why nano and not pico?

[kraylus]

doesnt matter to me. i see no cosmetic difference really... and as far as i can tell, there's no difference in functionality...

so why would you replace pico with nano?

just curious.

ryan

[delta407]

nano is "free software", pico is not. See this article for reasons.

[arkane]

basically the university of washington wrote it (I think thats who it is?) and Pine. They have some really whacked licensing on it, as Delta407 said.

Personally, I don't think either are good alternatives, but thats just me. vi would have been better

I know I know... personal choices.

[MX]

nano has a niftfy easy to use search and replace that (last i saw) pico does not offer (at least its not listed on the main screen options)

and not to mention pico/nano are far easier to the new user then VI/M X/EMACS etc

i like nano

[klieber]

OK folks, we've already had our vi vs. emacs vs. every other text editor flame war in these forums. We are not going to turn this thread into one, too.

Please be mindful of that when responding to this thread.

--kurt

[metalhedd]

This is in no way a text editor holy war, just a comment from someone whose been through most of the newbie teething problems. first of all, NEVER EVER EVER Tell a newbie that vi is a better text editor. one of my *nix guru friends told me that and caused me more grief than you could imagine... for someone coming from a windows world vi and emacs or anything similar is a horrible idea.

including it as the default editor for ANY distribution that targets newbies (or at least doesn't disclude them) is a horrible idea. the only purpose those text editors serve is for power users. the learning curve is far too much for a newbie. (considering that the learning curve for a text editor should be 1-2 seconds. not 20 minutes of reading man pages to figure out how to enter text.)

[klieber]

including it as the default editor for ANY distribution that targets newbies (or at least doesn't disclude them) is a horrible idea.

Gentoo in no way, shape or form targets itself as a newbie distro. And while I would say no linux distro discourages anyone from using their product, whether their new or a guru, I know I always make sure someone brand new to linux knows that Gentoo is tough nugget to crack and that there are easier alternatives out there.

--kurt

[metalhedd]

while its true that it doesn't target newbies, I guess the best way to say what i meant was unless the distro is intended strictly for *nix experts, don't use vi or emacs. anyone who wants to use vi or emacs can install it fairly early on and will only have to put up with nano to edit a couple of files, whereas a total newbie if given only vi would have a hell of a time figuring it out, and with no other alternatives until the installation is finished they may just give up altogether. you don't need the fancy features of those other text editors just to install gentoo.

[klieber]

while its true that it doesn't target newbies, I guess the best way to say what i meant was unless the distro is intended strictly for *nix experts, don't use vi or emacs.

OK, but now we're straying into a totally different thread, which has already been beat to death.

So, let's gently steer this beast back onto the topic of pico and nano. (which I think has already been answered, but I'll leave the thread open in case someone has something else to add to the subject.)

--kurt

[alec]

Disclaimer: I went through a vim phase, and now keep it for serious editing for stuff like HTML, but use nano for just about everything else.

--

I prefer nano over pico because:

-nano has a replace function
-nano is much, much smaller

Code: Select all

alec@melvin bin $ du /usr/bin/nano && du /usr/bin/pico
92      /usr/bin/nano
200     /usr/bin/pico

-nano has HOME and END keys that work
-i don't want pine.

I like nano over *vi* because:

-I don't need syntax highlighting to edit my /etc/make.conf - syntax highlighting is for weaklings and is one step closer to ncurses which is one step closer to X
-nano is much smaller than my vi of choice:

Code: Select all

alec@melvin bin $ du /usr/bin/nano && du /usr/bin/vim
92      /usr/bin/nano
1816    /usr/bin/vim

-if I'm just editing configs, or writing something, I really don't care to pound away at my keyboard until it lets me write something

I like nano over emacs because:

-nano is not emacs

Apologies to http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html :

When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi
*and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like,
'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor
that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time.

NANO(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual NANO(1)

NAME
nano - text editor

SYNOPSIS
nano [ -w ] [name]
DESCRIPTION
Nano is a free clone of pico. Nano is the standard text editor.
---

Computer Scientists love nano, not just because it's small,
but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves nano
because it's NANO!

"Nano is the standard text editor."

And nano doesn't waste space on my computer. Just look:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 92 Apr 29 2002 /bin/nano
-rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/bin/vi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs

Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to nano.
Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog
message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K;
and 3) RUNS NANO!!!!!!

"Nano is the standard text editor."

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty nano:

nano-box$ nano

Wow! It works! Finally, an editor that I can type in! It works like I think it should! As I'm typing this, it appears on the screen. When I want to find something, I don't have to read the man page. When I want to use a web browser, I can go to another terminal and fire up lynx! I LOVE NANO!

---
Note the epiphany.

"Nano is the standard text editor."

Nano, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

NANO IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! NANO HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED
AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! NANO WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS
BODILY FLUIDS OR CONFIG FILES!! NANO IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! NANO MAKES THE SUN
SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!!

When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra MEGABYTES of worthless
help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an tiny (to the point of nano) editor!!

TEXT EDITOR.

When Gentoo, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their
"editor" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely
you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard.

If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should
not be vi. If you use NANO, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE
SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY NANO TO TEMPT THE
FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY NANO HAS SPOKEN!!!

Hmm... just doesn't have the same effect as ed... oh well.

[jtanner]

My one gripe with nano is that you have to pass it a flag to prevent line-wrap, which seems counter-intuitive to me, and can be a painful mistake when editing files in /etc.

While I prefer xemacs for day-to-day use, I think the choice of nano on the install disk was a good one, with the aforementioned caveat.

Jim

[klieber]

My one gripe with nano is that you have to pass it a flag to prevent line-wrap

You can always alias nano to nano -w to work around that, but yes, I agree it isn't the most intuitive thing in the world.

--kurt

[jtanner]

My one gripe with nano is that you have to pass it a flag to prevent line-wrap

You can always alias nano to nano -w to work around that, but yes, I agree it isn't the most intuitive thing in the world.

--kurt

Is this something that should be done on the install cd? It might make things more intuitive to users not familiar with nano. Or would this cause too much confusion with people already familiar with nano (does specifying -w twice even cause a problem)?

Jim

[klieber]

Is this something that should be done on the install cd?

Launching 'nano -w -w' doesn't seem to cause any errors, so I'm not sure why this wouldn't be a good idea for the install. (I'm not sure what shell the install process uses and whether or not it supports aliasing, though.)

I would still say that all the docs should include mention of the '-w' requirement so those users who do read them won't be confused down the road why 'nano' works in one place but not in the other.

--kurt

[jtanner]

I believe the install process uses bash, but it's been so long....

I agree with you about the docs, though. Where should I submit this for consideration by the maintainer of the install cd, Gentoo Suggestions forum or bugzilla?

Also, is there a global config file for nano to set/unset such options? Something like site-load.el for xemacs?

Jim

[klieber]

Where should I submit this for consideration by the maintainer of the install cd?

http://bugs.gentoo.org/

No idea on the global config file.

--kurt

[jtanner]

Bug filed at http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3639

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Jim

[alec]

I don't know about nano being linked to nano -w - I mean, if it's in the docs, it's in the docs. No real reason to dumb nano down (wow, that's something...)

[lain iwakura]

just have to add my 2 sense in here:
i think nano works fine for the default text editor on install. one reason I think it's used because, well, it's a hell of a lot smaller than emacs. and of coarse, it's simple. no need to get too fancy right away -- especially for someone new to linux. vi(m) would just confuse the hell out of them.

[klieber]

ok folks, this thread is now locked.

--kurt