123 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
123 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
GNU nano -- a simple editor, inspired by Pico
|
|
|
|
Purpose
|
|
|
|
Nano is a small and simple text editor for use on the terminal.
|
|
It copied the interface and key bindings of the Pico editor but
|
|
added several missing features: undo/redo, syntax highlighting,
|
|
line numbers, softwrapping, multiple buffers, selecting text by
|
|
holding Shift, search-and-replace with regular expressions, and
|
|
several other conveniences.
|
|
|
|
Appearance
|
|
|
|
In rough ASCII graphics, this is what nano's screen looks like:
|
|
|
|
____________________________________________________________________
|
|
| GNU nano 7.2 filename Modified |
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
| This is the text window, displaying the contents of a 'buffer', |
|
|
| the contents of the file you are editing. |
|
|
| |
|
|
| The top row of the screen is the 'title bar'; it shows nano's |
|
|
| version, the name of the file, and whether you modified it. |
|
|
| The two bottom rows display the most important shortcuts; in |
|
|
| those lines ^ means Ctrl. The third row from the bottom shows |
|
|
| some feedback message, or gets replaced with a prompt bar when |
|
|
| you tell nano to do something that requires extra input. |
|
|
| |
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
| [ Some status message ] |
|
|
|^G Help ^O Write Out ^W Where Is ^K Cut ^T Execute |
|
|
|^X Exit ^R Read File ^\ Replace ^U Paste ^J Justify |
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Origin
|
|
|
|
The nano project was started in 1999 because of a few "problems"
|
|
with the wonderfully easy-to-use and friendly Pico text editor.
|
|
|
|
First and foremost was its license: the Pine suite does not use
|
|
the GPL, and (before using the Apache License) it had unclear
|
|
restrictions on redistribution. Because of this, Pine and Pico
|
|
were not included in many GNU/Linux distributions. Furthermore,
|
|
some features (like go-to-line-number or search-and-replace) were
|
|
unavailable for a long time or require a command-line flag. Yuck.
|
|
|
|
Nano aimed to solve these problems by: 1) being truly free software
|
|
by using the GPL, 2) emulating the functionality of Pico as closely
|
|
as is reasonable, and 3) including extra functionality by default.
|
|
|
|
Nowadays, nano wants to be a generally useful editor with sensible
|
|
defaults (linewise scrolling, no automatic line breaking).
|
|
|
|
The nano editor is an official GNU package. For more information on
|
|
GNU and the Free Software Foundation, please see https://www.gnu.org/.
|
|
|
|
License
|
|
|
|
Nano's code and documentation are covered by the GPL version 3 or
|
|
(at your option) any later version, except for two functions that
|
|
were copied from busybox which are under a BSD license. Nano's
|
|
documentation is additionally covered by the GNU Free Documentation
|
|
License version 1.2 or (at your option) any later version. See the
|
|
files COPYING and COPYING.DOC for the full text of these licenses.
|
|
|
|
When in any file of this package a copyright notice mentions a
|
|
year range (such as 1999-2011), it is a shorthand for a list of
|
|
all the years in that interval.
|
|
|
|
How to compile and install nano
|
|
|
|
Download the latest nano source tarball, and then:
|
|
|
|
tar -xvf nano-x.y.tar.gz
|
|
cd nano-x.y
|
|
./configure
|
|
make
|
|
make install
|
|
|
|
You will need the header files of ncurses installed for ./configure
|
|
to succeed -- get them from libncurses-dev (Debian) or ncurses-devel
|
|
(Fedora) or a similarly named package. Use --prefix with ./configure
|
|
to override the default installation directory of /usr/local.
|
|
|
|
After installation you may want to copy the doc/sample.nanorc file
|
|
to your home directory, rename it to ".nanorc", and then edit it
|
|
according to your taste.
|
|
|
|
Web Page
|
|
|
|
https://nano-editor.org/
|
|
|
|
Mailing Lists
|
|
|
|
There are three nano-related mailing-lists.
|
|
|
|
* <info-nano@gnu.org> is a very low traffic list used to announce
|
|
new nano versions or other important info about the project.
|
|
|
|
* <help-nano@gnu.org> is for those seeking to get help without
|
|
wanting to hear about the technical details of its development.
|
|
|
|
* <nano-devel@gnu.org> is the list used by the people that make nano
|
|
and a general development discussion list, with moderate traffic.
|
|
|
|
To subscribe, send email to <name>-request@gnu.org with a subject
|
|
of "subscribe", where <name> is the list you want to subscribe to.
|
|
|
|
The archives of the development and help mailing lists are here:
|
|
|
|
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/
|
|
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-nano/
|
|
|
|
Bug Reports
|
|
|
|
If you find a bug, please file a detailed description of the problem
|
|
on nano's issue tracker: https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano
|
|
(you will need an account to be able to do so), or send an email
|
|
to the nano-devel list (no need to subscribe, but mention it if
|
|
you want to be CC'ed on an answer).
|
|
|