Episode: 623
Title: HPR0623: nano editor
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0623/hpr0623.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:01:37

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Good day. My name is JWP and I'm doing a new hacker public radio episode. This is content
only for hacker public radio. I normally do a podcast, the JWP Linux and open source
podcast. You can see the show notes and get the links to Lipson at jwp5.wordpress.com or WordPress.com
slash jwp5. Those are the show notes. My contact information is jwp5 at hotmail.com. Today
what I want to talk you all about is something that I use pretty much every day in my Linux
life. We all have particular things that we like or don't like. My first experience with
Unix was I was using copy serve and it was very much Unix-like and then I started working
with Unix systems, old AT&T Unix systems. AT&T actually sold servers at one point in time
that had Unix on them. They had this program called Pine and it's an email program, newsreader,
back then you could post from Pine into like these use net groups and I know they still have
all that and everything but I can't remember when the last time it was that I used one.
I got very used to the control keys being there for me and extremely comfortable and using
them and thought that unlike VI or VIM or any of the other editors that it was very easy
to use and it did exactly what it was supposed to do. I didn't really know that the reason that I
used Nano is that a few years ago I was doing alpha CPUs which came from digital equipment company
on a machine called Multia and I didn't want to use true 64. I wanted to do Linux and the only Linux
that really did alpha really well at the time was Davian and so there was a few sites on it
that used this thing called Nano and I liked it because it was pretty small and I liked it.
So how did Nano come about and Nano came about by a guy named Chris, Chris Aligrita.
He didn't like the license for something called Pico PICO and so he created Nano and Nano is in computing.
Nano was a GPL licensed curses based text editor for Unix and Unix like systems.
It is a clone of Pico the editor of the PINE email client Nano claims to emulate Pico with some extra functionality and that's from the Wikipedia.
Again from the Wikipedia it talks about how Chris got started in 1999 and he named it TIP because TIP means this isn't Pico.
He was motivated to create a free software replacement for PICO since neither it nor PINE were distributed under the free software license.
The name was officially changed to Nano on 10 January 2000 to differentiate it between the TIP command.
The name comes from the system of SI prefix where Nano is a thousand times bigger than Pico.
Although the recursive back acronym Nano's another editor is sometimes used.
On February 2000 one Nano became an official part of the GNU project and that's a research development thing that does a lot.
It says Nano implements some of the features that Pico likes including text colored text extra expression search and replace scrolling multiple buffers rebindable key support and experimental undoing and redoing edit.
On August 11 2003 Chris all agreed to officially handed maintenance of Nano's stable branch to David Lauren Tramsey.
On December 2007 David Lauren Tramsey officially stepped down as Nano's maintainer.
Now when I went to the Nano there's another site not just the Wikipedia. If you go to www.nano-editor.org and you stay contact it writes to Chris.
So I guess Chris is doing it again. I'm not sure I wrote Chris on email. I'm not sure if he'll write back you know it's sort of like Ryan Jono you know you may get a reply you may not get a reply.
So it you know like Pico it's it's a keyboard oriented with the control and it's controlled with control keys which is something that I really like.
And since Pine was my first ever experience I really liked that and I even use Alpine now on my my debut and slug a lot.
So if you go through the the sign through the website there's this wonderful fact and and again Chris says he maintains this.
Because the fact was originally maintained by Chris and it was later maintained by David Lauren Tramsey and I don't know if if if David's not the maintainer anymore then I'm not for sure it was on it was on Wikipedia.
I'm quite confused but you know they have they have the you know how to contribute you if you if you if you have something to to change in the code you do nano at nano-editor.org and it'll be added to future versions.
The sort of talked about the history but on the original website it it says in the beginning the for years just like I said that you know it was all tied to pine and then Pico was editor and people started doing Pico for many things.
Many beginners to you in a flock to Pico upon because of their well organized easy to use interfaces which is 100% the reason that I use it I don't use V.I. or V.M. or any of that other stuff because it's not easy to use it's not simple for me and you know not that I'm slow or anything but I just like to be comfortable and I haven't run across anything that I didn't use.
That I didn't use couldn't use nano for just as well as I could V.I. or V.I. or V.M. or any of that other stuff and and so if I was going to program you know I just use that editor in the boom to in program or leaf pad or you know one of the free ones from portable apps.
No reason to use the console only in that the reason you use the console editor is to edit the your config files and to maybe make a quick text note.
Something along those lines the so in the beginning there was just this units and and then we started getting this proliferation of this Linux in the mid 1990s and many university students became
extremely familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of pine and pico and then came Davian and wow Davian was really in my life with that alpha server and it still is to a lesser extent.
The Davian has really strict standards and distributing truly free software.
A software with no restrictions on redistribution it would not include a binary package for pine or pico many people had serious dilemma they love these programs but the versions available were not truly free software and the GNU sense of the word.
The event well in late 1990-1999 Chris who's our hero was yet again planning to himself about the lesson perfect pico license that was distributed under the thousand make files that came with it and how just a few small improvements can make it the best editor in the world.
Having been a convert from slackward to Davian he missed having simple binary a simple binary package that included pine and pico and it grown tired of downloading them self finally something's left inside Chris and he coded and hacked like a madman for many hours one straight weekend to make a barely usable pico clone at the time he called tip this isn't pico.
And the program could not be invoked without a file name could not say files and had to know help.
I know help text display is bell checker and so forth but over time it improved and with the help of a few great coders that matured to hopefully the stable state of this today.
And two thousand one nano was declared the fit an official to you GNU program by Richard installment.
Nano also reached its first production lease on twenty two March which is my birthday in two thousand one so that's another reason why I like it a lot.
Again they changed it from tip to to nano.
The current version is two point two zero.
The there is a man page and they have like their own red hat derivatives and Davian derivatives interesting enough there's also a DOS one which was really which would really be cool but when I clicked it the university of Texas server didn't
know how to do it but you can also compile it from source and it says if you want to do one thirty two if you're using the official nano zip and abstracted all the files you should make the file.
Nano RC and replace it somewhere in your when thirty two substance right permission on top of C.
And so you can so he gives a way to do nano with Windows XP if you want to.
However I think it would be easier just to open a tell net or open putty and go to SDF and then you have the whole thing right there.
And so many so many so many things and that it has and I guess you can give money but Christ didn't say how to give money so anyway this is my notes on nano again it runs
with the control key it's a lot like alpine or pine if you want something really simple it's the perfect thing on my Davian's log I use SC which is a text brace spreadsheet I use nano and I use the calendar program C.
And as like a little mini office suite and it's it's it's pretty cool and and I've got to see if I can install it in tiny corks see what happens if I if I do it in tiny core but I think I did get it and install it in tiny core I think that was one of the first packages.
Anyway this is JWP and if you have any questions please email me at JWP5 at hotmail.com thank you very much bye.
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