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

[Benno Schulenberg]

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014, at 17:28, Chris Allegretta wrote:
> On 4/9/14, Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> As a flag or rcfile option?  Sure.

My idea was to lump it in with the other whitespace-showing code,
to be toggled on and off with M-P, but the end-of-lines showing only
when in softwrap mode.  But maybe that is too rigid?

> > 4)  Currently nano does nothing special when it is invoked with the
> > name of 'pico'.
> 
> 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."

This "or a compilation switch" doesn't make sense to me -- I can only
understand it as meaning that the binary will somehow have a different
behaviour.  Why is it okay that a program with one and the same name
can have different default behaviours, and that a program called with a
different name must behave the same?  They give no arguments for this.

But I don't really care, because I won't use it, and (as Mark says) it's
always possible to make 'pico' an alias or a tiny script that calls nano
with certain options.

> > 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.

It is a few lines, I'll write it when I get around to it -- many other things
to do.  :)

Benno

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Accessible with your email software
                          or over the web