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 addressing 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 configure 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--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@nano-editor.org or directly to the development list. Current Status This is the 1.1 or unstable branch of nano. New features will be added and things will be changed around and basically stability is not guaranteed. If this is not what you're interested in, please use the latest 1.0.x release of nano. New features in this branch include: + .nanorc file support (--enable-nanorc configure option, see sample.nanorc file) + Negative -r value for "#cols from right", allows dynamic adjustment of wrap margin based on window size. + Write marked text to separate file (^O after selecting with ^^). + Append to file (Meta-A at write file menu). + Multiple file buffers! (--enable-multibuffer configure option, --multibuffer, -F cmdline flag, Meta-F toggle, then ^R to load). + Better compatibility with Pico. Mouse mode now supports clicking shortcuts and files in browser, search toggles that are Pico extensions moved to Meta keys so as to not interfere with Pico control sequences. + Smooth scrolling through files, instead of the jerky half-page down, half-page up method. This is available by using the -S or --smooth switch, or the Meta-S toggle. + Better non-*nix file support. GNU nano now automatically converts files from DOS format or Mac format to standard file format. It can also write files in either format by using the appropriate command line (-D, --dos or -M, --mac) or toggle (Meta-D, Meta-O). Chris Allegretta (chrisa@asty.org) $Id$