1.1. What is GNU nano?
1.2. What is the history behind nano?
1.3. Why the name change from TIP?
1.4. What is the current version of nano?
1.5. I want to read the manpage without having to download the program!
2.1. FTP and WWW sites that carry nano.
2.2. RedHat and derivatives (.rpm) packages.
2.3. Debian (.deb) packages.
2.4. By GIT (for the brave).
3.1. How do I install the RPM or DEB package?
3.2. Compiling from source: WHAT THE HECK DO I DO NOW?
3.3. Why does everything go into /usr/local?
3.5. nano should automatically run strip on the binary when installing it!
3.6. How can I make the executable smaller? This is too bloated!
3.7. Tell me more about this multibuffer stuff!
3.8. Tell me more about this verbatim input stuff!
3.9a. How do I make a .nanorc file that nano will read when I start it?
3.9b. How about in Win32?
4.1. How do I open a file with a name beginning with '+' from the command line?
4.2. Ack! My Backspace/Delete/Enter/Meta/double bucky key doesn't seem to work! What can I do?
4.3. Ack! My numeric keypad's keys don't work properly when NumLock is off! What can I do?
4.4. Ack! When I hold down a Meta key combination for a while, the character of the held key gets inserted now and then. What gives?
4.5. How do I type the F13-F16 keys listed in the help viewer? My keyboard only has F1-F12!
4.6. nano crashes when I type <insert keystrokes here>!
4.7. nano crashes when I resize my window. How can I fix that?
4.8a. With what keystroke can I paste text from the clipboard into nano?
4.8b. When I paste text into a document, each line gets indented further than the last. Why? And how can I stop this?
4.8c. When I paste from Windows into a remote nano, nano rewraps the lines. What gives?
4.9. I've compiled nano with color support, but I don't see any color when I run it!
4.10. How do I make nano my default editor (in Pine, mutt, etc.)?
4.11. How do I select text for or paste text from the clipboard in an X terminal when I'm running nano in one and nano's mouse support is turned on?
4.12. On startup I get a message that says "Detected a legacy nano history file". Now older nano versions can't find my search history!
5.1. There's no translation for my language!
5.2. I don't like the translation for <x> in my language. How can I fix it?
5.3. What is the status of Unicode support?
6.1. Why should I use nano instead of Pico?
6.2. Why should I use Pico instead of nano?
6.3. What is so bad about the older Pine license?
6.4. Okay, well, what mail program should I use then?
7.1. Where can I ask questions or send suggestions?
7.2. How do I submit a bug report or patch?
7.3. I want to send the development team a big load of cash (or just a thank you).
7.4. How do I join the development team?
7.5. Can I have write access to the GIT tree?
GNU nano is designed to be a free replacement for the Pico text editor, part of the Pine email suite from The University of Washington. It aims to "emulate Pico as closely as possible and then include extra functionality".
Funny you should ask!
In the beginning...
For years Pine was THE program used to read email on a Unix system. The Pico text editor is the portion of the program one would use to compose his or her mail messages. Many beginners to Unix flocked to Pico and Pine because of their well organized, easy to use interfaces. With the proliferation of GNU/Linux in the mid to late 90's, many University students became intimately familiar with the strengths (and weaknesses) of Pine and Pico.
Then came Debian...
The Debian GNU/Linux distribution, known for its strict standards in distributing truly "free" software (i.e. software with no restrictions on redistribution), would not include a binary package for Pine or Pico. Many people had a serious dilemma: they loved these programs, but the versions available at the time were not truly free software in the GNU sense of the word.
The event...
It was in late 1999 when Chris Allegretta (our hero) was yet again complaining to himself about the less-than-perfect license Pico was distributed under, the 1000 makefiles that came with it and how just a few small improvements could make it the Best Editor in the World (TM). Having been a convert from Slackware to Debian, he missed having a simple binary package that included Pine and Pico, and had grown tired of downloading them himself.
Finally something snapped inside and Chris coded and hacked like a madman for many hours straight one weekend to make a (barely usable) Pico clone, at the time called TIP (Tip Isn't Pico). The program could not be invoked without a filename, could not save files, had no help text display, spell checker, and so forth. But over time it improved, and with the help of a few great coders it matured to the (hopefully) stable state it is in today.
In February 2001, nano was declared an official GNU program by Richard Stallman. nano also reached its first production release on March 22, 2001.
On January 10, 2000, TIP was officially renamed to nano because of a namespace conflict with another program called 'tip'. The original 'tip' program "establishes a full