123 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
123 lines
5.2 KiB
Plaintext
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GNU nano -- a simple editor, inspired by Pico
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Purpose
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Nano is a small and simple text editor for use on the terminal.
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It copied the interface and key bindings of the Pico editor but
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added several missing features: undo/redo, syntax highlighting,
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line numbers, softwrapping, multiple buffers, selecting text by
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holding Shift, search-and-replace with regular expressions, and
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several other conveniences.
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Appearance
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In rough ASCII graphics, this is what nano's screen looks like:
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____________________________________________________________________
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| GNU nano 5.9 filename Modified |
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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| This is the text window, displaying the contents of a 'buffer', |
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| the contents of the file you are editing. |
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| |
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| The top row of the screen is the 'title bar'; it shows nano's |
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| version, the name of the file, and whether you modified it. |
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| The two bottom rows display the most important shortcuts; in |
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| those lines ^ means Ctrl. The third row from the bottom shows |
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| some feedback message, or gets replaced with a prompt bar when |
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| you tell nano to do something that requires extra input. |
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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| [ Some status message ] |
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|^G Help ^O Write Out ^W Where Is ^K Cut ^T Execute |
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|^X Exit ^R Read File ^\ Replace ^U Paste ^J Justify |
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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Origin
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The nano project was started in 1999 because of a few "problems"
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with the wonderfully easy-to-use and friendly Pico text editor.
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First and foremost was its license: the Pine suite does not use
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the GPL, and (before using the Apache License) it had unclear
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restrictions on redistribution. Because of this, Pine and Pico
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were not included in many GNU/Linux distributions. Furthermore,
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some features (like go-to-line-number or search-and-replace) were
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unavailable for a long time or require a command-line flag. Yuck.
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Nano aimed to solve these problems by: 1) being truly free software
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by using the GPL, 2) emulating the functionality of Pico as closely
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as is reasonable, and 3) including extra functionality by default.
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Nowadays, nano wants to be a generally useful editor with sensible
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defaults (linewise scrolling, no automatic line breaking).
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The nano editor is an official GNU package. For more information on
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GNU and the Free Software Foundation, please see https://www.gnu.org/.
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License
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Nano's code and documentation are covered by the GPL version 3 or
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(at your option) any later version, except for two functions that
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were copied from busybox which are under a BSD license. Nano's
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documentation is additionally covered by the GNU Free Documentation
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License version 1.2 or (at your option) any later version. See the
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files COPYING and COPYING.DOC for the full text of these licenses.
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When in any file of this package a copyright notice mentions a
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year range (such as 1999-2011), it is a shorthand for a list of
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all the years in that interval.
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How to compile and install nano
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Download the latest nano source tarball, and then:
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tar -xvf nano-x.y.tar.gz
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cd nano-x.y
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./configure
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make
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make install
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You will need the header files of ncurses installed for ./configure
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to succeed -- get them from libncurses-dev (Debian) or ncurses-devel
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(Fedora) or a similarly named package. Use --prefix with ./configure
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to override the default installation directory of /usr/local.
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After installation you may want to copy the doc/sample.nanorc file
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to your home directory, rename it to ".nanorc", and then edit it
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according to your taste.
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Web Page
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https://nano-editor.org/
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Mailing Lists
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There are three nano-related mailing-lists.
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+ info-nano@gnu.org is a very low traffic list used to announce
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new nano versions or other important info about the project.
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+ help-nano@gnu.org is for those seeking to get help without
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wanting to hear about the technical details of its development.
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+ nano-devel@gnu.org is the list used by the people that make nano
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and a general development discussion list, with moderate traffic.
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To subscribe, send email to <name>-request@gnu.org with a subject
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of "subscribe", where <name> is the list you want to subscribe to.
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The archives of the development and help mailing lists are here:
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https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/
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https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-nano/
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Bug Reports
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If you find a bug, please file a detailed description of the problem
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on nano's issue tracker: https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano
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(you will need an account to be able to do so), or send an email
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to the nano-devel list (no need to subscribe, but mention it if
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you want to be CC'ed on an answer).
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