Nano has already supplanted the great EMacs and Vim as the most popular text editor of all linux distros, for though it has many omissions in functionality it scores over the older, more complete programs in two important respects. First, it is slightly simpler; and secondly it has the text “^ Exit” inscribed in highlighted text on its footer

EDIT : This sees to be going over some people’s heads. It’s a hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy reference.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions . . . it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

  • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Both nano and emacs suffer from the same problem - bad defaults. You need to pass like ten options to nano for it to work as expected to edit configuration files and small scripts.

      • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        alias nano='nano -A -D -E -F -T 4 -Z -g -i -l -m -q -t -% -_' and you need to enable syntax highlighting in nanorc (not all distros enable it by default) include /usr/share/nano/*.nanorc also there are additional/improved rules for highlighting here https://github.com/galenguyer/nano-syntax-highlighting and you can rebind every key, but it seems that it doesn’t support ‘chaining’ of keys nor multiple modifier keys at the same time.

        • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Nice, thanks!

          For anyone wondering about the options: https://i.imgur.com/hAjTxJO.png

          Also, apparently you can create ~/.nanorc and put the following in for those (instead of an alias):

          set smarthome
          set boldtext
          set tabstospaces
          set multibuffer
          set tabsize 4
          set zap
          set showcursor
          set autoindent
          set linenumbers
          set mouse
          set indicator
          set saveonexit
          set stateflags
          set minibar

          I’ll play around with those and the syntax stuff. I definitely personally do not want the saveonexit behaviour, but you’ve started me on the path of looking at the other options, and that right there shows me it’s worth my time to look, so thank you :)

    • homes@piefed.worldEnglish
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      2 months ago

      That’s why nano gets used more than vi/vim. In the past, the majority of people using terminal text editors were geeks and developers. Now the majority of people using the terminal text editors are more often casual users who have no use for putting the time and effort to learn vi/vim, especially because they have no need for the extended functionality

      • chellomere@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I don’t get you people. Proper copy/paste support is “extended functionality”? I beg to differ. This is basic functionality.

        And no, single line copy/paste as offered by nano, or copy and paste through the terminal is not proper copy/paste.

        • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
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          2 months ago

          Nano has proper copy/pate, it works identical to any text editor. Mark -> copy/cut -> paste

  • TaterTot@piefed.socialEnglish
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    2 months ago

    I’m ashamed to admit that, despite having read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy several times, my Vim elitist mindset made me miss the reference.

    Sometimes you need a real good slice of humble pie to remember what’s important in life.

  • heliotrope@retrofed.comEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I’ve used Vim, NeoVim, Micro, mg(1), JOE, and even MS Edit (both the original DOS version and the recent Rust clone). No matter how complex and tailored I wrote my config, though, the features I actually used were included in GNU nano and/or my command shell without any of the bugs, bloat, learning curve, or slop.

    Using it as my default just makes sense.

    • Funkt4st1c@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Nano is great for editing files. It is absolutely terrible for any amount of text processing or anything other than raw code copied from a tutorial

      • heliotrope@retrofed.comEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        What sort of text processing? I rarely do this, so I usually just rely on things like sed, ed, sort, uniq, and other shell commands to handle this.