Re: [Nano-devel] [RFC] add toggle to writeout selection instead of entire buffer

[David Ramsey]

Mike Scalora:
> IMHO: Despite having used nano for decades, I was surprised it works
> the way it does work now. I think FILE operations (save, read) are not
> like text/content operations (replace, spell check, cut) so I don’t
> think this commonality makes sense (is expected). For the majority of
> users, I think it would be surprising behavior, in this case, a bad
> surprise. I support the toggle being added, I would even prefer it to
> NOT be sticky. Saving only the selection is something I would do very
> rarely and I fear not noticing and loosing the rest of the file.

I also save selections (as opposed to entire files) rarely, but the few
times I do need to do that, the ability comes in very handy.  Since the
main problem is not noticing when you're saving a selection instead of a
whole file, if a toggle is problematic, there's another solution that
nano has precedent for.

Specifically, when you save a file in nano, but change the filename
beforehand, nano gives a warning prompt about whether to save the file
under a different name.  When the mark is on, why not have a similar
warning prompt for that, something like "Save selection instead of
file?"?  The muscle memory of Ctrl-O/Enter wouldn't bypass the prompt so
easily, since the prompt would only respond to Y or N.

Or, failing that, possibly have another visual indicator when the mark
is on to make it more obvious?  If you hit Ctrl-^ and don't move the
cursor, the mark is on, but the marked selection is empty, so you can't
easily tell that the mark is on in that case.