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?
3.4. nano should automatically run strip on the binary when installing it!
3.5. How can I make the executable smaller? This is too bloated!
3.6. Tell me more about this multibuffer stuff!
3.7. Tell me more about this verbatim input stuff!
3.8. How do I make a .nanorc file that nano will read when I start it?
3.9. Why does my self-compiled nano not read /etc/nanorc?
4.1. Alt+Up does nothing on a Linux console. How can I make it scroll?
4.2. How can I make Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right select words on urxvt?
4.3. How do I remove an unwanted Byte Order Mark?
4.4. With what keystroke can I paste text from the clipboard into nano?
4.5. How do I select text for or paste text from the clipboard when nano's mouse support is turned on?
4.6. When I paste text into a document, each line gets indented further than the last. Why? And how can I stop this?
4.7. When I paste from Windows into a remote nano, nano rewraps the lines. What gives?
4.8. I've compiled nano with color support, but I don't see any color when I run it!
4.9. How do I make nano my default editor (in Pine, mutt, git, ...)?
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 was designed to be a free replacement for the Pico text editor, part of the Pine email suite from The University of Washington. It aimed to "emulate Pico as closely as is reasonable 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 duplex terminal connection to a remote host", and was included with many older Unix systems (and newer ones like Solaris). The conflict was not noticed at first because there is no 'tip' utility included with most GNU/Linux distributions (where nano was developed).
The current version of nano should be 9.1. Of course, you should always check the nano homepage to see what the latest and greatest version is.
Jeez, demanding, aren't we? Okay, look here.
The nano source tarballs can be downloaded from the following web sites:
Debian users can check out the current nano packages for:
You can also have a look at the Package Pool to see all the available binary and source packages.
For the "bleeding edge" current version of nano, you can use git to download the current source code. Note: believe it or not, by downloading code that has not yet stabilized into an official release, there could quite possibly be bugs, in fact the code may not even compile! Anyway, see the hacking document for info on getting and building nano from git.
It's simple really! As root, type rpm -Uvh nano-x.y-1*.rpm if you have a RedHat-ish system or dpkg -i nano_x.y-1*.deb if you have a Debian-ish system, where x.y is the version number of nano. There are other programs to install packages, and if you wish to use those, knock yourself out.
Okay, take a deep breath, this really isn't hard. Unpack the nano source with a command like:
tar -xvf nano-x.y.tar.gz
Then you need to run configure with any options you might want (if any).
The average case is this:
cd nano-x.y/
./configure
make
make install #(as root, of course)
Well, that's what the configure script defaults to. If you wish to change this, simply do this:
./configure --prefix=/usr
This will put nano into /usr/bin when you run make install.
It does when you use make install-strip. The default make install does not, and will not, run strip automatically.
Actually, there are several parts of the editor that can be disabled. You can pass arguments to the configure script that disable certain features. Here's a brief list:
--disable-browser Disable the built-in file browser --disable-color Disable color and syntax highlighting --disable-comment Disable the comment/uncomment function --disable-extra Disable the easter egg --disable-formatter Disable the formatting tool --disable-help Disable the built-in help texts --disable-histories Disable the saving of search strings and cursor positions --disable-justify Disable the justify/unjustify functions --disable-libmagic Disable the use of libmagic for determining a file's syntax --disable-linenumbers Disable line numbering --disable-linter Disable the linting tool --disable-mouse Disable mouse support --disable-multibuffer Disable the opening of multiple file buffers --disable-nanorc Disable the use of .nanorc