5 ms·

I think nano is modern itself, still actively being developed, and for the past few years more or less feature complete. But if nano wasn't there, I would proba

by pepa65 3y ago

I think nano is modern itself, still actively being developed, and for the past few years more or less feature complete. But if nano wasn't there, I would probably be using micro.

xp84 3y ago
Too many awkward keyboard commands though. To save and quit: ^o, Return, ^x Vs Micro ^s ^q Honestly that, and ^k (kill to end of line) are the only commands I use in any CLI editor. Ironically my muscle memory actually learned the obnoxious 3-step nano way so I usually forget to use micro. But every time I work with a developer under 40 and see them fiddling with vim trying to wrestle with vim to do simple text entry with a git commit message, I help them set $VISUAL and -$EDITOR to micro, although I have to remember the config to turn on the help/status bar that shows the commands, since they inexplicably turned it off by default a few years ago.
- freeopinion 3y ago
  Whenever I see a developer under 40 struggling to figure out what all the carets on the bottom of the screen mean...
- Jiocus 3y ago
  Are you sure about those nano commands? Since a few years I've always found nano system defaults to be: ^s: Save ^o: Save as (type out filename, save and return to editing) In other words, to save and quit: ^s,^x
  - xp84 3y ago
    If that’s true, I’ve been literally wasting a really annoying keystroke every time. Why on Earth don’t they include SAVE in the list of commands they advertise in the footer?
    - Jiocus 3y ago
      Let's see what nano says in ^G (help): ^S Save file without prompting
      - xp84 3y ago
        I appreciate that and will be forever grateful to you personally from now on when I hit ^S, but I just never thought to search the Help for it, since I figured something so critical would surely not have been omitted from the footer menu if it existed! Let's just take a moment to appreciate what is apparently more important than the happy-path activity of saving your file: ^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos ^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell Of these, I to this day have no idea what ^J, ^C, and ^T would even do. Who the heck tries to justify text in a plaintext editor? Lol.
        Jiocus 3y ago
        To be fair, I just discovered that many(all?) of the commands listed in ^G (help) are actually in the footer menu, but the menu is truncated to what available space is available on 2 rows × char width. Save is positioned very far to the right as the last item. According to nano, the rationale of the order is: > "The bottom two lines show the most commonly used shortcuts in the editor." I still use ^O a lot due to heuristics of reading a file X, to use as a template for a new file Y (think nginx server block). The intent to use ^O, in those cases, actually precedes firing up nano.
        xyproto 3y ago
        * ^J is not very useful, it combines a block of lines into a single line. * ^T requires a spell checker to be installed. I get: Error invoking "spell", even though I have aspell, gspell, hspell, huspell, hunspell and also nuspell installed. Who knows how to configure this. * ^C outputs information about the current cursor position, but "Cur Pos" is not a helpful description.
    - tpoacher 3y ago
      not only that, you can type ^x directly; if the file was modified you'll be prompted for a "save y/n" before exit

by pepa65 3y ago

I think nano is modern itself, still actively being developed, and for the past few years more or less feature complete. But if nano wasn't there, I would probably be using micro.

xp84 3y ago

Too many awkward keyboard commands though. To save and quit: ^o, Return, ^x Vs Micro ^s ^q Honestly that, and ^k (kill to end of line) are the only commands I use in any CLI editor. Ironically my muscle memory actually learned the obnoxious 3-step nano way so I usually forget to use micro. But every time I work with a developer under 40 and see them fiddling with vim trying to wrestle with vim to do simple text entry with a git commit message, I help them set $VISUAL and -$EDITOR to micro, although I have to remember the config to turn on the help/status bar that shows the commands, since they inexplicably turned it off by default a few years ago.

freeopinion 3y ago
Whenever I see a developer under 40 struggling to figure out what all the carets on the bottom of the screen mean...
Jiocus 3y ago
Are you sure about those nano commands? Since a few years I've always found nano system defaults to be: ^s: Save ^o: Save as (type out filename, save and return to editing) In other words, to save and quit: ^s,^x
- xp84 3y ago
  If that’s true, I’ve been literally wasting a really annoying keystroke every time. Why on Earth don’t they include SAVE in the list of commands they advertise in the footer?
  - Jiocus 3y ago
    Let's see what nano says in ^G (help): ^S Save file without prompting
    - xp84 3y ago
      I appreciate that and will be forever grateful to you personally from now on when I hit ^S, but I just never thought to search the Help for it, since I figured something so critical would surely not have been omitted from the footer menu if it existed! Let's just take a moment to appreciate what is apparently more important than the happy-path activity of saving your file: ^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos ^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell Of these, I to this day have no idea what ^J, ^C, and ^T would even do. Who the heck tries to justify text in a plaintext editor? Lol.
      - Jiocus 3y ago
        To be fair, I just discovered that many(all?) of the commands listed in ^G (help) are actually in the footer menu, but the menu is truncated to what available space is available on 2 rows × char width. Save is positioned very far to the right as the last item. According to nano, the rationale of the order is: > "The bottom two lines show the most commonly used shortcuts in the editor." I still use ^O a lot due to heuristics of reading a file X, to use as a template for a new file Y (think nginx server block). The intent to use ^O, in those cases, actually precedes firing up nano.
      - xyproto 3y ago
        * ^J is not very useful, it combines a block of lines into a single line. * ^T requires a spell checker to be installed. I get: Error invoking "spell", even though I have aspell, gspell, hspell, huspell, hunspell and also nuspell installed. Who knows how to configure this. * ^C outputs information about the current cursor position, but "Cur Pos" is not a helpful description.
  - tpoacher 3y ago
    not only that, you can type ^x directly; if the file was modified you'll be prompted for a "save y/n" before exit