The nano editor (Nano's ANOther editor) by Chris Allegretta Manifesto Nano is the editor formerly known as TIP (TIP Isn't Pico). The nano project was started because of three main problems with the wonderfully easy-to-use and friendly Pico text editor: - It's license is not the GNU GPL, and hence some Linux distributions, including Debian (my favorite) don't always include it/don't include binaries. This is not necessarily a problem, but an issue nonetheless. - Until recently, it had no ability to go to a line # from within the editor. There was the +number command line option, but who wants to exit a file to go to a specific line number? When I want to go to a line, since I have to exit anyway, I just call up vi temporarily. - No search and replace feature. Well, apparently there is a flag that lets you do a search and replace (-b in newer versions) but, well, I still dont like it. 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. 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 to override the default installation directory of /usr/local. Web Page http://www.asty.org/nano 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--request@lists.sourceforge.net with a subject of "subscribe", where is the list you want to subscribe to. For general bug reports, send a description of the problem to nano@asty.org or directly to the development list. Current Status nano is currently at version 0.9.x, and it will probably remain there for awhile. This reflects the adage that the last 10% of a project takes 90% of the time. Version 1.0 will be released when there are no unresolved bugs, and not before. I am also currently looking for patches for all things listed in the TODO file. If you have a comment or suggestion, please let me know, all help is appreciated. Warning: This program can and possibly will corrupt your data in its current form! It is beta software, so treat it as such! Thank you. 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. As you can guess, I'm not much of an emacs fan ;) Chris Allegretta (chrisa@asty.org)