README
1
2 GNU nano -- a simple editor, inspired by Pico
3
4Purpose
5
6 Nano is a small and simple text editor for use on the terminal.
7 It copied the interface and key bindings of the Pico editor but
8 added several missing features: undo/redo, syntax highlighting,
9 line numbers, softwrapping, multiple buffers, selecting text by
10 holding Shift, search-and-replace with regular expressions, and
11 several other conveniences.
12
13Appearance
14
15 In rough ASCII graphics, this is what nano's screen looks like:
16
17 ____________________________________________________________________
18 | GNU nano 6.3 filename Modified |
19 --------------------------------------------------------------------
20 | This is the text window, displaying the contents of a 'buffer', |
21 | the contents of the file you are editing. |
22 | |
23 | The top row of the screen is the 'title bar'; it shows nano's |
24 | version, the name of the file, and whether you modified it. |
25 | The two bottom rows display the most important shortcuts; in |
26 | those lines ^ means Ctrl. The third row from the bottom shows |
27 | some feedback message, or gets replaced with a prompt bar when |
28 | you tell nano to do something that requires extra input. |
29 | |
30 --------------------------------------------------------------------
31 | [ Some status message ] |
32 |^G Help ^O Write Out ^W Where Is ^K Cut ^T Execute |
33 |^X Exit ^R Read File ^\ Replace ^U Paste ^J Justify |
34 --------------------------------------------------------------------
35
36Origin
37
38 The nano project was started in 1999 because of a few "problems"
39 with the wonderfully easy-to-use and friendly Pico text editor.
40
41 First and foremost was its license: the Pine suite does not use
42 the GPL, and (before using the Apache License) it had unclear
43 restrictions on redistribution. Because of this, Pine and Pico
44 were not included in many GNU/Linux distributions. Furthermore,
45 some features (like go-to-line-number or search-and-replace) were
46 unavailable for a long time or require a command-line flag. Yuck.
47
48 Nano aimed to solve these problems by: 1) being truly free software
49 by using the GPL, 2) emulating the functionality of Pico as closely
50 as is reasonable, and 3) including extra functionality by default.
51
52 Nowadays, nano wants to be a generally useful editor with sensible
53 defaults (linewise scrolling, no automatic line breaking).
54
55 The nano editor is an official GNU package. For more information on
56 GNU and the Free Software Foundation, please see https://www.gnu.org/.
57
58License
59
60 Nano's code and documentation are covered by the GPL version 3 or
61 (at your option) any later version, except for two functions that
62 were copied from busybox which are under a BSD license. Nano's
63 documentation is additionally covered by the GNU Free Documentation
64 License version 1.2 or (at your option) any later version. See the
65 files COPYING and COPYING.DOC for the full text of these licenses.
66
67 When in any file of this package a copyright notice mentions a
68 year range (such as 1999-2011), it is a shorthand for a list of
69 all the years in that interval.
70
71How to compile and install nano
72
73 Download the latest nano source tarball, and then:
74
75 tar -xvf nano-x.y.tar.gz
76 cd nano-x.y
77 ./configure
78 make
79 make install
80
81 You will need the header files of ncurses installed for ./configure
82 to succeed -- get them from libncurses-dev (Debian) or ncurses-devel
83 (Fedora) or a similarly named package. Use --prefix with ./configure
84 to override the default installation directory of /usr/local.
85
86 After installation you may want to copy the doc/sample.nanorc file
87 to your home directory, rename it to ".nanorc", and then edit it
88 according to your taste.
89
90Web Page
91
92 https://nano-editor.org/
93
94Mailing Lists
95
96 There are three nano-related mailing-lists.
97
98 * <info-nano@gnu.org> is a very low traffic list used to announce
99 new nano versions or other important info about the project.
100
101 * <help-nano@gnu.org> is for those seeking to get help without
102 wanting to hear about the technical details of its development.
103
104 * <nano-devel@gnu.org> is the list used by the people that make nano
105 and a general development discussion list, with moderate traffic.
106
107 To subscribe, send email to <name>-request@gnu.org with a subject
108 of "subscribe", where <name> is the list you want to subscribe to.
109
110 The archives of the development and help mailing lists are here:
111
112 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/
113 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-nano/
114
115Bug Reports
116
117 If you find a bug, please file a detailed description of the problem
118 on nano's issue tracker: https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano
119 (you will need an account to be able to do so), or send an email
120 to the nano-devel list (no need to subscribe, but mention it if
121 you want to be CC'ed on an answer).
122
123
README.hacking
1INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMPILING AND INSTALLING NANO FROM GIT
2=======================================================
3
4The latest changes and fixes for GNU nano are available via git, but
5building this needs a bit more care than the official tarballs.
6
7
8Prerequisites
9-------------
10
11To successfully compile GNU nano from git, you'll need the following:
12
13 autoconf (version >= 2.69)
14 automake (version >= 1.14)
15 autopoint (version >= 0.18.3)
16 gcc (version >= 5.0)
17 gettext (version >= 0.18.3)
18 git (version >= 2.7.4)
19 groff (version >= 1.12)
20 make (any version)
21 pkg-config (version >= 0.22)
22 texinfo (version >= 4.0)
23
24You will also need to have the header files for ncurses installed,
25from libncurses-dev on Debian, ncurses-devel on Fedora, or similar.
26
27These should all be available in your distro's package manager or
28software center, or otherwise on any GNU mirror.
29
30
31Clone the source
32----------------
33
34To obtain the current nano development branch (called 'master'), use the
35following command. It will create in your current working directory a
36subdirectory called 'nano' containing a copy of all of the files:
37
38 $ git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/nano.git
39
40
41Generate the configure script
42-----------------------------
43
44Once you have the sources in the "nano" directory,
45
46 $ cd nano
47 $ ./autogen.sh
48
49This will set up a configure script and a Makefile.in file.
50
51
52Configure your build
53--------------------
54
55To configure your build, run the configure script from the nano source
56directory:
57
58 $ ./configure [--add-options-here]
59
60
61Build and install
62-----------------
63
64From the nano source directory, build the code with:
65
66 $ make
67
68Then, once it's done compiling, run:
69
70 $ make install
71
72which should copy various files (i.e. the nano executable, the info and
73man pages, and syntax highlighting pattern files) to their appropriate
74directories.
75
76If you're installing into the default install directory (/usr/local),
77you'll need to run that "make install" command with root privileges.
78
79
80Problems?
81---------
82
83Please submit any bugs you find in the code in git via the bug tracker
84on Savannah (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano).
85
86
87Contributing something
88----------------------
89
90If you have a fix for a bug, or the code for a new or improved feature,
91first create a branch off of master:
92
93 $ git checkout -b somename
94
95Then change the code so it does what you want, and commit it together
96with your Sign-off:
97
98 $ git commit -as
99
100In the commit message (after the one-line summary) give a rationale
101for the change. With your Signed-off-by you declare that the code is
102yours, or that you are free to reuse it, and that you submit it under
103the license that covers nano. Then create a patch (or patches):
104
105 $ git format-patch master
106
107Send that patch (or patches) to <nano-devel@gnu.org>, as an attachment
108or with git send-email.
109
110To keep most lines of nano's source code within a width of 80 characters,
111a tab size of four should be used. So in your nanorc file you may want
112to include 'set tabsize 4', or you could use -T4 on the command line.
113To make git display things as intended, you can do:
114
115 $ git config --local core.pager "less -x1,5"
116
117To see all types that are used in nano's source code colorized as types,
118you can add these lines to your ~/.nanorc:
119
120 extendsyntax c color green "\<struct (dirent|option|passwd)\>"
121 extendsyntax c color green "\<struct (sigaction|stat|termios)\>"
122 extendsyntax c color green "\<struct (timespec|vt_stat|winsize)\>"
123 extendsyntax c color green "\<([[:lower:]_]+(struct|type)|va_list)\>"
124