working with nano

[Linux for blind general discussion]

I was introduced to nano by pico the default editor with the alpine mail
client loaded when composing or replying to mail.  It was part of the
alpine package and could be used indenpendently as a text editor.

Nano is a much improved pico and can be substituted for use in alpine.

In the '90's I used dial up to a shell acount to use alpine and used pico 
and later nano as my text editor.

Currently I use both in the terminal of a mac.

The key to making best use of nano is to configure the features one wants 
in the nanorc file.  This includes key mapping for each option with 
ctrl+letter.

The port for the mac comes with a text nanorc.sample file which notates all
the options.

If this is not available in other distributions I would be happy to send it 
as an attachment.

On Fri, 16 Jun 2017, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:

> Yes, this thread is interesting.  I think I'll try some of what people
> have suggested.  I've tried nano a few times, but I clearly didn't find
> all the places where I could learn to make it do more of what I wanted.
>
> In 1979, the only thing I knew about computers was that I didn't have
> one.  I was in school for another line of work.  My serious time on
> computers began in the spring of 1989, and I got at least half-seriously
> into Linux in around 2005.  At that time, such editing as I did was
> using emacs, but mostly I've used vim.
>
> Anyway, I appreciate the info on this thread.
>
> Al
>
> On 06/16/2017 11:24 AM, 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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