why nano and not pico?

kraylus · l33t Joined: 07 Jun 2002 Posts: 648 Location: ft.worth.tx

doesnt matter to me. i see no cosmetic difference really... and as far as i can tell, there's no difference in functionality...

so why would you replace pico with nano?

just curious.

ryan
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delta407 · Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2002 4:25 am Post subject:

nano is "free software", pico is not. See this article for reasons.

arkane · l33t Joined: 30 Apr 2002 Posts: 918 Location: Phoenix, AZ

basically the university of washington wrote it (I think thats who it is?) and Pine. They have some really whacked licensing on it, as Delta407 said.

Personally, I don't think either are good alternatives, but thats just me. vi would have been better

I know I know... personal choices.

MX · Guest

nano has a niftfy easy to use search and replace that (last i saw) pico does not offer (at least its not listed on the main screen options)

and not to mention pico/nano are far easier to the new user then VI/M X/EMACS etc

i like nano :roll:

klieber · Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2002 11:48 am Post subject:

OK folks, we've already had our vi vs. emacs vs. every other text editor flame war in these forums. We are not going to turn this thread into one, too.

Please be mindful of that when responding to this thread.

--kurt
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The problem with political jokes is that they get elected

metalhedd · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 1:16 am Post subject:

This is in no way a text editor holy war, just a comment from someone whose been through most of the newbie teething problems. first of all, NEVER EVER EVER Tell a newbie that vi is a better text editor. one of my *nix guru friends told me that and caused me more grief than you could imagine... for someone coming from a windows world vi and emacs or anything similar is a horrible idea.

including it as the default editor for ANY distribution that targets newbies (or at least doesn't disclude them) is a horrible idea. the only purpose those text editors serve is for power users. the learning curve is far too much for a newbie. (considering that the learning curve for a text editor should be 1-2 seconds. not 20 minutes of reading man pages to figure out how to enter text.)

klieber · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 1:25 am Post subject:

metalhedd · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 1:29 am Post subject:

while its true that it doesn't target newbies, I guess the best way to say what i meant was unless the distro is intended strictly for *nix experts, don't use vi or emacs. anyone who wants to use vi or emacs can install it fairly early on and will only have to put up with nano to edit a couple of files, whereas a total newbie if given only vi would have a hell of a time figuring it out, and with no other alternatives until the installation is finished they may just give up altogether. you don't need the fancy features of those other text editors just to install gentoo.

klieber · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 1:42 am Post subject:

alec · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 270 Location: Here

Disclaimer: I went through a vim phase, and now keep it for serious editing for stuff like HTML, but use nano for just about everything else.

--

I prefer nano over pico because:

-nano has a replace function
-nano is much, much smaller

jtanner · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 4:34 pm Post subject:

My one gripe with nano is that you have to pass it a flag to prevent line-wrap, which seems counter-intuitive to me, and can be a painful mistake when editing files in /etc.

While I prefer xemacs for day-to-day use, I think the choice of nano on the install disk was a good one, with the aforementioned caveat.

Jim

klieber · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 4:50 pm Post subject:

jtanner · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 5:43 pm Post subject:

klieber · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 5:48 pm Post subject:

jtanner · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 6:22 pm Post subject:

I believe the install process uses bash, but it's been so long....

I agree with you about the docs, though. Where should I submit this for consideration by the maintainer of the install cd, Gentoo Suggestions forum or bugzilla?

Also, is there a global config file for nano to set/unset such options? Something like site-load.el for xemacs?

Jim

klieber · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 6:24 pm Post subject:

jtanner · Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 7:25 pm Post subject:

Bug filed at https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3639

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Jim

alec · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 270 Location: Here

I don't know about nano being linked to nano -w - I mean, if it's in the docs, it's in the docs. No real reason to dumb nano down (wow, that's something...)

lain iwakura · Apprentice Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 176 Location: sd, ca

just have to add my 2 sense in here:
i think nano works fine for the default text editor on install. one reason I think it's used because, well, it's a hell of a lot smaller than emacs. and of coarse, it's simple. no need to get too fancy right away -- especially for someone new to linux. vi(m) would just confuse the hell out of them.
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klieber · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2002 9:54 am Post subject:

ok folks, this thread is now locked.

--kurt
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The problem with political jokes is that they get elected