to switch to more common bindings or even ask the user on the first run about it. But then I discovered the micro editor and simply have been using that.

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

#178

Post by paulryanrogers »

palata wrote: post #73
dijit wrote: post #5

There was a time (2006?) when I was getting into linux. I was a big microsofty, due to comfort mostly, and I was shamed into trying Linux. Like most people I went Ubuntu first, but wifi drivers at the time were lacking, and nvidia of yore was certainly not better than nvidia of now. Suffice it to say: I spent a lot of time in the terminal trying to fix things. Nano was my tool of choice because: honestly the initial…

> We have a less powerful tool because we want to attract newbies That's exactly it. The modern metrics for anything to be successful is the number of people using it, even if they are completely useless because they did not put any effort into learning the basics. In this case, it would be essentially "ESC", "i" and ":wq". But that's waaaay too hard. No wonder everybody ships a full rootfs in a container for every s…

It's not about difficulty of pressing a few keys, it's about discover-ability.

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

#179

Post by vbezhenar »

p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

ed is the only editor which works like every other console program on the system. Nano does not work like every other program on the system. Neither vi nor nano should be shipped in the base system.

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

#180

Post by korrt »

p-e-w wrote: post #39

There is a very simple, end-of-discussion type argument why shipping Vim as the default editor is a terrible idea: Because its user interface differs significantly from how every other program on the system works. You can have all kinds of fruitful or fruitless debates about whether there is some deeper sense in which Vim is a "superior" editor, but there is no sensible reason for it to be the default, ever. Conventi…

If I forget to change the default editor in Debian and Nano pops up, I have to consult a search engine how to exit it. Just like other people do for Vim, except that Nano's interface is horrible.

It is a weird decision, much like shipping Exim as the default MTA.

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