smol/README

	GNU nano - an enhanced clone of the Pico text editor.
                                      
Overview

     The nano project was started because of a few "problems" with the
     wonderfully easy-to-use and friendly Pico text editor.

     First and foremost is its license: the Pine suite does not use the
     GPL or a GPL-friendly license, and has unclear restrictions on 
     redistribution.  Because of this, Pine and Pico are not included with
     many GNU/Linux distributions.  Also, other features (like goto line
     number or search and replace) were unavailable until recently or
     require a command-line flag.  Yuck.

     nano aims to solve these problems by emulating the functionality of
     Pico as closely as possible while adressing the problems above and
     perhaps providing other extra functionality.

     The nano editor is now an official GNU package.  For more information
     on GNU and the Free Software Foundation please see http://www.gnu.org.
     
How to compile and install nano

     Download the nano source code, then:
     tar zxvf nano-x.y.z.tar.gz
     cd nano-x.y.z
     ./configure
     make
     make install
     
     It's that simple. Use --prefix with configutr to override the 
     default installation directory of /usr/local.
     
Web Page

	http://www.nano-editor.org
     
Mailing List and Bug Reports

	SourceForge hosts all the nano-related mailing-lists.
	+ nano-announce@lists.sourceforge.net is a very low traffic list
	  used to announce new Nano versions or other important information
	  about the project.
	+ nano-devel@lists.sourceforge.net is the list used by the people
	  that make Nano and a general development discussion list, with
	  moderate traffic.
	To subscribe, send email to nano-<name>-request@lists.sourceforge.net
	with a subject of "subscribe", where <name> is the list you want to
	subscribe to.
	For general bug reports, send a description of the problem to
	nano@nano-editor.org or directly to the development list.

Current Status

     nano is currently at the 1.0 prerelease level. This mean it has all
     features that the 1.0 version will have and only bug fixes and updates 
     will be added before the official 1.0 is released. There are still a
     few lingering bugs, but for the most part your data should be safe.
     Backups are still your friend though.
     
     Note that the primary aim of nano is to emulate Pico while adding a
     few key "missing" features. I do NOT want just a GPL'ed Pico clone,
     nor do I want something that strays too far from the Pico design
     (simple and straightforward). If you don't like this, feel free to
     fork my code at any time, but please call your editor something
     else, believe it or not I struggled awhile before coming up with
     the name nano (and before that TIP), and it would be much easier for
     everyone if there weren't five versions of the same program.
     
   Chris Allegretta (chrisa@asty.org)

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