"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

The program "Pine" has become a popular program for both Email and News. It makes use of a small and simple editor named "pico".

Pico's command set only has a dozen commands and it shows the most useful commands in the last two lines of the display:

   UW PICO(tm) 3.5                New Buffer

[...]

^G Get Help  ^O WriteOut  ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg   ^K Cut Text  ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit      ^J Justify   ^W Where is  ^V Next Pg   ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell

However, the source code for Pico is closely linked to the source code of Pine; therefore you cannot download Pico on its own - you have to donwload the source of the complete newsreader to install the little editor. Worse: Although Pine is freely available you should know this:

Pico is dead - long live Nano

That's why there is now an OpenSource project for a "Pico clone" - "Nano". (Think of it as "'n another editor", if you like.)

The goal of Nano is to make a small editor like Pico available under the GNU General Public Licence and to add some important commands, while keeping the design, ie "small and beautiful".

The Editor's New Clothes

   nano 0.8.1                     New Buffer

.

^O Write Out ^_ Goto Line ^R Read File ^Y Prev Page ^K Cut Text  ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit      ^\ Replace   ^W Where Is  ^V Next Page ^U Uncut Txt ^T To Spell

The difference to pico is subtle - no more copyright by the University of Washington ["UW ... (tm)"]. :-)

Also, the WriteOut command now is above the Exit command, so you can see both "exit commands" in one column.

The new commands are in the second column - GotoLine and Replace.

The Help command is still available with Control-G - but when you invoke it then you will see this message:

        [ Help function not yet implemented, nyah! ]

But do not despair - there's help on the command line:

$ nano -h
Usage: nano [GNU long option] [option] +LINE 

Option          Long option             Meaning
 -V             --version               Print version information and exit
 -c             --const                 Constantly show cursor position
 -h             --help                  Show this message
 -i             --autoindent            Automatically indent new lines
 -s [prog]      --speller=[prog]        Enable alternate speller
 -t             --tempfile              Auto save on exit, don't prompt
 -v             --view                  View (read only) mode
 -w             --nowrap                Don't wrap long lines
 -x             --nohelp                Don't show help window
 -z             --suspend               Enable suspend
 +LINE                                  Start at line number LINE

        set editor="nano -citxz"

What's your version?

$ nano -V
  nano version 0.8.0 by Chris Allegretta

$ nano -V
  nano 0.8.0 http://go.to/nano-editor [email protected] by Chris Allegretta

Smaller, Faster, Better

So, although "nano" is bigger than "pico" I hope that nano will both be smaller in source as well as in binary size.

A quick look at history

        date    size    name-version
        ====    ====    ============
        000110  56k     nano-0.7.4
        000113  56k     nano-0.7.5
        000116  58k     nano-0.7.7
        000119  60k     nano-0.7.8
        000123  67k     nano-0.7.8
        000124  68k     nano-0.7.9
        000125  70k     nano-0.8.0
        000129  72k     nano-0.8.1

Installation

   wget http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/astyanax/nano/dist/nano-0.8.1.tar.gz

   gtar xvvzf nano-0.8.1.tar.gz

   cd nano-0.8.1
   ./configure
   make

Now strip the binary:

guckes@linux> ls -l nano
-rwx--x--x   1 guckes   users      120357 Jan 31 21:31 nano
guckes@linux> strip nano
guckes@linux> ls -l nano
-rwx--x--x   1 guckes   users       38232 Jan 31 21:34 nano

guckes@linux> ls -l =pico
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root       159576 Aug 13 02:23 /usr/bin/pico

And if someone asks you why people delight in nanotechnology - now you know. Enjoy Nano!

Discussing Nano

However, I am pretty sure that the news about Nano will hit the newsgroup comp.mail.pine pretty soon. I expect many users of Pine to switch to using Nano instead of Pico. Expect crossposts - so please direct followups from comp.mail.pine:

        Followup-To: comp.editors

Thankyou.

The Big Future

Also, an interface to "spell checking" is in the works. This needs lots of testing , of course. So all you nerds with strange language - please help checking and testing this code!

Personally, I hope that these commands will be added:

• Visualization of the edit buffer's end.
• Visualization of trailing whitespace (noone ever sees it which is bad!).
• Visualization of _underlined_ and *ephasized* text. (very simple)
• Commands to jump to line before/after current paragraph.
• Command to "pipe" the current text to another (external) command.
• Substitution ("Subst", aka "search and replace") with these options: substitution starts at line 1 or optionally on current line; skip current match; perform substitution on all further matches.

Links and addresses

Chris Allegretta  [email protected]
Nano editor maintainer

http://go.to/nano-editor or (currently)
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/astyanax/nano/
Nano editor HomePage (run by Chris Allegretta)

http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/astyanax/nano/dist/
Nano editor distribution location (only HTTP - no FTP or FTP mirrors yet)

http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/astyanax/nano/dist/RPMS/
Nano editor RPMs

http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/pico/
Pico editor page (run by Sven Guckes)

Sven Guckes       [email protected]
Author of this article and evangelist for text based programs
such as elm, irc, lynx, mutt, nn, screen, slrn, vim, zsh.
Email since 1989, Usenet since 1992.  Webmaster of slrn.org, vim.org.
http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/

Copyright © 2000, Sven Guckes
Published in Issue 50 of Linux Gazette, February 2000