<blockquote><p>GNU nano was designed to be a free replacement for the Pico text editor, part of the Pine email suite from <ahref="http://www.washington.edu/pine/">The University of Washington</a>. It aimed to "emulate Pico as closely as is reasonable and then include extra functionality".</p></blockquote>
<p>For years Pine was THE program used to read email on a Unix system. The Pico text editor is the portion of the program one would use to compose his or her mail messages. Many beginners to Unix flocked to Pico and Pine because of their well organized, easy to use interfaces. With the proliferation of GNU/Linux in the mid to late 90's, many University students became intimately familiar with the strengths (and weaknesses) of Pine and Pico.</p>
<p>The <ahref="https://www.debian.org/">Debian GNU/Linux</a> distribution, known for its strict standards in distributing truly "free" software (i.e. software with no restrictions on redistribution), would not include a binary package for Pine or Pico. Many people had a serious dilemma: they loved these programs, but the versions available at the time were not truly free software in the <ahref="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">GNU</a> sense of the word.</p>
<p>It was in late 1999 when Chris Allegretta (our hero) was yet again complaining to himself about the less-than-perfect license Pico was distributed under, the 1000 makefiles that came with it and how just a few small improvements could make it the Best Editor in the World (TM). Having been a convert from Slackware to Debian, he missed having a simple binary package that included Pine and Pico, and had grown tired of downloading them himself.</p>
<p>Finally something snapped inside and Chris coded and hacked like a madman for many hours straight one weekend to make a (barely usable) Pico clone, at the time called TIP (Tip Isn't Pico). The program could not be invoked without a filename, could not save files, had no help text display, spell checker, and so forth. But over time it improved, and with the help of a few great coders it matured to the (hopefully) stable state it is in today.</p>
<p>In February 2001, nano was declared an official GNU program by Richard Stallman. nano also reached its first production release on March 22, 2001.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>On January 10, 2000, TIP was officially renamed to nano because of a namespace conflict with another program called 'tip'. The original 'tip' program "establishes a full duplex terminal connection to a remote host", and was included with many older Unix systems (and newer ones like Solaris). The conflict was not noticed at first because there is no 'tip' utility included with most GNU/Linux distributions (where nano was developed).</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>The current version of nano <i>should</i> be <b>5.0</b>. Of course, you should always check the <ahref="https://nano-editor.org/">nano homepage</a> to see what the latest and greatest version is.</p></blockquote>
<p>You can also have a look at the <ahref="http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/nano/">Package Pool</a> to see all the available binary and source packages.</p>
<blockquote><p>For the 'bleeding edge' current version of nano, you can use GIT to download the current source code. <b>Note:</b> believe it or not, by downloading code that has not yet stabilized into an official release, there could quite possibly be bugs, in fact the code may not even compile! Anyway, see <ahref="http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/nano.git/tree/README.GIT">the nano GIT document</a> for info on anonymous GIT access to the nano source.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>It's simple really! As root, type <b>rpm -Uvh nano-x.y-1*.rpm</b> if you have a RedHat-ish system or <b>dpkg -i nano_x.y-1*.deb</b> if you have a Debian-ish system, where <b>x.y</b> is the version number of nano. There are other programs to install packages, and if you wish to use those, knock yourself out.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>It does when you use <b>make install-strip</b>. The default <b>make install</b> does not, and will not, run strip automatically.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Actually, there are several parts of the editor that can be disabled. You can pass arguments to the <b>configure</b> script that disable certain features. Here's a brief list:</p>
<p>There's also the <b>--enable-tiny</b> option which disables everything above, as well as some larger chunks of the program (like the undo/redo code and the code for selecting text). Also, if you know you don't need other languages, you can use <b>--disable-nls</b> to disable internationalization and save a few kilobytes. And finally, there's always good old <b>strip</b> to remove all unneeded symbols.</p>
<blockquote><p>To use multiple file buffers, you must not have configured nano with <b>--disable-multibuffer</b> nor with <b>--enable-tiny</b> (use <b>nano -V</b> to check the compilation options). Then when you want to insert a file into its own buffer instead of into the current file, just hit <b>Meta-F</b> after typing <b>^R</b>. If you always want files to be loaded into their own buffers, use the <b>-F</b> or <b>--multibuffer</b> flag when you invoke nano, or add <b>set multibuffer</b> to your .nanorc file.</p>
<p>You can move between the buffers you have open with the <b>Meta-<</b> and <b>Meta-></b> keys, or more easily without holding Shift: <b>Meta-,</b> and <b>Meta-.</b> (clear as mud, right? =-). When you have more than one buffer open, the ^X shortcut will say "Close", instead of "Exit".</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>When you want to insert a literal character into the file you're editing, such as a control character that nano usually treats as a command, first press <b>Meta-V</b> (if you're not at a prompt, you'll get the message "Verbatim Input" on the status bar), then press the key(s) that generate the character you want.</p>
<p>Alternatively, if Unicode support is enabled (see section <ahref="#5.3">5.3</a>), you can press <b>Meta-V</b> and then type a six-digit hexadecimal code (from 000000 to 10FFFF, case-insensitive), and the character with the corresponding value will be inserted. The status bar will change to "Unicode Input: ......" when you do this.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>It's not hard at all! Simply copy the <b>sample.nanorc</b> from the doc/ directory in the nano source package (or from /usr/doc/nano on your system) to <b>.nanorc</b> in your home directory, and then edit it. If you didn't get a sample nanorc, the syntax of the file is simple: features are turned on and off by using the words <b>set</b> and <b>unset</b> followed by the long option name of the feature (see <b>man nanorc</b> for the full list of options). For example, "set quickblank" or "set smarthome". Of course, for this to work, your nano must <b>not</b> have been compiled with <b>--disable-nanorc</b>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>By default (see <ahref="#3.3">3.3</a>), nano gets installed into /usr/local. This also means that, at startup, nano will read <b>/usr/local/etc/nanorc</b> instead of <b>/etc/nanorc</b>. You can make a symlink from the former to the latter if you want your self-compiled nano to read the same nanorc as the system-installed nano. Or you can configure your nano to overwrite the system nano (again, see <ahref="#3.3">3.3</a>).</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>If a command-line argument that begins with '+' is followed by another argument, the former is always treated as a starting line (plus column number), and the latter always as a filename. If a command-line argument that begins with '+' isn't followed by another argument, it's treated as a filename. Examples:</p>
<p>To open '+filename.txt': <b>nano +filename.txt</b><br>
<blockquote><p>You can use the <b>-K</b> or <b>--rawsequences</b> option on the command line, or add the line <b>set rawsequences</b> to your .nanorc. However, nano's mouse support will be disabled if you do any of these things.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>You have the <i>autoindent</i> feature turned on. Hit <b>Meta-I</b> to turn it off, paste your text, and then hit <b>Meta-I</b> again to turn it back on.</p>
<p><i>Update:</i> Since version 4.8, nano will suppress auto-indentation during a paste, so you no longer need to toggle it off and on manually.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>When pasting from Windows, in some situations linefeeds are sent instead of carriage returns (Enters). And linefeeds are <b>^J</b>s, which make nano justify (rewrap) the current paragraph. To prevent these linefeeds from causing these unwanted justifications, add this line to your .nanorc on the remote Linux box: <b>unbind ^J main</b> or <b>bind ^J enter main</b>, depending on whether the paste contains CR + LF or only LF.</p>
<p><i>Update:</i> Since version 4.8, nano will ignore linefeed characters in a paste, so you no longer need the above workaround.</p></blockquote>
<h3><aname="4.8"></a>4.8. I've compiled nano with color support, but I don't see any color when I run it!</h3>
<blockquote><p>If you want nano to actually use color, you have to specify the color configurations you want it to use in your .nanorc. Several example configurations are in the <b>syntax/</b> subdirectory of the nano source, which are normally installed to <b>/usr/local/share/nano/</b>. To enable all of them, uncomment the line <b># include "/usr/local/share/nano/*.nanorc"</b> in your nanorc. See also section <ahref="#3.9">3.9</a>.</p></blockquote>
<h3><aname="4.9"></a>4.9. How do I make nano my default editor (in Pine, mutt, etc.)?</h3>
<blockquote><p>You need to make nano your $EDITOR. If you want this to be saved, you should put a line like this in your <b>.bashrc</b> if you use bash (or <b>.zshrc</b> if you believe in zsh):</p>
<p>Change /usr/local/bin/nano to wherever nano is installed on your system. Type "which nano" to find out. This will not take effect until the next time you log in. So log out and back in again.</p>
<p>Then, on top of that, if you use Pine, you must go into setup (type <b>S</b> at the main menu), and then configure (type <b>C</b>). Hit Enter on the lines that say:</p>
<p>If you're a mutt user, you should see an effect immediately the next time you log in. No further configuration is needed. However, if you want to let people know you use nano to compose your email messages, you can put a line like this in your <b>.muttrc</b>:</p>
<blockquote><p>In June 2001, GNU nano entered the <ahref="https://translationproject.org/html/welcome.html">Translation Project</a> and since then, translations should be managed from there.</p>
<p>If there isn't a translation for your language, you could ask <ahref="https://translationproject.org/team/">your language team</a> to translate nano, or better still, join that team and do it yourself. Joining a team is easy. You just need to ask the team leader to add you, and then send a <ahref="https://translationproject.org/disclaim.txt">translation disclaimer to the FSF</a> (this is necessary as nano is an official GNU package, but it does <b>not</b> mean that you transfer the rights of your work to the FSF, it's just so the FSF can legally manage them).</p>
<p>In any case, translating nano is easy. Just grab the latest <b>nano.pot</b> file listed on <ahref="https://translationproject.org/domain/nano.html">nano's page</a> at the TP, and translate each <b>msgid</b> line into your native language on the <b>msgstr</b> line. When you're done, you should send it to the TP's central PO-file repository.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>The best way is to send an e-mail with your suggested corrections to the team's mailing list. The address is mentioned in the <code>Language-Team:</code> field in the relevant PO file. The team leader or the assigned translator can then make the changes reach the nano-devel list.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Unicode should be fully usable nowadays. When the encoding of your terminal is set to UTF-8, and your locale (mainly the LANG environment variable) is UTF-8 too, then you should be able to read, enter and save Unicode text.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>If you want features like undo/redo, syntax highlighting, line numbers, soft-wrapping, opening multiple files at once, an interface localized to your language, or search and replace with support for regular expressions, then you want nano.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>If you use your editor only to write emails or other texts and have no need for the above-mentioned features, then Pico will do fine for you.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>The U of W license for older versions of Pine and Pico is not considered truly Free Software according to both the Free Software Foundation and the <ahref="https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines">Debian Free Software Guidelines</a>. The main problem regards the limitations on distributing derived works: according to UW, you can distribute their software, and you can modify it, but you can not do both, i.e. distribute modified binaries.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>If you are looking to use a Free Software program similar to Pine, and Emacs is not your thing, you should definitely take a look at <ahref="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a>. It is a full-screen, console based mail program that actually has a lot more flexibility than Pine, but has a keymap included in the distribution that allows you to use the same keystrokes as Pine would to send and receive mail. It's also under the GNU General Public License, version 2.0.</p>
<p>Of course, due to the license change you can now use the <ahref="http://www.washington.edu/alpine/">Alpine distribution</a> of PINE as it is now considered Free Software, but you would be sacrificing many of nano's features to do so.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>There are three mailing lists for nano hosted at <ahref="https://savannah.gnu.org/">Savannah</a>: info-nano, help-nano and nano-devel. info-nano is a very low traffic list where new versions of nano are announced (surprise!). help-nano is for getting help with the editor without needing to hear all of the development issues surrounding it. nano-devel is a normally low, sometimes high traffic list for discussing the present and future development of nano. Here are links to where you can sign up for a given list:</p>
<p>The best way to submit bugs is through the <ahref="https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano">Savannah bug tracker</a>, as you can check whether the bug you are reporting has already been submitted, and it makes it easier for the maintainers to keep track of them.
<p>You can submit patches for nano via <ahref="https://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?group=nano">Savannah's patch manager</a>.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>That's fine. Send it <ahref="mailto:nano-devel@gnu.org">our way</a>! Better yet, fix a <ahref="https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano">bug</a> in the program or implement a <ahref="https://nano-editor.org/dist/latest/TODO">cool feature</a> and send us that instead (though cash is fine too).</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>The easiest way is to consistently send in good patches that add some needed functionality, fix a bug or two, and/or make the program more optimized/efficient. Then ask nicely and you will probably be added to the Savannah development list and be given write access after a while. There is a lot of responsibility that goes along with being a team member, so don't think it's just something to add to your resume.</p></blockquote>
