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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)

#211

Post by chongli »

chrisoverzero wrote: post #196
chongli wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ed is not useful for writing, because it does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters have. What do you mean? $ ed i Ed is indeed a good choice for a line editor. We're not talking about line editors, though, but about text editors. Ed is not useful for writing, because it does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters…

Here’s the claim: > [ed] does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters have. …and here’s the counterclaim: .s/does not have/does have/g p See how you had to type another command to see the results of this substitution? I don’t think this demonstrates what you want it to.

Typewriters don't have substitution. The immediate visual feedback when entering text in ed is that the keystrokes are echoed to the screen. This occurs regardless of whether you're writing commands or you're in insert mode, such as in this case:

    i
    Ed is indeed a good choice for a line editor. We're not talking about line editors, though, but about text editors. Ed is not useful for writing, because it does not have the immediate visual feedback when entering text that even mechanical typewriters have. For that, you need a text editor, and between Vim and Nano, only one behaves like most Unix software developed in the past three decades.

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

#212

Post by virtualritz »

MisterTea wrote: post #171
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 w…

Your point seems to assume that reading manuals is the 'right' way to learn about working with a system.

While it is the preferred way for myself I acknowledge that it is not for a lot of other people.

Furthermore you can easily configure any distro today to 'respect history' as much as you desire by changing a few config files.

That doesn't change the face that the average person interacting with a *nix OS today will not share this history.

Discoverability in UX is a key concept. The people who came up with what you call 'history' simply had no clue about it.

Human Computer Interfaces (HCI, what now broadly falls under the term 'UX') was a subject you studied decoupled from the rest of CS (if the university even offered this). People writing tools where oblivious to UX. And the users where the same folks.

I would go as far and say that ignoring this and insisting on these modal editors as defaults because 'history' indeed borders on arrogance for this very reason.

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

#213

Post by garciasn »

_0w8t wrote: post #177
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 th…

They're standard for beginning of line, end of line, cut line when using bash/zsh; that's already most of the way there.

I use vim day to day but I do miss pico's ctrl-k/ctrl-u behavior for doing quick block cut/paste.

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

#214

Post by benj111 »

nkozyra wrote: post #19
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…

> I feel like nano shipping as the default editor is a step-back. We have a less powerful tool because we want to attract newbies Perhaps, but your experience sounds like a good blueprint for what new terminal users might want. Start with nano move to more powerful tools when you need them.

If someone asked you what drill they should buy having never used a drill before, not knowing what theyre going to use it for, but probably 'hanging pictures and stuff'. Would you suggest a top of the line SDS Max drill, or would you suggest some bog standard inexpensive drill that does the basics?

less powerful doesn't mean worse if you aren't using the features. It just makes it harder to use.

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

#215

Post by [deleted] »

kapep wrote: post #126
dijit wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my concern would be that I dont think people would reach for the more powerful tools; since they arent being pressured into learning them and its impossible to articulate the power you would get until you have it. I was extremely resistant to learn new things when I thought my current way of working was perfectly fine. It’s only retrospectively that I realise how limited I was.

It's also hard to articulate power if the people have no need for that power. People stay with nano because it's intuitive and good enough at editing some config files. What else would someone learning Linux even do with a text editor? I've tried to get into vi and emacs but I honestly never found a good use case for them, even as a developer. When I edit files, the changes are usually very small and I spent most tim…

[deleted]

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

#216

Post by dijit »

Yizahi wrote: post #133
alkonaut wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on how you use the system. I have no intention of ever using a Linux as my “main” system. I’m always a visitor on a strange foreign system. I hold my nose, go in, do whatever dirty deed must be done to get it working again. Usually it’s in some docker image, or an old pi used in my closet, maybe a router, or a cloud vm. But regardless it’s never “home”. I don’t have a personal user, I don’t have a…

Exactly this. That's why I often read comments like "just install zsh it's so good", or "I have this vim config with plugins and everything works as I expect" and have to react - "ok, good for you, but I have to use fresh installs of linux exclusively, often embedded, and I just pray it's not a busybox, so only defaults for me forever". Learning vim to edit a few lines a week on some remote host, because they didn't…

honestly, I think you’re right. one of the things I failed to mention was that one of the reasons I learned vi is that it was the only editor available across all unix and unix-likes. I think it was even mandated by POSIX. Often these days fresh installs come with nano and not vi, which means that we are tailoring fresh minimal installs to non-power users at the cost of power users. Which is probably what I’m upset about. I like that nano is available and easy to get; i think it should be in the default installation for anything larger than a pxe image or minimal install, but I am not a fan of this kind of behaviour change.

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

#217

Post by palata »

smarkov wrote: post #193
palata wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why can't we all agree on how we edit text? Because there are some extremely different ways of editing text out there. As you mention, vim and emacs are extremely different from Word, though extremely popular. There are certainly many more examples, but I believe those 3 are enough to say that we most definitely have not all agreed on how to edit text.

> Because there are some extremely different ways of editing text out there. Key word here being _different_. Different should not be the default. That does not mean we should all be forced to edit text the same way, it just means that the most widely used way of editing text should be the default. For the most part we have agreed on what the standard way of editing text is in GUI's. nano has its quirks but at least…

> it just means that the most widely used way of editing text should be the default.

Yeah, maybe. Not entirely convinced though :-). There is a tendency to reinforce the most widely used ways everywhere. As an artist, you can choose to make the kind of music most people want to hear in a night club, or make the kind of music you, as a musician, like. And accept that maybe that's not for the majority.

The majority is using Windows/macOS/Android/iOS. Linux distros are mostly used for servers (where I would hope that a sysadmin can learn a handful of vim bindings (ESC, "i", ":wq" is enough to start)), and some people (me included) are using a Linux Desktop.

Of course, the more popular Linux Desktop gets, the more people will want it to look like Windows/iOS (because those are by far the most popular). Does that mean all Linux Desktop distros should try to get adopted by those people? I don't think so. Fine if Ubuntu wants to make a "FOSS alternative to macOS", but I would find it sad if it did force others to follow. And it does: most devs don't really know Linux and want the macOS experience, end up using Ubuntu, and write code that works only on Ubuntu. So now many apps rely on e.g. systemd just because Ubuntu chose it. I find it a bit sad.

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

#218

Post by palata »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #178
palata wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

When you start vim, it says "type :help Enter for information". When you do that, it starts with "Move around: Use the cursor keys, or "h" to go left, [...]".

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

#220

Post by minusf »

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…

there is no "default editor" in unix systems per se, only installed by default. whatever the user/distribution sets in $EDITOR/$VISUAL is the one being called.

vi/vim became "default" on linux distros because it was simply always available while emacs was an optional kitchen sink package and there were no other widely accepted alternatives (like midnight commander's built in editor or nano).

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