GNU Nano 4.0 Text Editor Released

[Hi-Angel]

How could you mistype emacs as vim? Nothing's better than an editor war on a sunny Sunday

Well, yeah, I think nowadays word "Vim" means not the text editor, but rather vim-mode. In the end of the day variations of it with quality varying for disgusting to amazing have been integrated into countless editors and IDEs (kate, Emacs, Monodevelop, QtCreator, Visual Studio's VsVim — just off the top of my head).

I myself using Emacs with Evil mode (that's the name of Vim-mode for Emacs), the experience is great.

[Hi-Angel]

I 100% agree. Nothing wrong with vim but seriously, it's just a text editor.
I've used nano for years, because it's faster and easier to use. If I want the extra power, I'll use a graphical editor. Vim, to me, serves no advantage except if I need the advanced features on a system without a GUI.

FWIW vim has a graphical frontend, GVim.

[Hi-Angel]

Btw, I shall mention that IMO Emacs is even better vim than the original Vim. On top of vim implementation it features:

• Hybrid line numbers. Vim are refusing to implement them; hopefully neovim may be better in that regard… But someone needs to create the report
• Per buffer (i.e. basically a file opened in editor) history of movements. In vim it's global, i.e. if you press Ctrl+o, it may jump into another file. That's very uncomfortable when you're moving through a source code a lot
• Better regular expressions. On top of the usual stuff Emacs allows to execute ELisp expressions inside regexps, which allows you to do such stuff, as e.g. add to a pattern an increasing number (e.g. to enumerate something).

[schmidtbag]

FWIW vim has a graphical frontend, GVim.

Yes, and it's also a good program for people to learn vim. But beyond that, I'd rather just use console-based vim or a GUI editor.

[torsionbar28]

The same way you would with any graphical text editor... Go to the end of the line and press the delete key... It even responds to stuff like the Home, End, and Page Up/Down keys the same way as any other non-vi program. You're over-complicating it.

And how many key presses is that, exactly? With vim, it's a single one. J. Doesn't matter where in the line you are, it just works. 'J' for join. no need to be in a specific position on the line to make it work. Doesn't get much simpler than that. Honestly, most modern MMORPG games have more key bindings than vim does.

Edit: But FWIW I believe in using whatever works for you. Choice is good. I just happen to find vim the easiest and most familiar.

[cybertraveler]

And how many key presses is that, exactly? With vim, it's a single one. J. Doesn't matter where in the line you are, it just works. 'J' for join. no need to be in a specific position on the line to make it work. Doesn't get much simpler than that.

That's, at minimum, two key presses:

1. SHIFT
2. J

If you're currently in insert mode, that's 3 key presses:

1. ESC
2. SHIFT
3. J

With Nano it would be 1 to 3 key presses:

1. END (if not already at the end of the line)
2. SPACE (if needed)
3. DEL

(Obviously I am assuming a typical keyboard with a standard configuration of both editors.)

[schmidtbag]

And how many key presses is that, exactly? With vim, it's a single one. J. Doesn't matter where in the line you are, it just works. 'J' for join. no need to be in a specific position on the line to make it work. Doesn't get much simpler than that. Honestly, most modern MMORPG games have more key bindings than vim does.

Oh whop-dee-doo, with nano it's up to 2 keypresses: end+delete. Gee, my whole workflow is ruined because I have to press ONE extra key literally right next to the other one I have to press (/s). If you're already at the end of the line, all you have to do is press delete. Or, if you're at the beginning of the next line, just press backspace.
Also, depending on what you're doing in vim, no, it actually isn't just 1 keypress. For example, if you're in insert mode, you have to get out of that in order to concatenate, at which point, you're already on-par with nano.

[Zucca]

I am a Nano fan! Was never able to learn Vim, Nano rules!

I have used vim for several years now. But I just never get used to the insert mode. That's the reason I've been _seriously_ thinking of swithing to nano as my CLI/TUI editor. I just need to check if nano has few things I regulary use with vim...

[cybertraveler]

I have used vim for several years now. But I just never get used to the insert mode. That's the reason I've been _seriously_ thinking of swithing to nano as my CLI/TUI editor. I just need to check if nano has few things I regulary use with vim...

Someone in this thread recommended the dte editor as a nice alternative to Nano. I haven't tried dte, but it does look nice; especially if you want something inbetween Nano and Vim in terms of functionality.

https://gitlab.com/craigbarnes/dte

One obvious downside is that, unlike Nano, it's not installed by default on many distros. However it is very light on dependencies, so I expect in most cases it wouldn't be a problem to quickly install it via the standard distro package manager on most systems.

[schmidtbag]

I have used vim for several years now. But I just never get used to the insert mode. That's the reason I've been _seriously_ thinking of swithing to nano as my CLI/TUI editor. I just need to check if nano has few things I regulary use with vim...

Nano is relatively basic so it could be lacking some things you want. jed to me is a nice step up from nano and is much more user-friendly than vim, but unlike vi(m), emacs, or nano/pico, you won't find it pre-installed in most (if any) distros.