Re: [Nano-devel] Nano logo

[Chris Allegretta]

On 9/21/14, Robert Funnell <address@hidden> wrote:
> Well, I'm glad I asked!
>
> I wouldn't say that I think it's super important, but I'm afraid that
> your supposition is supported by the fact that I'm not really a nano
> user, in spite of being a long-time Pine/Alpine user - in fact my
> favourite text editor is the one that is probably at the opposite end
> of the spectrum from nano. You may be able to guess which one I mean.

That's quite ok and no offense intended, I love and use vi[m] myself
and nano was written using it before it could become self-hosting as
it were.  I still use vim for things, and I try and think about why I
use it and see if nano can grow enough of a featureset that I don't
have to jump back and forth as frequently - for instance by making
nano's lockfiles [superficially] compatible with vim's for editing in
shared directories.  You really can't beat vim for 'I want to do this
really complicated search and replace across multiple lines with
mutliple backreferences'.

> I came across nano again this week - it has the tremendous advantage
> of being on Debian's CD #1. It looks very nice and I'll probably
> recommend it to students whom I'm forcing to use Linux for the first
> time, so they can do a few necessary editing jobs.

Yep we'll always be a newbie-friendly editor, well as long as I have
anything to say about it.  My intention for nano was to be the editor
anyone could start on when using a Unix-like OS.  Gradually people
would move on to vi or emacs because they are just so feature-rich and
really just great sturdy editors, but I wanted that to take a lot
longer than it did for people to transition away from Pico.  [Al]pine
is great, I miss using it.

> I must say that the idea of using ascii-art for the logo was
> brilliant. Below is the result of avoiding the work that I'm supposed
> to be doing at the moment:
>
>       iLE88Dj.  :jD88888Dj:
>     .LGitE888D.f8GjjjL8888E;
>     iE   :8888Et.     .G8888.
>     ;i    E888,        ,8888,
>           D888,        :8888:
>           D888,        :8888:
>           D888,        :8888:
>           D888,        :8888:
>           888W,        :8888:    i;
>           W88W,        :8888:.   Ei
>           W88W:         .D888EtiGL.
>           DGGD:           iD88ELi

Nice!  I'll make an announcement on Twitter assuming other folks think
this is a good idea.

> - Robert
>
> On Sun, 21 Sep 2014, Chris Allegretta wrote:
>
>> Heh.  The backstory is rather short: I have very little artistic
>> talent and wanted to find a font in the Gimp that could produce a
>> snazzy n that I could then turn into ascii-art.  The only remotely one
>> available for free on Linux at the time was for the Greek alphabet.
>> Surprisingly few people have since brought this up since I did it so
>> long ago, though I was well aware of the incorrectness at the time.
>>
>> It seemed to me that the same people who would deride that the letter
>> choice as something that was super important would be the same one who
>> would say they would never resort to using nano anyway in favor of
>> their editor which had no flaws in their mind, and thus that people
>> who didn't mind the logo's errant origin probably wouldn't mind the
>> editor :-)  It's worked out fairly well I must say!
>>
>> That said, late this fall nano itself is turning 15 and the logo is
>> quite long in the tooth - according to archive.org the eta logo was
>> introduced on or around April 1 2001 - haha!  You can see the old logo
>> which was also from Gimp, made from a simple included script-fu, at
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20010202023300/http://www.nano-editor.org/
>>
>> So who thinks we should have a new logo contest to celebrate 15 years?
>>
>>
>> On 9/21/14, Benno Schulenberg <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 20, 2014, at 20:14, Robert Funnell wrote:
>>>> Why does nano use the Greek character eta as a logo? It gives the
>>>> impression that somebody doesn't know which Greek character it is and
>>>> thinks it corresponds to 'n'.
>>>
>>> :)
>>>
>>> I think that maybe... just maybe... Chris may have reserved
>>> a really big prize for the first person to ask this question.
>>>
>>> :)
>>>
>>> If not, then /me is interested too in the answer.
>>>
>>> Benno
>>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nano-devel mailing list
> address@hidden
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nano-devel
>