Peep Posted October 9, 2003 Report Share Posted October 9, 2003 this seems like something that there is probably a good FAQ about somewhere, but i didn't find one: when i first installed mandrake, i was baffled by vi and emacs. i stumbled upon nano, and have used it ever since because there's nothing you have to remember... all the shortcuts i need are at the bottom, although i think the only thing i ever use is ctrl-x. but i notice when i edit files in nano, it seems to wrap the text and put in line breaks sometimes. i thought maybe i needed a more "serious" editor, but when i pulled out emacs and putzed around, it looked like it did the same thing. should i generally be concerned about line breaks? and is there a reason for me to learn emacs or vi? i don't need an all-powerful editor, i just do light editing of files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 If you mean by that question that you want to make a line that is longer than the screen (or the 80 char limit or whatever) there is a way to get around it. All you need is go to the second line that nano/pico create automatically, then go to the leftmost side, then press the backspace /delete key. It will then attach the second line into the first line and it will show a $ sign showing that there are more things on the right side. You just need to press "right" to see the rest of the line. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted October 10, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 that's what i've been doing, but is there a way to stop it from doing that in the first place?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 I haven't verified this, but from nano's man page from nano's man page: -w (--nowrap) Disable wrapping of long lines. You can also try other editors such as kedit. There's a whole slew of them.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 is there a reason for me to learn emacs or vi? Yes there is, say X crashes, to fix it you need to edit a file, how you going to do it? most of the text editors like kedit etc, won't work if X isn't running. vi is the answer, comes pre-installed, and you don't need X Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qchem Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 >vi is the answer, comes pre-installed, and you don't need X Flamebait!!!! :wink: Emacs comes pre-installed and doesn't need X!! I prefer it, but I think it's really a case of which one you try to learn first is the text editor you'll prefer. I like emacs' ability to cut and paste rectangles and couldn't find this in vi... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aru Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 You both are wrong :P Neither emacs nor vim are available(1) for you when something goes really wrong in your system (I mean REALLY wrong)! but "vim minimal" (the closest vi clone from the vim guys) and ed are both right there when they are needed, both are very powerful, and more important they have similar commands to what you are used to use if you edit your files with vim. The knowledge of the basic vim commands would mean the difference of a trivial fix of a missconfiguration, and a full reinstall. Another important tools you should know how they work (as they will save you many times) are: awk, sed, grep, ..., and ofcourse you'll need to feel confident with bash. I like emacs' ability to cut and paste rectangles and couldn't find this in vi... have you ever played with vim in VISUAL MODE? ;) (1) The "available-ness" of the binaries depends on how you have partitioned your hd (ie, /usr/bin/ files aren't usually available if the system only can mount the / partition; commonly the /usr tree is mounted in a separated partition) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted October 10, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 from nano's man page: -w (--nowrap) Disable wrapping of long lines. thanks. i must've missed that one. i'm more comfortable doing simple editing in console than in an X app (kedit, gedit, etc). not sure why. i can use vi enough to edit a line or two if i have to boot from the rescue disk... but i wouldn't want to ever have to use it for much of anything else. i also just realized why nano probably seems easier. i hadn't remembered that pico was the editor used in pine, which i used many years ago. so between that, the fact that i had a cat named nano (not the cat in my avatar), and my laptop is named pico... i like nano & pico. (yes, i'm weird). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qchem Posted October 13, 2003 Report Share Posted October 13, 2003 >have you ever played with vim in VISUAL MODE? Nope, but I do a lot of work over SSH with no X forwarding.... And I don't want to relearn lots of command strokes. :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted October 13, 2003 Report Share Posted October 13, 2003 If I ever had a cat, I would name him Pixel :) After the kitty in the Robert Heinlein novel (The cat who walks through walls) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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