Re: [Nano-devel] [RFC] a few things

[Mark Majeres]

On 4/9/14, address@hidden <address@hidden> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. [RFC] a few things (Benno Schulenberg)
>    2. Re: [RFC] a few things (Chris Allegretta)
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> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 14:50:46 +0200
> From: Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden>
> To: Nano <address@hidden>
> Subject: [Nano-devel] [RFC] a few things
> Message-ID:
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> Content-Type: text/plain
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to hear your opinion on the following few points.
>
> 1)  Currently, when the user makes a mistake on the command line,
> nano blurts out 48 lines of usage text, scrolling the actual error
> message right off the screen.  (I then don't even bother to scroll
> back, but just do <Up> and look closely at what I typed.)  Would
> it not be better if nano just printed the error message plus one
> line saying "Type 'nano --help' for a list of options."?
>
> 2)  The tiny version of nano does not provide the ability to search
> case-sensitively nor backwards, but does provide the ability to search
> for regular expressions.  The first ability costs almost no code, and
> the second just a few tiny fragments -- shouldn't they be included?
> Also, a tiny nano includes the ability to Search-and-replace (M-R)
> but not the ability to Search-for-next (M-W).  The latter costs just
> a bit of code -- shouldn't it be included in tiny?  Or should tiny
> exclude even more?  Regular expressions and even Replace?
>
> 3)  Some years ago Dan Mahoney suggested [1] the addition of the
> feature of making not only tabs and spaces but also end-of-lines
> visible -- useful when in softwrap mode, where it can be difficult
> to see whether a line wraps or ends.  Would anyone else be interested
> in this feature?
>
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2010-06/msg00000.html
>
> 4)  Currently nano does nothing special when it is invoked with the
> name of 'pico'.  Should it?  Should it in that case try to resemble pico
> as closely as possible, in every menu?  It would allow nano itself to
> diverge a bit from this look (just the arragement of help lines) in an
> attempt to be more helpful (show ^\ Replace by default, for example).
>
> 5)  The section "Editor Basics" in the texinfo documentation explains
> several things about nano -- like how to enter commands, how to use the
> mouse, and what the Title bar and Status bar are -- but it doesn't explain
> how the cutbuffer works (for example that consecutive ^Ks will add to the
> buffer, but that a ^K after any other key will overwrite it), and what the
> mark is and how it behaves (that a ^K will cut the whole marked section
> and unset the mark without saying so).  Would the addition of two sections,
> "The Cutbuffer" and "The Mark" be useful?  And should maybe even the man
> page contain a short section about the basic editing behaviour of nano?
>
> Benno
>
> --
> http://www.fastmail.fm - Send your email first class
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 11:28:48 -0400
> From: Chris Allegretta <address@hidden>
> To: Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden>
> Cc: Nano <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Nano-devel] [RFC] a few things
> Message-ID:
>       <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 4/9/14, Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'd like to hear your opinion on the following few points.
>>
>> 1)  Currently, when the user makes a mistake on the command line,
>> nano blurts out 48 lines of usage text, scrolling the actual error
>> message right off the screen.  (I then don't even bother to scroll
>> back, but just do <Up> and look closely at what I typed.)  Would
>> it not be better if nano just printed the error message plus one
>> line saying "Type 'nano --help' for a list of options."?
>
> Excellent, yes.
>
>> 2)  The tiny version of nano does not provide the ability to search
>> case-sensitively nor backwards, but does provide the ability to search
>> for regular expressions.  The first ability costs almost no code, and
>> the second just a few tiny fragments -- shouldn't they be included?
>> Also, a tiny nano includes the ability to Search-and-replace (M-R)
>> but not the ability to Search-for-next (M-W).  The latter costs just
>> a bit of code -- shouldn't it be included in tiny?  Or should tiny
>> exclude even more?  Regular expressions and even Replace?
>
> indifferent to this; nano originally became the default debian editor
> (brag brag brag) parlly because it was able to fit on the boot
> floppies image.  Jordi or someone more Debian-ish can correct of I'm
> operating under a misapprehension about that.
>
>> 3)  Some years ago Dan Mahoney suggested [1] the addition of the
>> feature of making not only tabs and spaces but also end-of-lines
>> visible -- useful when in softwrap mode, where it can be difficult
>> to see whether a line wraps or ends.  Would anyone else be interested
>> in this feature?
>>
>> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2010-06/msg00000.html
>
> As a flag or rcfile option?  Sure.
>
>> 4)  Currently nano does nothing special when it is invoked with the
>> name of 'pico'.  Should it?  Should it in that case try to resemble pico
>> as closely as possible, in every menu?  It would allow nano itself to
>> diverge a bit from this look (just the arragement of help lines) in an
>> attempt to be more helpful (show ^\ Replace by default, for example).
>
> That's by design (now anyway). It's part of the GNU Coding Standards,
> http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Program-Behavior
>
> "Please don't make the behavior of a utility depend on the name used
> to invoke it. It is useful sometimes to make a link to a utility with
> a different name, and that should not change what it does.
>
> Instead, use a run time option or a compilation switch or both to
> select among the alternate behaviors."
>
> That's one of the reasons we have 8 billion flags :-)
>

Instead of a soft link, you can create an alias with the desired
flags.  This method would require documentation and user interaction
though.  I know busybox is a multi-call binary and I recently read
that git is too (haven't verified this).  To check argv[0] and run as
pico seems ok to me.


>> 5)  The section "Editor Basics" in the texinfo documentation explains
>> several things about nano -- like how to enter commands, how to use the
>> mouse, and what the Title bar and Status bar are -- but it doesn't
>> explain
>> how the cutbuffer works (for example that consecutive ^Ks will add to the
>> buffer, but that a ^K after any other key will overwrite it), and what
>> the
>> mark is and how it behaves (that a ^K will cut the whole marked section
>> and unset the mark without saying so).  Would the addition of two
>> sections,
>> "The Cutbuffer" and "The Mark" be useful?  And should maybe even the man
>> page contain a short section about the basic editing behaviour of nano?
>
> I'm 100% for more thorough documentation.  It could even be added as a
> task on the Savannah page if we want to ask for help writing it.
>
>
>
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> End of Nano-devel Digest, Vol 122, Issue 11
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On a seperate note, I develop on openwrt quite a bit and it does not
create /dev/std* by default.  It took a little effort to figure out
why I could not invoke nano in pager mode as advertised.  I changed
the line in nano to read from /proc/self/fd/0 instead of /dev/stdin.

The pager mode of nano is very useful for formatting output from
iptables and similar commands that spit out loads of info.  I added a
few lines that make nano behave similar to the 'less' command.  If you
think this would be a feature that should be included let me know and
I'll post a patch.

Mark