micro – A Modern Alternative to nano

https://micro-editor.github.io/

by theycallhermax • 3 years ago

383 324 3 years ago

micro-editor.github.io

Semaphor• 3 years ago

Out of 14 other submissions, 2020 [0] had 103 comments and 2021 [1] 162 comments.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23334190

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29128702

petabytes3• 3 years ago

Been using it as my main editor for the past 3 years now, coming from Sublime Text. It's been a great editor so far, but it's missing a lot of modern features, and the plugin support seems to be next to none.

tipiirai• 3 years ago

Why did you leave Sublime?

LoganDark2• 3 years ago

Sublime has syntax highlighting, but no analysis or refactoring features

dr_kiszonka• 3 years ago

I use Sublime daily exclusively for quick notes and as a scratch pad/clipboard. What I have started noticing recently and what worries me is that with only the most basic Markdown plugins it now uses 1 GB of RAM and is somewhat less snappy than it used to. I really hope it goes away soon but with other editors getting more resource-heavy, I am worried.

petabytes3• 3 years ago

"Please purchase a sublime text license" popup every 15 saves. Been about 5 years since I last used it.

akho• 3 years ago

It's an alternative to nano, not to vsc.

xp846• 3 years ago

I must be weird because I see a major divide in editors. CLI editors are for light text editing and don’t need plugins. Updating a line in a config file, etc. I’ve never even wished for a plug-in for them. IDEs need plugins. They’re for coding.

(I know some people use vim or emacs for coding, with 1000 amazing plugins, but I think deep down they’re masochists in the first place, especially vim.)

legends2k• 3 years ago

I think people who reach for an IDE are deep down spoiled brats who need everything on a platter.

petabytes3• 3 years ago

I tried to use vscode, but I hated the high CPU usage. My laptop literally gets warm when scrolling through code. And fan go brrrrr

muxator• 3 years ago

The top intuitive to use TUI editors in my heart will always be: - MS Dos Edit - Turbo Pascal 6

Edit felt like a windows application: select with shift+arrows, move fast with ctrl+home/end.

Turbo Pascal's keybindings were a bit influenced by WordStar's, I think, so a bit old style already at the time. But, my friend, the TUI Toolkit, TurboVision! What did they do there! Multiple windows that could be dragged and resized, blazingly fast. All of this on a 486 with megabytes of ram.

I never found any TUI editors like those two.

acumenical• 3 years ago

I've never used micro, but if you look at the default keybindings[0], you'll see they're very Windows-y and might be to your liking.

As for myself, I don't see cut-to-character or select-to-character like in vim, and yanking and pasting seems more intuitive in vim. And with visual block I don't miss Sublime style cursors at all.

0: https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/blob/master/runtime/help/k...

boxed• 3 years ago

The selection model is unfortunately a bit broken. For example shift+control+arrows and shift+down doesn't work. I believe the problem is that selection with shift isn't written to compose with other navigation.

pyrelight• 3 years ago

Turbo Pascal's UI was magical and perfect.

TylerE• 3 years ago

The one I really liked back in the day was Jed. Basically nano/windows style keybindings, but it had stuff like syntax highlighting…in the mid 90s.

kseistrup• 3 years ago

I've been using jed since the 90'es. I've tried many other editors, but I always return to jed.

Should I switch to something else, it would probably be kakoune.

richardjam73• 3 years ago

When looking at Freedos a while back I found an editor called setedit. It does work on other platforms than DOS but I haven't tried it. It is influenced by the Borland C++ IDE editor.

https://setedit.sourceforge.net/

pepa652• 3 years ago

Those are default bindings in nano I think. (I've been using my custom bindings for years...)

lloeki• 3 years ago

486? Ha! I remember getting my hands on a TP copy in late 80s early 90s, first version I had fit on a 720k floppy but the second one did not (1.44), and I remember trimming it down to fit 720k because I had only a 640kiB 80c88 with two 3.5" 720k drives and no hard disk. It was plenty fast already!

Then I got a 1MiB 286 Goupil G5 (with something like 20MiB HDD, I remember thinking that thing is so huge how am I ever going to fill that, which I never did) and a colour CRT, TP felt so blink and you miss it fast on that machine already, it must have been lightspeed on a 486!

I for the life of me can't remember if aforementioned versions were (resp.) 4.0 and 5.0 or 5.0 and 6.0 though. My hunch is on the latter but I'm really not sure. Last one I used was TP 7.something much later (early '00s)

pjmlp2• 3 years ago

TP 5.5 was the one that wasn't already fitting into a floppy.

Using MS-DOS 3.3 with TP 4, was still doable on a 1.44MB, which I used to carry around during high school for our computer lab.

roytam87• 3 years ago

You may give YEdit a try. http://www.malsmith.net/edit/

pjmlp2• 3 years ago

TurboVision in TP 6 was my path into OOP, started early on by TP 5.5 adoption of Apple's Object Pascal features.

The framework design is marvelous, not only what it could do on UI level, it already had reflection, serialization, collections with common stuff like map/filter/sort via callbacks.

Great learning experience, and good ramp into "there is more than one way to do OOP".

Another good TUI experience on MS-DOS, also with great OOP ramp-up learnings, Clipper (version 5 introduced OOP support).

zczc• 3 years ago

I think mcedit is close (included with Midnight Commander): similar keybindings, pull-down menu on top, resizable windows

tuatoru• 3 years ago

Try tilde editor. It's close-ish.

1. https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde

ale42• 3 years ago

Very nice discovery, thanks! Just found it was already on HN, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34545086

By the way, I noticed a long startup delay... (on tilde, and on micro as well). After some stracing, I found out that the culprit was a TCP connection attempt to an X server that I didn't have. (X forwarding was configured in my SSH client, but there was no X server running on my PC...) In case it can help someone ;)

pavlov• 3 years ago

The reason why MS-DOS text editors were so fast and felt powerful is that they used direct access to video memory to render the text-mode UI.

Unix is still stuck on the notion of the console being an output stream that emulates a Teletype printer at some level. Full-screen text UIs work around this by adding extra layers for screen manipulation in a stream-oriented device.

On MS-DOS, the system APIs were so primitive and limited that everybody (beyond basic CLI tools anyway) just wrote directly against the IBM PC hardware, which conveniently mapped the text-mode screen at a memory location. You could print or move or clear on-screen elements using standard memory operations, and there was no other software layer sitting in between translating the frame buffer, so updates were instant. (No other hardware layers either. The CRT blasted out your characters at most some 15 ms after your update. Today, who knows what’s buffered in the GPU and display itself.)

It’s the difference between a multi-user system where you (as the user) get a narrow stream of I/O with the shared computer vs. a single-user machine where you truly control the device. Sadly the latter model of personal computing is increasingly obsolete.

magicalhippo• 3 years ago

Hence some lovely text mode demos and such. Random example[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSe5FGlyBFU

cmrdporcupine7• 3 years ago

While the 'tty' concept seems archaic, it has served Unix-ish systems very well in the long run, giving us a nice console experience with a diversity of terminal applications and an excellent remote experience.

Meanwhile Windows never really implemented a proper universal console abstraction -- until recently -- and forced all console output through the same terrible hardcoded terminal with crap support for basic things like copy and paste, and struggled for over two decades to have a productive console environment, forcing administrators and power users to do everything of substance through the GUI or tear their hair out. This is finally fixed, but only recently.

mbork_pl• 3 years ago

Right! I also used a Norton Commander clone written with Turbo Vision. You could mark several files (with Insert), then press F4 and voilà - you got multiple windows open! AFAIR, you could even do a "global search and replace" (across these windows). Powerful stuff.

Although coding in TV was much, much less pleasant than using it...

Now I use Emacs, which is obviously superior to any other editor except Vim, which is incomparable [0] to Emacs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partially_ordered_set

angg• 3 years ago

andridk• 3 years ago

I thought Nano was the modern alternative to Pico ^_^

mjhagen• 3 years ago

I'm holding out for Macro.

xvedejas• 3 years ago

according to SI, the opposite of micro (10^-6) is mega (10^6)

sph• 3 years ago

Yes, a Macro Editor... perhaps with some Editor MACroS.

l-albertovich• 3 years ago

It'd be funny to silently alias quetta=emacs in systems. I wonder what would people think when they find it.

pepa652• 3 years ago

I think nano is modern itself, still actively being developed, and for the past few years more or less feature complete. But if nano wasn't there, I would probably be using micro.

xp846• 3 years ago

Too many awkward keyboard commands though. To save and quit: ^o, Return, ^x

Vs Micro ^s ^q

Honestly that, and ^k (kill to end of line) are the only commands I use in any CLI editor.

Ironically my muscle memory actually learned the obnoxious 3-step nano way so I usually forget to use micro.

But every time I work with a developer under 40 and see them fiddling with vim trying to wrestle with vim to do simple text entry with a git commit message, I help them set $VISUAL and -$EDITOR to micro, although I have to remember the config to turn on the help/status bar that shows the commands, since they inexplicably turned it off by default a few years ago.

freeopinion• 3 years ago

Whenever I see a developer under 40 struggling to figure out what all the carets on the bottom of the screen mean...

Jiocus3• 3 years ago

Are you sure about those nano commands? Since a few years I've always found nano system defaults to be:

^s: Save

^o: Save as (type out filename, save and return to editing)

In other words, to save and quit:

^s,^x

molticrystal• 3 years ago

Another small TUI ide/editor to try is Orbiton [0] also written in go and has clang-lint, compiling, and has gdb debugging support, though I believe it lacks plugins. These features work also for Rust, C/C++, and I would imagine Zig, and Go development as well. I tested it on an old 2012 kindle fire and it works great.

[0] https://github.com/xyproto/orbiton

littlestymaar• 3 years ago

How can it be modern if it's not even written in Rust /s

oneshtein2• 3 years ago

Rust

https://github.com/ahmednooor/lino

https://github.com/curlpipe/ox

https://github.com/zee-editor/zee

https://github.com/ilai-deutel/kibi

https://github.com/gchp/iota

satvikpendem• 3 years ago

Shall we just use ed instead?

quickthrower22• 3 years ago

No because I want to leave on time

globular-toast4• 3 years ago

Just curious, why are people interested in small editors like this? The only reason I ever use vi/vim is because it's everywhere. If I'm going to install an editor, I'll install Emacs. If it's a remote system I'll simply open the file over SSH with tramp (essentially transparently supports remote editing) and retain the full power and speed of my local Emacs. For TUI editing (like for sudoedit, git commit, C-x C-e etc.) I run Emacs as a daemon so new frames, including TUI frames load instantly, look very close to my Emacs GUI (with nerd fonts, colours and everything) and are literally Emacs. You really don't need to have multiple editors for different use cases.

mixmastamyk11• 3 years ago

Not everyone is interested in a humongous editor with a steep learning curve. Some people just want to quickly edit a file.

You can use this with the knowledge you have already of windows notepad or mac simpletext and it will work on a busted or server machine with only a unix console.

KnobbleMcKnees• 3 years ago

It also works where you don't have ssh to tunnel files, which is true for many servers in many professional environments.

tasogare• 3 years ago

Not everyone is interested in a humongous editor with a steep learning

Then why using a TUI editor at all? Each time nano was opened because of some default settings, I saw this whole bottom bar with shortcuts. It sure doesn't seems to be easy to learn either.

globular-toast4• 3 years ago

It's funny because `emacs -Q -nw` loads instantly on my very modest system and supports pretty much everything `nano` does immediately. You can move around with arrows, you can just start typing etc.

The one thing it's missing is telling you how to save and close the file etc... Makes me wonder if a nano-style help bar with super-simple key bindings would be a useful default bundle for Emacs.

`emacs -Q` seems to load even faster, somehow, and that's the full graphical version if you have a window system.

eternityforest3• 3 years ago

Nano is on all the OSes I ever encounter. I don't edit things remotely often and it's usually trivial config files.

I tried micro, and liked it but it didn't quite open instantly on a pi and I don't use CLI editors for anything big enough to really need the features.

OfSanguineFire• 3 years ago

I have been a Linux nerd for over two decades, but I never managed to grok vi, it just seems unintuitive. I found Emacs more attractive, and when I ssh into a low-powered device like a router running OpenWRT, Emacs isn’t available so I use the editor that is available and seems intuitive: Nano. (Yes, I know I could also use Emacs with TRAMP, but everyone establishes their own personal workflow.)

This comment isn't meant to knock vi. Obviously it has its fans. But the inability of some hackers to feel comfortable with it is a well-known phenomenon.

linuxdude31410• 3 years ago

Have you ever sat down for an hour and tried to learn?

If you’re familiar with Unix tools a lot of the syntax should be familiar (like string substitutions).

Having been a math tutor in the past, I pretty firmly believe anyone is capable of learning the basics of how to use vim.

It’s either a lack of effort or a learning disability, not much in between.

It’s really not hard to memorize a few keyboard shortcuts for most people who are proficient with computers.

thargor90• 3 years ago

We use micro because we could develop a custom plugin without too much effort and it is very easy to deploy (copy) to systems that have no good terminal editor available.

Prefer vim usually, but it's too much effort to deploy a sane configuration to our target systems.

oytis2• 3 years ago

vim vs emacs is an age-old flamewar. I for one was never able to make use of emacs, it feels like a whole new hobby or job to configure it. Vim on the contrary is pretty convenient to use on default settings.

Terretta2• 3 years ago

interested in small editors like this

Not really interested in small editors like this.

Very interested in small editors like* nano, for this root comment reason:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37173126

See also the opening paragraph here:

https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-use-nano-text-editor/

It's courteous to ensure nano in cattle builds for today's sysadmins that didn't grow up with vi or vim or pick the emacs side of that debate.

globular-toast4• 3 years ago

Nano is pretty decent for that reason and I definitely wouldn't grumble at having to use it for tiny tasks like a few lines of config file. Including nano (or any editor) inside cattle doesn't seem like it should be necessary, though. If you can open a shell then you should be able to use tramp or something similar.

mixmastamyk11• 3 years ago

micro is a great compliment to other CUA editors. One set of keybindings to rule them all!

feldrim3• 3 years ago

The issue of micro for me was the formatted paste. When I paste a piece of code, micro tries to indent it line by line. Yet, it does not have the whole picture. So it indents the pasted text gradually to infinity. And line by line inferring the format slows the process down to zero. You paste and go grab a coffee instead of watching a Matrix-like paste scene.

I hope they solved it but I left at that point. If it is solved, I can give it a try again.

Yasuraka2• 3 years ago

You could disable it (Ctrl+E, 'set autoindent off')

https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/blob/master/runtime/help/o...

But even when enabled (like I have) it should indently correctly when pasting entire blocks.

If you'd like to share your setup/env/config I'd take a look at working out a patch

feldrim3• 3 years ago

It's been a while, I will try and create an issue. Bir I was using the default setup IIRC.

mminer237• 3 years ago

I've had that happen once when I was using it on Windows with Wezterm.

It depends on how you paste. I'm not 100% clear how it works, but I believe micro reimplements pasting directly with xclip (idk what it does on Windows) so if you paste with Ctrl+V, it just instantly inserts what's on the clipboard as a block and copies the source indentation. If you do Ctrl+Shift+V, sometimes it essentially just gets the clipboard piped from the terminal each character one at a time, not knowing what comes next, so then it indents extra when it sees the return character and then it naïvely gets a couple tabs added on top.

pletnes2• 3 years ago

Is it super fast on large files? (Large is 1 GB+) I’ve used vim or notepad++ for those in the past but would be happy to find something faster.

bdhcuidbebe• 3 years ago

I use textwrangler for those massive files. Check it out!

pletnes2• 3 years ago

Looks like mac only? I’m often stuck on windows. But thanks!

glebd• 3 years ago

JOE is pretty nice https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/ — a hybrid of WordStar and Emacs, and if you run it with `jstar` you get a pretty authentic WordStar experience which also feels like the earliest Borland Turbo IDEs.

benhoyt2• 3 years ago

I used to love JOE! Maybe that's why, because it had echoes of WordStar. I just wrote an article about how I still use the "WordStar Diamond" keys in Linux today: https://benhoyt.com/writings/wordstar-diamond/

cmrdporcupine7• 3 years ago

Great memories there, back in the 90s I used to use joe for everything that wasn't editing code. Mainly because it just isn't good at that, it's more of a "word processing" model, with word wrapping and lack of syntax highlighting, etc.

But for writing text documents? Lovely little editor.

jhallenworld• 3 years ago

You should try a more recent version of it: sudo apt-get install joe

JOE has syntax highlighting, UTF-8, regex, shell windows, hex editing, incremental search, column/rectangular block, macros..

diydsp• 3 years ago

Yup! I often invoke it with "jmacs" to get the emacs keyboard shortcut set.

NikkiA• 3 years ago

native-mode joe is closer to zde/vde than wordstar, although jstar obviously slides that closer to wordstar.

deepspace• 3 years ago

Yes! The first word processor I used was Wordstar (under CP/M). My first programming environment was Borland Turbo Pascal. Later, I used "QEdit", which was configurable to use the wordstar keys.

When I finally migrated from DOS to Unix, in the early 90s, I was delighted to discover JOE. It is the first program I install on any new Linux or *BSD box or VM.

JOE has syntax highlighting and several other nice features these days. I have therefore never felt the need to get proficient with vi or emacs.

Tomte• 3 years ago

Are the differences between the modes and their keybindings not documented in the manual?

Probably I'm just stupid and overlooked them, but I really don't see anything.

defanor• 3 years ago

It calls its terminal multiplexer functionality "terminal emulator", it seems. Unless it has a GUI, but then "terminal-based" is wrong.

I am not a fan of nano, as it is not even qualified to attend the editor war, but this one adds JSON configuration, "curl | bash" installation, has a JS-dependent website, and generally looks even more awkward than nano. Apparently both nano and this editor have their target audience, as do all those other "modern" editors, but observing this triggers the feelings likely similar to those that lead to flamewars: it is painful to observe seemingly inefficient and otherwise awkward tools used by others, and tempting to suggest to look into better options.

mgaunard4• 3 years ago

try looking at a "modern" text editor; the one which appears to have the highest popularity is visual studio code.

It's an awful slow mess that cannot stop itself from triggering unsolicited popups, eating all your RAM and inserting characters you didn't type.

The reality is that this is the reality of programmers today, they want something that does a shitty work for them rather than be in control.

linuxdude31410• 3 years ago

I have absolutely none of the problems you are describing with VSCode.

You have an immense amount of control over VSCode and its plugin ecosystem is fantastic.

This sounds like more of a problem with your workstation or environment.

jtriangle• 3 years ago

You know what nano's good for? Editing a few lines of a config file every now and then.

For that purpose, it's great, works a peach, and is as at least as good as every other option if not better.

And that's what 99% of people use it for, because that's what 99% of people need in a terminal based text editor. Those people don't tend to participate in these sorts of discussions because, well, they're probably still trying to figire out how to exit vim after someone told them vim was better than nano.

cesarb5• 3 years ago

You know what nano's good for? Editing a few lines of a config file every now and then.

As long as you always start it as "nano -w" to prevent its enabled-by-default (at least on some versions) word wrapping from corrupting your config file.

mixmastamyk11• 3 years ago

    sudo apt install micro

Not awkward, it uses keybindings you already know if you've used a PC or Mac in the last 40 years. :-/

prmoustache4• 3 years ago

I think the vim keybinding are the one I have used in the last 35 years.

berkeleynerd2• 3 years ago

Definitely this. I'm super happy for anyone finding some new level of productivity with vim, emacs, kakoune, etc. but I don't want to join an editor cult, not even a CUA one. I just want to edit text from the command line using a familiar set of keystrokes and move on with my life and micro fits the bill.

Borborygymus2• 3 years ago

Software project name DNA.

MicroEmacs -> Pico -> Nano -> Micro

einr• 3 years ago

PICO is the PIne COmposer -- the editor that came with PINE, the e-mail client.

Borborygymus2• 3 years ago

Pico was based on MicroEmacs 3.6. Nano is an open source clone of Pico - there's definite DNA in that series. I'm assuming not in this new Micro, but it's faintly amusing that the name seems to be a play on something that was a play on a name which was a play on a historical namesake of the new thing.

Circles.

cmrdporcupine7• 3 years ago

Mildly amusing joke, but, as sibling pointed out, different lineage.

hobo_mark• 3 years ago

Is there any console editor that supports VS Code key bindings?

moffkalast3• 3 years ago

Well VS code is electron, so you could just launch chromium in kiosk mode with xinit and have VS code render in the actual terminal I guess?

punnerud• 3 years ago

On Mac, add it to terminal with brew:

brew install micro

The command on the webpage will only add it to the location you run it.

linuxdude31410• 3 years ago

Thats because wherever you downloaded it isn’t in PATH.

If you don’t want to use brew and want it available everywhere just set PATH=$PATH:<location of script>

prmoustache4• 3 years ago

Micro? really? a 11MB binary?

kioshix• 3 years ago

Seems like a really modern alternative to my 389K nano.

oytis2• 3 years ago

Micro should have been 389M then.

benhoyt2• 3 years ago

Yeah, "micro" for an editor would be 11 kilo bytes. I bet it's possible to do a half-decent editor in C in 11KB. Antirez's "kilo" (~1000 lines of C) is 36KB when compiled with standard gcc (https://github.com/antirez/kilo).

That said, for many server-type use cases these days, 11MB isn't a huge deal. Still, I wonder if micro could be compiled on / ported to TinyGo and end up a few hundred KB? It looks like TinyGo can produce some pretty small binaries: https://tinygo.org/docs/guides/optimizing-binaries/

prmoustache4• 3 years ago

That said, for many server-type use cases these days, 11MB isn't a huge deal.

Yes but that doesn't make it a good candidate for a default editor that would be ubiquitous, from small embedded development stuff to servers to desktop.

I don't mind several MB when the tool offer more than the competition. But what are pico/nano lacking really when it comes to editing a few lines in a config file once in a while? It is not like micro is trying to replace visual studio code or emacs either. Or is it?

KolenCh• 3 years ago

11 Micro TB

daneel_w• 3 years ago

Well, it's written in Go, so...

otterpro• 3 years ago

Vim on my macbook is 5MB. Perhaps Micro can be optimized for smaller-sized binary?

prmoustache4• 3 years ago

On some linux distros (debian based) there is a im-tiny package smaller than the full blown vim.

Also historically vim was not the default vi clone installed, which was an optionnally installed package. The default was very often a smaller clone: elvis. Busybox as its own vi clone and most BSD OS are still providing nvi by default

xuejie2• 3 years ago

I've been using micro as my main code editor(well I do use vscode for writing coq but that's the only exception) after 10+ years' time with emacs. I simply treat micro as the modern compromised version of acme. It almost has all the features to support the core idea of acme, I have written a plugin to exploit this direction: https://github.com/xxuejie/micro-acme So far it has been working perfectly for me.

antics9• 3 years ago

Same here. Went from Emacs to Acme, while using mg in the terminal. Now I’ve customised Micro to get that Acme feel.

alberth2• 3 years ago

Knowing nothing about micro, is there a reason why development has slowed down over the last 1-2 years?

https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/tags

aslilac• 3 years ago

because it's a text editor that's already fully capable of editing text. not every thing needs to constantly evolve and add features at a break-neck pace.

zyedidia• 3 years ago

A big reason is because I started a working towards a PhD recently, and so I've been more focused on that. I think micro has also reached a relatively stable spot, where it would only be significantly improved with some large new features. It is serving its purpose well as a simple/familiar terminal-based editor. I have plans to give it more love and release a version 3, but no timeframe.

cmrdporcupine7• 3 years ago

I keep trying stripped down terminal editors as alternatives to emacs -- because these days I use like 1% of emacs anyways -- but I always severely miss the common emacs major modes for C/C++ etc and especially its approach to indentation there (tab to force correct indent). I really wish other editors would follow this convention.

drbaba2• 3 years ago

I really wish other editors would follow this convention.

In editors with configurable keyboard shortcuts, you can bind this to tab yourself. For example, in Vim, the normal-mode command `==` would correctly reindent the current line. (Here, `=` is an operator, so you can also apply it to other regions like `=i{` to reindent correctly everything inside braces.)

To bind tab to reindent correctly in normal and visual mode, you can put this in your vimrc:

    nnoremap <tab> ==
    vnoremap <tab> =

You can also remap it in insert mode if you want, but then you might want to throw some if-statements in there to determine when to indent and when to reindent :)

aidog• 3 years ago

I love micro, I just wish it had a file selector like nerdtree and a shell.

mixmastamyk11• 3 years ago

It has a command shell, Primary+E.

moffkalast3• 3 years ago

This is not a nano alternative, it follows the vim paradigm of having a command mode that nano does not have (for good reasons). It's more of a merge between vim and nano if anything, breaking the core intention behind nano.

If you ask me, nano has a niche of a super simple terminal editor that anyone can look at for the very first time and instantly figure out, with very few pitfalls or ways to mess up. The more features you add, the more modes and options, the easier it is for newcomers to press a key combo that puts them in a state only intended for power users that they won't be able to get out of without googling.

quickthrower22• 3 years ago

https://itsthedatastupid.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/nomodes...

cmrdporcupine7• 3 years ago

I guess my main complaint about nano has always been that it seems more suited for document editing rather than code -- defaults to word-wrap on, doesn't really have syntax highlighting by default, not a lot of support for code-oriented workflow.

Fine for writing up an email or commit message, I guess, but then I have to have another editor to write code in anyways?

After 30 years of using emacs (well, these days a lot of CLion, too, let's call me a backsliding emacs user) I'm ready for an alternative. But nobody has come along with something that really fits the same swiss army knife niche.

moffkalast3• 3 years ago

Well in my experience I very rarely if ever need to actually code in a terminal. Sftp or rsync are usually on hand so there's little reason to not just go for sublime or vscode if I need to make a substantial change. What nano comes in handy for is changing config files and adjusting system settings, when I'm jumping around and making very small edits.

linuxdude31410• 3 years ago

Writing code in nano is so asinine and such a huge red flag.

tpoacher6• 3 years ago

I write a ton of code and it's all nano. I simply disagree that it's not suited for code.

defaults to word-wrap on

a simple toggle in the config, or in the live session.

no syntax highlighting by default

says who? Are you using an ancient version by any chance? If anything syntax highlighting is one of nano's strengths, as creating your own or modifying an existing syntax is super easy. I had to write custom syntax for nano and vim once: nano took me a few minutes, the vim one took me a whole day to write.

no support for code-oriented workflow

Like? I've never wanted something (reasonable) that couldn't be done.

berkeleynerd2• 3 years ago

I love micro and use it every day. Now that I've tried Helix, however, I want micro plus baked-in treesitter, LSP, and contextual help. Helix really nails it with that feature set but I'm just too happy with my "single-mode + commands" ctrl-c/ctrl-v muscle memory to switch.

notnmeyer3• 3 years ago

i’ve been daily driving helix for 6 months or so. the fact that’s it’s batteries included is so nice. great editor.

m0rissette• 3 years ago

Vim is all you need.

Narushia3• 3 years ago

Been using this for years, really great for making quick edits in the terminal. Mouse support and standard editing shortcuts as the default (unlike many other terminal text editors) are the best features in my opinion.

Geezus_42• 3 years ago

What standard?

btbuildem• 3 years ago

Guessing the mainstream ctrl-c/ctrl-v as opposed to "two quad key combos while squatting with one foot off the ground"

PhasmaFelis3• 3 years ago

I'm assuming they mean the standard shared by every GUI app in every OS for the last 25 years.

Narushia3• 3 years ago

I’m not referring to some definite standard, but to the conventions that have existed in most desktop apps, at least on Windows and Linux, ever since I first used a computer. Wikipedia has a good list of them.[1]

The list also shows Emacs and Vim for comparison, so it’s easy to see the deviation from the Windows/Linux conventions.

When it comes to text editing specifically, at least these ones are deeply inscribed in my muscle memory, and I use them every day in a variety of applications:

– Ctrl+C: copy selection to clipboard

– Ctrl+V: paste from clipboard

– Ctrl+X: cut selection to clipboard

– Ctrl+Z: undo previous operation

– Ctrl+Y: redo previous operation

– Ctrl+A: select all

– Ctrl+F: find

– Del: delete char to the right of cursor

– Ctrl+Del: delete word to the right of cursor

– Ctrl+Backspace: delete word to the left of cursor

– Home: go to start of line

– End: go to end of line

– Ctrl+Home: go to start of document

– Ctrl+End: go to end of document

– Ctrl+Left: go to previous word

– Ctrl+Right: go to next word

(And the Shift variations for selecting text regions, like Ctrl+Shift+Right for selecting the word right of the cursor.)

I’m definitely not the fastest typer, but I feel these make my text editing a snappy process.

Additionally, while not related to the editing itself, I appreciate these ones:

– Ctrl+S: save document

– Ctrl+Q: quit document

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts

teddyh• 3 years ago

In those rare cases where Emacs is too large, I use Zile.

kasperset• 3 years ago

Reminds me of mg editor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mg_(text_editor) It is a very small subset of EMacs and barely any features compare to micro.

gabrielgio6• 3 years ago

Why is there still software asking user to run sudo on something downloaded from the internet? Why even bother doing that script if there is a easier, safer, with smaller footprint and built-in in all distro option available?

Just as comparison, micro alpine's package has 4MB (installed) while its staticly compiled binary version it downloads from github has 11MB. The repo's package would make it more micro.

johnklos3• 3 years ago

Hear, hear!

It is completely irresponsible to encourage piping random Internet sources to sudo or to (ba)sh, and I'm quite tired of hearing the ridiculous justification that "everyone does it".

jamespo• 3 years ago

do you read the script sections of all the packages you install?

notnmeyer3• 3 years ago

sudo, yes. piping to a shell is fine imo provided the install script is easy enough to read if you are so inclined. i have seen lots of generated install scripts that are mind boggling.

the reality is that you run code you haven’t personally read and vetted everyday. so the idea that you need some stranger to bless a package for you to be trustworthy doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

beeburrt• 3 years ago

So these are all a bad way of installing?

https://bun.sh/

https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install

https://deno.land/manual@v1.36.1/getting_started/installatio...

I'm not disagreeing with you, as a beginner, I'm just trying to learn.

pacifika• 3 years ago

It would be interesting if there was a dsl scripting language with the only purpose of installing software

Karellen2• 3 years ago

Why is there still software asking user to run sudo on something downloaded from the internet?

Does it do this?

From https://github.com/zyedidia/micro#quick-install-script

    Quick-install script

    curl https://getmic.ro | bash

    The script will place the micro binary in the current directory.
    From there, you can move it to a directory on your path of your choosing
    (e.g. `sudo mv micro /usr/bin`).

It points out you need `sudo` to move the binary to `/usr/bin` - if that's even what you want to do - but... yeah? So?

gabrielgio6• 3 years ago

It says when you run the installer:

    Note that you must install micro to a directory accessible to all users when doing
    this, typically /usr/bin. cd to that directory before running this script.
    
    E.g.:
    
      $ cd /usr/bin
      $ curl https://getmic.ro/r | sudo sh
    
    or
    
      $ su - root -c "cd /usr/bin; wget -O- https://getmic.ro | GETMICRO_REGISTER=y sh"

codedokode7• 3 years ago

This is just a demonstration of how unfriendly is Linux to supporting third-party software. You are supposed either to use software from distribution's repository or compile it yourself. And if you are a software developer, then you are on your own to decide how to support hundreds of different distributions (the most popular way is to statically compile everything into a single binary).

Such scripts remind me of DOS-era "installers", and they are awful:

- it is unknown whether your distribution is supported or not

- this script is probably not tested on many distributions and can break something

- it is unsafe, because you are running a code that some random person posted on the Internet without any sandboxing

diego_sandoval• 3 years ago

Personally, I don't want a middleman to be inserted between the application developer and me.

I want to get my applications directly from the application developer, because that way I can make sure that I'm using the officially supported version of the app and that no one has meddled with the code.

If I don't trust the application developer, I simply don't install the application.

gabrielgio6• 3 years ago

because that way I can make sure that I'm using the officially supported version

No, they (the developers) can’t guarantee that, nor is their job.

You would trust them to develop a reliable software and you would trust the maintainer to guarantee the it will be properly compiled for specific OS version, has the proper permission set and has all dependencies it requires to run.

To ask the software developer to pack and make sure it works for all distribution would be huge amount of work that is beyond their knowledge (which it is not a issue). Also it seems one is not aware how to properly do it when they comes up with a not so bright ideas like the “curl | bash”.

It is not you don’t trust the developer, it is that there are people who know how to better distribute it.

obs.: this is in the context of micro and general FOSS that is easily available and distributable.

delfinom• 3 years ago

So it reinvented vim/emacs and friends and called it an alternative to nano without understanding what nano is.

That's like saying Visual Studio is an alternative to Notepad with a straight face. I mean sure, both could type text but it's fundamentally a different product.

NayamAmarshe2• 3 years ago

Its main idea is the simplicity. It supports regular GUI editor like syntax and code highlighting.

It's not like nano or vim or emacs. It's for people who prefer OOTB simplicity.

johnklos3• 3 years ago

micro wants to be a small, lightweight, modern alternative to other things, but it's written in Go, which means it isn't going to be available for older systems and/or for classic architectures.

A good alternative should be usable in a decent number of places where the original is usable :P

malloc-0x90• 3 years ago

Tilde is faster for bigger files, and it runs and compile everywhere; TextAdept even has code folding.

- https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde

- https://orbitalquark.github.io/textadept/

MantisShrimp90• 3 years ago

I guess this is for people that don't use Neovim but never want to leave the terminal? Just kinda seems like the worst of both worlds to me. Less powerful than neovim while still using the same configuration language, yet less ubiquitous than even vscode at this point which does have many easy download options.

cmrdporcupine7• 3 years ago

What a strange comment, as if everyone wants or needs to use vi...

Believe it or not, most people don't like or use modal editing and vi-style keybindings. Yes, Vim is extremely popular, but it's still a minority of people who are typing text into computers. The vast majority of people out there are working in editors with "traditional" direct, modeless, editing and some variation of "standard" (aka Windows/Mac) or Emacs-ish keybindings. (Hell, even bash/zsh/readline -- effectively a single line text editor -- ships with a sub-variation of emacs keybindings by default.)

Personally, I use emacs -- when it's available. But something like this looks good for lower footprint systems.

Anyways, what a strange comment. Nano/Pico, etc. have been around since the super early days, I remember using Pico on a 486 back in 1993. Used to be the default editor on most systems that had the 'pine' email client installed, too, which was very common all over the place.

xp846• 3 years ago

Seriously, the fetish people have for vim and for pushing a modal editor on people who didn’t learn on such programs is downright weird. Vim is definitely an insane default editor for anyone who’s not already a skilled fan of it. Micro even has mouse support, making the incredibly common task of “put something at a certain place in this config file” trivial, versus vim where you only need to memorize 12 random key bindings to become more efficient at keyboard cursor control than what a 7-year-old can do with a mouse.

I classify vim usage more as a religion than anything else. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect how effective that 0.5% of developers can be with it, but nearly no one I’ve met is as efficient in it as they’d be in VSCode, and about 95% are so unskilled in Vim that they get tripped up by just the basic mode switch and remembering :wq. They should not even be bothering with it. But sadly it seems 80% of people think it’s mandatory to use it to edit random files on servers, and as the editor for things like git.

swozey8• 3 years ago

I had no idea people used nano as their main code editor. I use it on any nix server I'm working on and have probably used it tens of thousands of times.

I'd been a linux/bsd engineer forever and I worked at some places where they refused to install nano on servers. There are some greybeard linux admins who absolutely refuse to let someone use anything other than vi. I never got that. It's a 20MB package and not exactly much of an attack vector.

dormento• 3 years ago

20MB is bigger than some whole GNU/Linux systems I installed in the past. Might explain why the greybeard council disapproves of it.

swozey8• 3 years ago

You made me curious. I started w/ openBSD 1.2 in '95. I can't find it anywhere though to see what size it was.

vdfs3• 3 years ago

20MB? just check nano executable and it's 277KB, the whole .deb packages is 860 kB

https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/nano

xyproto3• 3 years ago

gccgo + upx can reduce the size of Go executables considerably, usually below 1M.

swozey8• 3 years ago

I thought 20MB was a lot.

I did "nano debian size" on google and one of them mentions - The Nano package contains a small, simple text editor which aims to replace Pico, ... Download size: 1.5 MB. Estimated disk space required: 20 MB.

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/nano....

kunwon12• 3 years ago

I was a nano user, and this happened to me. I got greybearded into vim, and now I only touch nano when I need to de-crappify a vimrc file

I was mad about it at the time, but now I'm happy I made the change. Vim or vi is everywhere, including on the switches and routers I work on. Nano is not everywhere, nor can it easily be put everywhere.

If I weren't regularly SSHing into decrepit or resource-constrained hardware, I would likely see less of a benefit

swozey8• 3 years ago

I don't know why, probably terrible memory, but I have practically a mental block when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. I've tried spacevim and a few other bundled vims before but I have such a hard time doing anything other than moving the cursor and :wq! type of stuff.

Like.. this is wild https://vim.rtorr.com/

And now I'm hooked on a horrible amount of vscode plugins.

linuxdude31410• 3 years ago

You make some excellent points. Unfortunately most hardware at some point ends up in this state.

tuxychandru• 3 years ago

now I only touch nano when I need to de-crappify a vimrc file

You can start vim with --clean to fix your vimrc.

kuchenbecker• 3 years ago

I suggest everyone at least familiarize themselves with `vi`.

`set mouse=a` - yes i want to use a mouse `i` - start editing `esc :wq` - exit

From there it's syntactic sugar navigation and editing.

junaru• 3 years ago

Haven't tried removing nano ever but hate it with a passion for one simple reason.

If none of the EDITOR/VISUAL/etc. variables are set when you invoke 'visudo' a f*king nano appears.

Like god dammit it i assume vi in that name comes from vi as even the manpage has 'vi' among 'see also'. This is akin to launching firefox and some random application popping up - its the ultimate troll and i salute your graybeards for solving the problem at the core!

zwog• 3 years ago

That is OS dependent, though. On Arch Linux with EDITOR empty `visudo` opens vi.

poutinepapi• 3 years ago

Greybeards are going to greybeard mate. Plus, it's always funny to me because a lot of the old crowd you ask them what kind of system they ran and they(with swagger) admit that they were in charge of the WHOOOOLE IT department for their local government, and it was a big town too, so at least 500 users.

And I 105% assure that that system was the most secure in the entire county... And also unusable. And when that lad retires or someone in their office kills them out of sheer desperation, hopefully they'll be replaced by one of these new fangled engineers who might not know about vi, but they at least care a little bit about their users(Not a lot though, we're still engineers)

catiopatio• 3 years ago

You could have learned enough vim to be usable in the time it took to write that comment.

un1xl0ser• 3 years ago

The main reason to know vi inside and out as a Unix administrator has to do with it being the lowest common denominator on Unix and Linux systems.

As a *nix tech I could get a call to work on a QNX system, HP-UX system, SGI Altix supercomputer or a Sun Ultra 2. Linux systems were easy, as they had the package management support for FL/OSS, and would commonly come with Emacs in the base-pack (before nano was mainstream). Sometimes you would have a terminal issue and have a single line to work with, in which case you would need to operate vi without seeing what you are doing (or use sed/awk). So maybe it is those instincts to KISS and force everyone to learn vi, like they had to (I had to).

Certainly it provides no significant surface area of attack to have an editor, but I wouldn't put it past a threat actor to leverage plugin functionality as a persistence mechanism. I presume that these applications operate differently as root, but maybe not as service (daemon) accounts. It's not very well hidden, but there are all grades of threat actors.

JohnFen• 3 years ago

Personally, I strongly dislike nano and will take vi any day of the week over it.

However, the choice of text editor is a very personal one. It makes no sense at all for anyone to insist that anyone else should or shouldn't use any particular text editor. Just let people use what they like.

cesarb5• 3 years ago

There are some greybeard linux admins who absolutely refuse to let someone use anything other than vi. I never got that.

When I first encountered nano, I found out that it could silently corrupt configuration files (by word wrapping long lines) unless you were very careful to always start it as "nano -w". Since then, I've always removed nano (or at least set something else as the default editor) on every Unix system I administer.

rascul3• 3 years ago

If I recall correctly that default changed awhile back. One could also set it how they want in nanorc.

However, I do understand the criticism, and how that could leave a bad first impression.

zamadatix2• 3 years ago

"-w" changes visual wrapping, it doesn't save that way. No different than the behavior of "cat" in an interactive terminal really, beyond the temptation for editor religion.

There is the .nanorc option to do e.g. "setfill 80" and "set breaklines" but that's no different than setting a "tw=80" type config in your vimrc and saying vim breaks config files.

notnmeyer3• 3 years ago

pretty much madness. it’s almost like a badge of honor for some folks.

stjohnswarts• 3 years ago

there are vi minimalist versions that are much much small than 20MB

sramsay• 3 years ago

I suggest nano to my students in classes where everyone is a beginner and we're learning programming on the command line.

The greatest advantage of nano for these users is that all the commands are listed along the bottom of the screen. I was shocked to see that this is not true of micro.

vdfs3• 3 years ago

by this trend, pico should show the whole man page in the bottom of the screen

rob74• 3 years ago

The difference between micro and nano is that nano's keyboard shortcuts are pretty opinionated, while micro's are the ones used by most (GUI) applications nowadays: Ctrl+S for saving, Ctrl+F for find, Ctrl+Z for undo, Ctrl+Q to exit etc. etc. There is also a helpful hint at the bottom of the screen that you can press Alt+G to see the shortcuts, or Ctrl+G for some help.

mdaniel3• 3 years ago

Ctrl-S for saving ... Ctrl+Q to exit

Using a flow control sequences for editor commands; what can go wrong?

tivert3• 3 years ago

The difference between micro and nano is that nano's keyboard shortcuts are pretty opinionated, while micro's are the ones used by most (GUI) applications nowadays:

Opinionated, or just old and consistent? Nano is a clone of an editor related in 1989. Things weren't as settled back then. IIRC, I remember Ctrl-X was used to exit some DOS apps. IIRC, the current "GUI conventions" originated as Mac-isms in 1983/84.

Ctrl+S for saving, Ctrl+F for find, Ctrl+Z for undo, Ctrl+Q to exit etc. etc. There is also a helpful hint at the bottom of the screen that you can press Alt+G to see the shortcuts, or Ctrl+G for some help.

So, about that Ctrl-C...

tpoacher6• 3 years ago

Aside from the fact that all shortcuts are completely and easily remappable, Nano's default shortcuts actually make a LOT of sense once you start using them.

I find myself thinking I'm in nano mode and wanting to repeat searches forward and backward outside of nano so often, that when I realise I need to do something other than Alt-W/Alt-Q I have a mini-depressive episode.

Aloha3• 3 years ago

Alt-G brings that up apparently.

Control-G brings up help

There is also some sort of comment mode

b33j0r2• 3 years ago

I love micro for having mouse mode by default.

I use it to debug containers and short-lived VMs, because it’s easier to copy/paste stuff than configuring neovim (which I would normally use).

However! “Help” doesn’t start with G. That’s a bit weird. And someone mentioned ctrl-c. That’s a bit weird too ;)

lofatdairy• 3 years ago

I imagine that the intention of micro is more like a modern, extensible editor, rather than a beginner friendly or ubiquitous editor. I think in the latter aspects, nano is still probably what you'd want to recommend your students (until they're ready for vim /s). micro is probably more for people who learned using nano but need more functionality/want a nicer ui.

indymike• 3 years ago

Our team uses micro as the standard quick and dirty text editor, and we really like it. Micro uses familiar key bindings, which really helps. The name kid of tells the story on functionality Nano < Micro < vim or Emacs. I do thing Micro is a fantastic option for students mainly because they already have the key bindings drilled into their heads.

NayamAmarshe2• 3 years ago

I love micro! Super simple to use and very intuitive.

Aloha3• 3 years ago

While this is very nice, the lack of Control-A/Control-E support to jump around a line is annoying.

mypetocean• 3 years ago

On the other hand, Micro supports the Ctrl-based text nav/manip hotkeys (such as Ctrl-arrow, Ctrl-Backspace, CTRL-Home/End, also optionally combined with Shift for selection).

More of a DOS-origin set of hotkeys than GNU. So more familiar to some and less familiar to others.

It supports mouse interaction out-of-the-box, which is a big plus for some folks who haven't spent much time in keyboard navigation. The escape hatch is a nice option for some tasks, even for keyboard navigation pros.

neutrono2• 3 years ago

One can always use Home and End in that case.

Aloha3• 3 years ago

Only my Model M has a full keyboard

Roark66• 3 years ago

I'm not sure why do we need one. Nano works fine everywhere.

mixmastamyk11• 3 years ago

It has unique keybindings. I used to change them, but don’t need to with micro.

kevinlinxc• 3 years ago

One nit: can't enlarge the carousel of images on mobile

mpsprd2• 3 years ago

I wonder, who is this for?

I feel this kind of editor is for the sophisticated minimalist, used alongside a 60% fancy keyboard with ceramic key caps.

I see comments about this being good for "beginners", and I wonder what definition they are using. Make them use a basic graphical editor like gedit.

linuxdude31410• 3 years ago

Nano is not a powerful text editor and is generally only used by non sophisticated users.

neutrono2• 3 years ago

What is nano lacking in power?

pie_flavor2• 3 years ago

I use VS Code, but I don't use it for $EDITOR, because CLI programs popping up GUI windows always feels icky to me (and it's gotten orphaned once or twice). micro is a really great editor for people who don't use terminal editors for much.

mpsprd2• 3 years ago

Ok I see. Its $EDITOR for people that dislike modal editors.

peferron• 3 years ago

I'm not on VS Code but I use micro as $EDITOR for the exact same reasons and it's great. I don't have to remember special shortcuts just to amend a git message or do an interactive rebase.

Narushia3• 3 years ago

It is for me, who

– sometimes needs to make a few quick edits right from the terminal (but prefers a proper GUI text editor like VS Code for longer sessions)

– is accustomed to the keyboard shortcut conventions of desktop applications on Linux/Windows[1]

– occasionally, wants to use the mouse and expects it to work in the terminal like it would in a proper GUI text editor.

Micro fulfills all these needs with its default configuration. It is one of the first things I install on a Linux box, be it a desktop or a server.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts

codedokode7• 3 years ago

What disappoints me most is that terminal editors often use weird hotkeys that are unique only to them instead of using widspread hotkeys. What I want, is, for example, to use Ctrl + S for saving and not some other combination.

dietr1ch• 3 years ago

Good luck using C-z for undoing

codedokode7• 3 years ago

Why not? Those control combinations can be disabled if I remember correctly. Also, as they conflict with modern hotkeys, they should be changed everywhere.

TheHippo• 3 years ago

That is what makes micro so easy to use. It uses widespread hotkeys.

cryptecks• 3 years ago

You may be in luck, because the default keybinding for Save in micro is indeed Ctrl-S. I installed it and aliased it over Nano for a bit on one of the servers I SSH into constantly, just to test it out.

chromoblob• 3 years ago

it's just a static binary with no dependencies

Okay, how does it decide which color escape sequence to output? Does it have an inbuilt terminal database?

mixmastamyk11• 3 years ago

Couldn’t it use the system one?

pie_flavor2• 3 years ago

Micro to me strikes a perfect balance of easy enough to get working out of the box and not so simple it's stifling. I wish it came with LSP support built-in though.

hungryforcodes• 3 years ago

I understand there are alot of command line junkies here which might be against it -- but what's wrong with Tilde? (1)

1. https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde

BitFlogger• 3 years ago

Looks like it doesn't support MacOSX...

stracer• 3 years ago

Longer name, harder to type, probably won't catch on.

seabrookmx2• 3 years ago

echo 'alias m="micro"' >> ~/.bashrc

effie• 3 years ago

A person who knows and likes the program can do that, but the default name is a drawback for adoption. Nano is shorter name, using it is user-friendly and it already is on almost every modern Linux installation. So micro has a tough rival to beat, and it seems to be an "uphill battle".

mdwalters2• 3 years ago

Longer name? micro is only five letters long, and nano is four. Yes, it's longer than nano, but it's only longer by one... Care to elaborate?

omgmajk• 3 years ago

I've been using Micro for quite some time, with some configuration and addons it becomes very comfy and it's enough for me most of the time. I miss some features though but they are probably more of addons than core features.

wener• 3 years ago

I add nano to every alpine base container, micro seems good, but

    apk add nano  # Installed size 308 kB
    apk add micro # Installed size 12.17 MB

mdwalters2• 3 years ago

nano is micro, compared to micro itself.

matteoraso• 3 years ago

As an unironic GNU nano power user, I feel like this project is for people who want to like GNU nano but don't know how powerful the editor really is. Seriously, I highly recommend everybody to sit down with GNU nano and read the manual. There's a lot that you can do, almost as much as Vim in fact.

tpoacher6• 3 years ago

hear hear

canvascritic• 3 years ago

having spent decades with nano, transitioning to emacs was a revelation. the extensibility, the vast array of packages - it was like stepping into a whole new world. but then came vscode. it felt like the best of both worlds - simplicity when you need it, complexity when you want it. plus, the integrations and extensions are top-notch.

Also lately I've been a bit spoiled by Visual Studio enterprise at work, thinking to buy a personal license

I mean don't get me wrong, i have a soft spot for nano. there's something about its minimalism that's just...comforting. but functionality-wise, it doesn't hold a candle to emacs or vscode.

that said, i'm intrigued by micro. it promises modern features while staying true to nano's philosophy. if it delivers, maybe i'll find myself switching yet again.

lproven• 3 years ago

Same as any other trendy editor, old or new: wake me up when it's CUA.

I learned dozens of editors in the bad old days. Then common sense has ruled since the late 1980s, and anything which does not comply with the universal PC UI can die in a fire.

eigenlicht• 3 years ago

From sailplane straight to (at least) a Cessna looks more like another level, supercharge and weight class all in one. I guess it's fair to locate 'micro' rather somewhere in the in-between, a middle ground and then there are in fact not that many contenders on the CLI, or else they're fossils. I would've thought this is what makes it attractive to some? Whereas others don't really have a use case. As for 'nano' on the other hand frankly there are about as many proper and more modern alternatives as there are Linux distributions and I'm sure anyone who's still a console regular has their favorite or two. I'm a vimmer but for quick snaps or in very strange places I *really* like dte. Am not associated with the project: https://github.com/craigbarnes/dte

kgbcia• 3 years ago

The main advantage of nano is the tui user interface where commands and menus are displayed graphically. Second advantage it's pre installed on most systems. I would use vi if I knew how to quit , copy and paste, and navigate around the screen.

tpoacher6• 3 years ago

Saying a "modern alternative" implicitly suggests that nano is not modern, or that it is somehow outdated or unfit for "modern" use-cases. This couldn't be farther from the truth.

E.g. I'm currently using nano to edit a latex document, with full in-nano compiling and evince-synctex support (i.e. jump to/from pdf in nano). This required only a measly three lines of macros to be added to my .nanorc.

I am also a (reasonably knowledgeable) vim user, but I prefer nano for my coding, and now only tend to use vim when collaborating with a vim colleague. Everytime I hear vim rants about keystrokes and vim-magic, I chuckle because usually I can do the exact same thing with (my configuration of) nano at least as fast, if not faster. (no hate to vim, vim is also an excellent editor; I'm just pointing out that people tend not to realise or talk much about the power/potential of nano im the same way as they do for vim)

Incidentally, I did try micro last time it was posted on HN. I tried very hard to like it, but in the end it just couldn't hold a candle against the latest nano.

Note that often enough what people refer to as nano is some antiquated version that happened to have been bundled in their system. I saw a (reasonably modern) system recently whose nano version was 2.3! Meanwhile the latest nano is v7.2, and the added features just in the last two updates were gamechangers.

micro – A Modern Alternative to nano

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