Etc : Nano - starting
Nano Text Editor
Nano is the default command line text editor for most Linux Distro and rather than waffle on about its features, I thought it would be fun to create a text file based on Nano's own help page, which explains its text editing commands, referring to them as shortcuts.
Your mission, should you accept it, is to work your way through this text file using these shortcuts, hours of fun guaranteed!!.
The file is help.txt so Right Click the link and choose Save the Link as and to be really organised, create a folder in your Documents folder naming it nano and save it there.
Assuming that you have a reasonable size screen, resize this window down to half and open a terminal in the other half.
The easiest way to open a text file with nano is to cd to that files directory and type in nano file name so let the fun begin....
$ cd Documents/nano $ nano help.txt
The top bar displays the version number of nano 5.4 and the current file that is been edited help.txt and if the file has been modified * .
The main window is where you edit the text, you move the cursor around with your arrow keys and do some typing or deleting or copying, cutting etc..
Nano's help page starts with this intro, the > at the end of some lines means there is more text to be displayed, increase the window size to view them.
Below the text area is the status bar which will notify you of current operations or as above, where you are in the file.
At the bottom is the Help menu which has two rows of the most common shortcuts you need to get stuff done. Increase your window size and you will see more.
These shortcuts consist of holding down the Ctrl key represented by the ^ character and then a letter. There are other shortcut keys where you hold down a Modifier Key represent by a M which is the Alt Key or Esc Key or if your keyboard is set up the Windows Key and then a letter.
You can hide this help menu with the shortcut key Alt+X Help mode disabled, nano will display two extra lines of text instead and Alt+X again Help mode enabled to bring it back.
Some of the letter choices are strange, such as the very first shortcut Ctrl+G for Help, which brings up a concise help page outlining all the shortcuts, I copied this help page and used nano to create help.txt, playing around with the commands, grouping them into sections in order of what I think is most useful.
When in Help the shortcut menu changes with commands to scroll through the help file and search for words, more of them later, hit Ctrl+X to Close and go back to help.txt.
Moving around the page
Use your arrow keys to scroll through a text file, hold down the Control Key when using the Left and Right arrow keys to jump from word to word and when using the Up and Down keys to jump from block of text to next block.
With a long text file its useful to know the position of the cursor so Ctrl+C displays this or use Alt+C to toggle between displaying this permanently or not.
As you use Linux you will eventually have to troubleshoot some system text file, getting an error concerning line number xx. When you open the file you could start counting down the lines but its easier to display the line numbers with Alt+N Line Number Enabled, want to hide them then Alt+N again Line Number Disabled.
To goto a line number directly do Alt+G Enter line number, column number:, type in the line number and hit Enter.
Instead of increasing the terminal window size or scrolling through long lines of text use Alt+S to soft wrap the text, an S appears on the Top Bar.
I had to use the Shift key to override the Terminal Menubar as in Alt+Shift+S otherwise the Search Drop-down became active, to avoid this hide the Menubar on your Terminal or else use Esc instead of Alt.
Your first save..
Before you make any changes to this file lets save it as my_help.txt and work from there, you might have sooo much fun working through this doc that you may want to repeat the experience again :-).
Its the shortcut beside Help so type in Ctrl+O to write out, save this file to your hard drive, and in the File Name to Write: hit the Home key to get to the beginning of help.txt and type in my_ and hit Enter hit Y to say Yes, now you are working on my_help.txt and help.txt will remain unchanged.
There are many options with the Write Out Command Ctrl+O, more about them later!!!
Later versions of Nano have the universal command Ctrl+S to save the file without prompting, yes a shortcut that makes sense!!!!
Editing Text
After the first section Moving around the page I made a list of topics that I wanted to cover: Editing Text, Cut/Copy and Paste, Searching the file and working with documents. Its a work in progress so skip past the list down to Section 2 which will shortly have the title Editing Text.
Sooner or later you will have to edit a text file but I thought that the Undo command Alt+U and Redo command Alt+E are the most important especially if you hit a letter and forgot to hold down the Ctrl or Alt key.
The Delete and Backspace keys work as expected with Alt+Delete very useful for deleting blocks of text.
There are a few typos to correct and empty lines to delete so start editing.
Nano has a handy command that will try and complete the current word so try this out: place the cursor below that command and type B then hold down the Ctrl key and keep hitting the Right Bracket key. Nano will cycle through words in the text document starting with B Back, Beginning, Backspace and Browse.
Cut, Copy and Paste.
Section 3 deals with Cut and Copy and Paste so lets jump right in and do your first Cut and Paste do Alt+N to display the line numbers and go back up to line 46 - Editing Text and do Ctrl+K to Cut (Kut) the line.
Then go down to line 52 and after 2: do Ctrl+U (Unkut??) to Paste in Editing Text.
Now to do a Copy and Paste, go back up to line 47, this time try the command Alt+G, type in 47 and hit Enter.
Now to copy the text Cut, Copy and Paste from that sentence by first Marking that text which you do by moving to cursor under C and then Alt+A, a capital M will appear on the Menu Bar and Mark Set will pop up on the status bar. Now use the Right Arrow key to select the text plus one space past the e, otherwise you will only have selected Cut, Copy and Past.
Then do Alt+6 to Copy this text, Alt+G type in 71 and Enter to goto line 71, place the cursor past 3: and Ctrl+U to Paste.
Try the command Alt+M to use your mouse or touch pad, the cursor changes to an arrow and you click anywhere in the file to edit it.
Double Click for Mark Set to select the text with your mouse so that you can Copy or Cut or Delete. Click again for Mark Unset
Also you can click on the Shortcut Keys below to run the commands, try clicking on Help and then Close to get back to the file.
As you work your way through your text doc don't forget to keep saving, use the Ctrl+S if available for a quick no prompt save.
This may be all you need to know about nano so lets do something really useful...