working with nano

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tim here.  Hey, Martin, I love the tales of yore.  I too cut my Unix
teeth on DEC Ultrix machines, have used elvis/stevie as VI clones on
DOS (as well as "ed" on Unixlikes and "edlin" on DOS), played with a
Votrax Apple II hardware speech synthesizer, and also walked to school
up-hill both ways in the snow. (grins)

The round hockey-puck mice on those DEC Ultrix machines had
cutting-edge laser-tracking but were marred by the horrible user
interface where you couldn't tell the mouse orientation by feel
alone.

Guess it's time for this old geezer to go shake my cane at the kids
and tell them to get offa my lawn.

-tim

On June 16, 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> 	This has been an interesting thread so far. I began using
> unix in 1989 on a DEC system which used the trade name of Ultrix
> and the standard editor was vi so I've stuck with vi ever since
> since it is so common.
> 
> 	Well, ultrix went away many years ago and my working
> group used Sunos for several years as well as IBM's aix and
> finally Linux and I kept using vi.
> 
> 	To me, nano was and mostly still is that aggravating
> application one gets on a new Debian system before we have time
> to fix it.
> 
> 	I have on rare occasions used it long enough to do
> something that just had to be done quickly and wasn't too
> complicated but the first thing I noticed was that rather echoing
> the characters I was typing, it echoed the current column number
> on the line which is probably what happens with show-cursor on.
> 
> 	As I said, this usually happens when you are trying to
> fix something that is seriously broken and people are waiting and
> breathing down one's neck so I have never been too happy to hear
> 
> "gnu nano 2.x.y" instead of what one usually hears when vi or vim
> fires up and one knows what the keys do so you can concentrate on
> the task at hand.
> 
> 	Shortly before I retired, one of my coworkers asked me if
> I would put nano on the FreeBSD system we were using as the unix
> machine in our department. I installed it with no problem and
> realized that I was dealing with someone who was used to nano and
> didn't like to use vi any more than I liked to be forced to use
> nano so as far as I was concerned, it was turn abouts, fair play.
> It's kind of a case of saying "yes" when you possibly can rather
> than hassling somebody over basically nothing.
> 
> 	When I first started out in 1989, I was using an EchoGP
> hardware synth through an IBM PC/XT running DOS and kermit as the
> terminal emulator and I now use Debian Linux with speakup. These
> are the good old days right now-- not perfect, but certainly
> better than when I first started using computers which was 1979
> on an Apple II followed in the eighties by IBM PC's and clones.
> 
> 	By the way, elvis was a DOS version of vi that I used a
> lot back in the day. Don't forget that we all walked 5 miles up
> hill to and from school in the snow even in Summer.
> 
> Martin McCormick
> 
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