RFC: enable ^Z by default?

[Benno Schulenberg]

Hi all,

When typing ^T^Z, nano says: "Suspension is not enabled" (in the default setup).
I think this is silly -- if '^Z Suspend' is listed in the Execute menu, then it
should work.  However, to have ^T^Z work and have a plain ^Z say "Suspension is
not enabled"... that doesn't make sense.  So the question becomes: should we
enable ^Z by default?

In the archives of the mailing list I cannot find any reasoning for disabling
the ^Z keystroke by default and requiring an option (-z) or a toggle (M-Z) to
enable it.  I can imagine two reasons: 1) the inexperienced user might think
that ^Z is Undo, and to prevent these users from being "thrown out" of nano...
2) users might sometimes hit ^Z when they mean to type ^X, and since both
keystrokes kind of stop nano, to prevent any confusion...

But in editors like vim, emacs, lpe and ne, ^Z simply works, no enabling is
required, so why not in nano?  And if the effect of the ^Z keystroke bothers
the user, they can (since version 2.1.0 from 2008) unbind the key in their
nanorc.  And since version 5.0 they can then still suspend nano with ^T^Z,
no need for a re-enabling keystroke.

Furthermore, Debian and Ubuntu have had 'set suspend' in their /etc/nanorc
for years, so a considerable portion of Linux users have had ^Z enabled by
default for a long time, and no one seems to have complained.

Therefore, I propose to enable ^Z by default, to make -z, --suspendable,
and 'set suspendable' no-ops (recognized but ignored), and to remove the
M-Z toggle and its bindable function.  See attached patch.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Opinions?

Benno

0001-suspension-enable-Z-by-default-drop-the-z-option-and.patch
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