[Help-nano] Features I like a lot ... Re: Segfaults in libc-2.19 w/ 2.9.2

[Andreas Schamanek]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2018, at 21:18, Benno Schulenberg wrote:

> Op 15-01-18 om 22:36 schreef Andreas Schamanek:
> > I love Nano and I am very much excited about several recently added 
> > features.
> Out of curiosity, which features are those?

Thanks for asking! Let me start by mentioning the 2 features that I
consciously use most often, even though they are not quite recent
additions: Syntax highlighting and undo.

However, I indeed referred to features that had been added later, like

  ^S to save the file (which I am using frequently, currently ;)

BTW, it puzzles me how hard it is to unlearn ^O Enter.

Also very frequently I use Alt+Up/Down to find further matches of the
last search pattern. (Unfortunately, I doesn't work in my tmux.) ^Q
(start backwards search) is also nice to have.

Recent stuff from my .nanorc and command line (i.e. always used
defaults): atblanks, trimblanks, smooth, smarthome, wordbounds

One feature that has only been added with 2.9.2 is very dear to me, too:
"trimblanks ... will now snip trailing whitespace also while you are
typing". Before this I often removed these trailing whitespaces one by
one. Not anymore!

Then there are features that I do not use often but which sometimes come
in very handy:

  - comment/uncomment lines
  - indent/unindent lines (works even with tabs!), plus
  - conversion of tabs to spaces, and (as already mentioned)
  - smart home (jump to 1st character of line, then column 1)

  - soft wrapping of overlong lines
  - line numbering (not yet used but definitely good to have)
  - whitespace display (also usually not needed but can be a life saver)

  - improved navigation (^Up/Down, ^Left/Right, ^Home/End, ...)

When I read that nano now is able to record and run keystroke macros
I had to pinch myself to see if I am awake! That's incredibly awesome!

I would love to be able to select (mark) text by holding Shift together
with cursor keys. Unfortunately, I haven't yet managed to get this
working in my terminal (I use lilyterm either directly or "around" a
tmux). It works fine in an xterm, though.


If some of the mentioned features are actually ancient in terms of
nano's history, please bear with me. Inexplicably, there was a time
where I thought 2.2.6 was already good enough. I might have learned
about some features only later.

I'd also like to use the opportunity to say thanks for the incredible
support Benno is providing here on the list. That's worth more than any
feature could ever be. Thanks a lot indeed!

--
-- Andreas

    :-)