GNU Nano gains optional modern keybindings – OSnews
www.osnews.com

I almost feel like this a somewhat pointless feature. It’s almost easier to just learn the default ones as opposed to adding “-modernbindings” or creating an “enano” variant/copy.

  • GravitySpoiled@lemmy.mlEnglish
    351·
    5 months ago

    That’s your opinion.

    I like updating it to modern conventions. One day they become default and on another day you get rid of the old ones. The people of the future don’t have to learn two sets of keybindings.

    • Alphane Moon@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      81·
      5 months ago

      It’s definitely just my opinion. Honestly did not mean to imply otherwise.

      I would almost prefer them to just switch to the new keybindings by default in version 8.0.

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
        71·
        5 months ago

        It’s definitely just my opinion. Honestly did not mean to imply otherwise.

        For my opinion I usually create a comment below my post to seperate my opinion and the post itself.

        On-topic: I do believe it’s useful to have this switch and there’s nothing stopping distros to change their default. Completely replacing the default keybindings might be surprising to long time users, but I also believe it should be done at some point. For the meantime this switch can be simply added as an alias.

        • Alphane Moon@lemmy.mlOP
          3·
          5 months ago

          Fair point. I guess this was more of a casual post, so I didn’t think too much about it.

          I would have preferred if they switched to new keyboard model in version 8.x by default.

          I am a relatively light Linux user. Raspberry Pi headless via DietPi/Debian for NAS/Media server/torrents/PiHole and some experiments with self hosted services on major cloud services. I prefer to stick to defaults whenever possible.

          • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
            2·
            5 months ago

            I prefer to stick to defaults whenever possible.

            Same goes for me.
            E.g. changing vim keybindings on my local system to better suit my non-QWERTY keyboard would be annoying since they don’t transfer to remote systems. That’s a reason I like fish, because it’s defaults are modern and useable, compared to zsh/bash which benefits strongly from plugins.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
      25·
      5 months ago

      ^S for unprompted save is in the default keybinds, not that I could say when it was added. (Pretty sure it wasn’t a pico thing, but that leaves quite a bit of time unaccounted for.)

      Muscle memory for other editors kicked in when I was editing something and did a literal slow realisation and double-take when it worked.

      Now if only I could stop pressing ^W in Firefox to use nano’s “whereis” to find something that’d be great.

      For those unaware, it closes the current tab. Or the whole browser. Ugh.

      • Scio@lemmy.world
        8·
        5 months ago

        :GASP: ^S does save! I have played myself for a fool all these years!!

        Now I just have to unlearn ^X, Y, enter. . . :thisisfine:

        Firefox desperately needs a way to customize keyboard shortcuts, especially to disable them. Shortkeys isn’t really enough.

        • palordrolap@kbin.run
          2·
          5 months ago

          True. Other tools include: Ctrl+Shift+N to bring back a closed window if there’s another window of the same browser instance still open, and when there isn’t, there’s Restore Previous Session which is accessible a couple of ways.

          Neither bring back the comment that was being typed in a textbox on the page though. Guess when I usually ^W

      • Scio@lemmy.world
        6·
        5 months ago

        ^S works!! …As revealed by our kind palindromic friend on the other sibling comment! Why they don’t just list it on the statusbar we would never know!

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
          2·
          5 months ago

          Probably because Ctrl+S is the shortcut for scroll lock on the terminal so it can be a bit problematic if you start using it when not in nano. It freezes the output and you have to use Ctrl+Q to unlock.

          • Scio@lemmy.world
            1·
            5 months ago

            Makes sense! I should go check what my Zellijn configs are set to on the servers 🤔

  • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
    9·
    5 months ago

    creating an “enano” variant/copy

    What’s wrong with that?

    Providing optional alternative keybindings for people who know a set of bindings from other tools makes lot of sense. I always appreciate that some tools provide these. This shows that the devs think about newcomers who are used to other set of bindings. It’s optional.

    BTW the blog post you posted has only 4 sentences (excluding the quote). I often dislike articles that short, but on the other hand, at least its not blown up with crap. So there is that.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      3·
      5 months ago

      My issue is that the only time I use vim or nano it’s because I’m logged into some server where you’re going to be stuck with the defaults anyway. I guess it’s nice on your home machine, but customising a bunch of servers with your personal preferences isn’t really something you can do in most work situations.

      • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
        2·
        5 months ago

        Yes, that’s why I still need to learn how vi and vim in their default config work (in fact I started like that, so I know already). I wanted to get into finding as solution to this problem. Years ago I read in Reddit someone setup a keyboard macro (outside of Vim) to execute bunch of commands to setup the environment in the live session, while in Vim. At least some of the configuration can be used like that.

        Otherwise, yeah this really sucks. That is not a unique problem to editors, but any software that you run with a customized local setup and with bare naked server version. If you often switch back and forth, it makes sense to just use one set of keybindings. That also is the point: For people using other tools, it makes sense to provide these alternative keybindings, so they don’t need to relearn the nano specific setup.

        Edit: Too many Buts reduced.

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    115·
    5 months ago

    What does “modern” mean? Emacs-like? Vim-like? Some other bastard system?

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        912·
        5 months ago

        So “some other bastard system” it is, then.

        That’s a shame; a GNU project should be consistently GNU-like (i.e. adopt Emacs key bindings).

          • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
            44·
            5 months ago

            If Emacs keybindings are good enough to be the system default for Mac users, they should be good enough for anybody.

              • Drew@sopuli.xyz
                4·
                5 months ago

                Every text field in MacOs supports Emacs keybindings, like Ctrl-a to go to beginning, ctrl-k to delete to end of line, etc

            • RavuAlHemio@lemmy.world
              11·
              5 months ago

              Given that Mac keybindings for “common special functions” (Open/Save/Cut/Copy/Paste/Find/etc.) use Command instead of Ctrl, leaving Ctrl effectively unused unless in combination with Command, this argument doesn’t hold much water.

              Sure, some Emacs fan at Apple decided to add Emacs shortcuts to Cocoa controls, but that was a pretty arbitrary decision since people coming from Mac OS 9 didn’t use the Ctrl key, well, ever.

              • PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                1·
                5 months ago

                Books, periodicals, internet searches, practicing everything at home on a personal equipment until you’ve got it all mastered. If one can’t learn that way, take courses. The way the rest of us did it. Once you’ve got that, you have the ability to learn anything new coming… and can hit internet forums with well formed questions, complete with context. Staying on nano/pico, there is just no excuse if you’ve already been heavily using linux for 3 years or more. It’s an editor for those who are still in the beginning of the SELF learning phase. It should never be included in any distro’s default install except for school classroom centered distros. Just because something is easy to use doesn’t mean it’s installed as a standard everywhere. Folks learning this as their craft need to learn how to sit in front of any Linux or Unix and use standard tools to achieve what they need to do. That means learn your Vi. Learn your Posix shells like Ksh, Bash, Zsh, Dash, not the nano of shells, fish! Learn your Python, your Perl. Learn your SysV ‘isms in addition to your SystemD. Learn your csh (tcsh will do). Learn your terminal control codes. Learn your SysRq funtions. Learn your tmux, your gnu screen. Learn with and keep handy your books for awk, sed, patterns, perl. Learn your mkfs’, the different filesystems and their benefits, their options and tools, how to resize. Learn your MD raid. Learn your LVM. Learn various encrypt at rest options. Learn containers. Study and remember the differences between gnu, bsd, and sysv tools like tar, cpio, find, and even ps. Books books books! Practice practice practice! Study study study!

                And when you got that done, look up and see what you’ve missed while you were doing all that, and start in on all that new stuff. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Never stop reading, studying, practicing, learning.

                That’s how. Oh, and delete nano!!!

                • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                  1·
                  5 months ago

                  My point was that you can’t be an advanced user without first being a non-advanced user

                  (and side note, I’ve been using Linux for over 20 years on and off… still use Nano)

        • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
          1·
          5 months ago

          I like all editors to have as many diverse sets of keybindings as possible. Sadly most apps don’t, which is a main reason why I never bothered to properly learn emacs bindings, as I wouldn’t be able to use them anywhere else.

  • PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    5 months ago

    I got a temporary ban from, I suspect, the only mod in here to have personally blocked me. The mod log accuses me of breaking the rules 1 & 2. Based on the timing, it aligns with my comments in this post. They neither broke the community bulleted rules (about Linux, no misinformation), nor did they break rules of 1 & 2 of lemmy.ml. There was no bigotry, no racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia nor xenophobia. TThere were no individuals disrespected. I seek clarification of how my posts broke the rules, in DM’s please. I am not seeking further ban, just clarification of how those rules cover the opinion that one editor is less than another, lacks necessary features when compared with editors more standard across POSIX compliant systems, and that relying upon its existence could lead to situations where one could be ill equipped for systems where it is not installed, due to it not being such a standard.

    I post this as a comment, as I cannot seem to message the entire group of moderators for this community all together, especially where one appears to be unreachable to me… something I don’t think mods of a community should do or even be capable of if they are to carry out their duties properly.

    I ask the mods (preferably the mod who took the action, since no mod username is in the modlog… that’s a separate issue) to DM me and delete this or message me here, which ever is preferred. Can’t go navigating safely in here if the alleged offense wasn’t clearly communicated and explained how it violated said rules. I’m not even sure which comment, specifically, was at issue. Right now it feels like something I said was just deeply unpopular with one or more mods, and summarily punished and random rules tossed out.

    I’ll delete this in a few days if no mods respond. But clarification without further punishment would be appreciated.

    Thank you.