Episode: 1708
Title: HPR1708: GNU/Nano Editor
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1708/hpr1708.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 08:04:42

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This is HPR Episode 1,708 Entitled Nuno Editor.
It is hosted by JWP and is about 12 minutes long.
The summary is JWP Amails in an episode on the Editor Nuno.
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Good day and welcome to JWP's Linux and open source moment.
Today I'm going to talk about my editor, a lot of people talk about the I and EMAX and stuff and I do do a little bit of EMAX
from time to time. I actually have a little MIPS thing that used to be a file server from D-Link that I only run EMAX on and I try to do everything with EMAX
but that's not what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about Nano, GNU Nano.
What is Nano? Nano is a text editor for Linux like computing or operating environments using a command line interface.
It emulates the Pico text editor, part of the Pine Email client and also provides functionality and contrast to Pico.
Nano is licensed under the GNU General Public License GPL and was released as free software where by Chris Aligretta in 1990.
Today Nano was part of the GNU at U Project. Nano was first created in 1999 with the name TIP. This isn't Pico by Chris Aligretta.
His motivation was to create a free software replacement for Pico which was not distributed under a free software license.
The name change to Nano happened in 10 January 2000 to avoid naming conflict with an existing utility called TIP.
The name comes from the system SI prefixes to which Nano is a thousand times larger than Pico.
In February 2001 Nano became part of the GNU project. The GNU project is the thing that Richard Stalman does at the EMAX.
Nano implements some of the features that Pico lacks including color text, regular expression, search and replace, scrolling and multiple buffers.
We bindable to key support and experimental ongoing undoing of edit and changes.
On 11 August 2003 Chris, Akalecha officially handed the source code in maintenance to Nano over to David Lawrence Ramsey.
On December 2007 Ramsey stepped down as Nano's maintainer.
Now the wiki article doesn't say who's doing it now so I probably got to go find that out.
What's going on with Nano that makes it really easy especially for the first time a user Linux user.
Nano like Pico is keyboard oriented. It's controlled with control keys.
For example, control plus zero saves the current document. Control plus w goes to the search menu.
Nano puts a two line shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen listing many of the commands available in the current context.
For a complete list you just go to the help which is control plus G on the screen.
Unlike Pico Nano uses meta keys to toggle its behavior.
For example, meta slash S toggles smooth scrolling mode on and off.
Almost all the features that can be selected from the command line can be dynamically toggled on keyboards without the meta key.
It's often mapped to the escape key such as it's assimilate meta plus S or one has the escape key then release it and then the S key.
Nano can use pointer devices such as mouse to activate functions that are a short court bar as well.
I'm doing my LPI the Linux insinoles LPI the first one and I'm doing it fast down when I go and see Dave and Ken Fallon.
I'm at David all camp and Ken he said that Ken was coming to fast down and Brussels so I'm studying for the test.
I'm going to take it Sunday afternoon.
It was really interesting what was going on inside the paperwork for the test that the Linux insinoles focuses on Nano as the default browser.
Under section 33 of the study material for the Linux insinoles test it talks about Nano in the free book format, free creative comments book that you get from let's read it.
So if you want to do the Linux insinoles the LPI introductory program a company called line line lineup front GM page and Domstein Germany made a book about this and you can download it.
It's a lineup front GM is a leading supplier of high quality training materials for Linux and open source topics a reasonable prices for still study school higher education training.
Okay, and so this is so the license for this book was creative comments minus be wise slash NC slash indeed unported license you may copy distributed and make it publicly available as long as these conditions are met.
You must make it clear that this document is a product from let up front no commercial use you may not use this document for commercial purposes contact if you want to use this document personally no derivatives you may not alter transform or build a document on this document.
Contact us if necessary so that's the license that these guys use and it's a great so far it's a great book.
And so back to three three and GNU nano okay so so nano works with the Alt key and the control key mostly the control key was all that I used before I did this but you can also do Alt key Alt key stuff.
So so the the again so saving text is central plus zero are are central while pressing zero nano ask you the name of the following then you put it in quitting nano of course is control and X and if your text contains unsafe modifications nano will ask you about the safe modifications.
Looting file so if you're inside now you can do control R and it will ask you for the for the file right for the file name if you know it and then cutting and pasting and this is something I didn't know so you can do control K to cut and control you to paste and you can do control
and then that little like it sort of looks like a heel over the six key to mark and you can cut it out and mark and so inside their book they have several things where you do control K control A or this control with this little I guess it's sort of like two thirds of a triangle is what it looks like so you got the tip but not the base of the triangle.
And again control G control G is the for for all the help and I really had no idea that this was it all right hey well this is the first of the many segments for this LPI certification.
Hey thank you very much for your time if you need reach me I'm at JWP5 at hotmail.com thank you bye.
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