The line numbers and position bar are some real quality-of-life enhancements!

I don't regularly use nano anymore, but I have often thought that more programs should imitate the way it shows the command shortcuts on-screen as a kind of instant tutorial. I remember my physics major friends in college thinking it was pure snobbery for vi not to do that by default. Back then we were dialing in to an HP-UX server and using pico, which nano is an open-source clone of. For those who aren't aware, pico was originally the editor component of the Pine email client.

▲

mystifyingpoi 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> physics major friends in college thinking it was pure snobbery for vi

I don't think it is snobbery, that approach would clutter the entire screen. Basically every single small/capital letter and symbol has a function in vim.

▲

jasperry 2 days ago | parent [-]

To its credit, vim does show a help text with :q on it if you start it with no file. Back then, it was just vi opening to a blank screen.

	▲	qsort 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		set shortmess+=I

▲

ziotom78 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Absolutely, the shortcut help is so useful!

I believe that Nano and Pico copied it from Wordstar.

	▲	Firehawke a day ago \| parent [-]
		That seems very likely. One of the first things I'd noticed back in the early 90s when I got my shell account and used Pico for the first time was that the UI was similar (not exact copy, mind you) of how Wordstar was, with some basic guidance at the bottom to get you started. Also kind of reminds me of the old Telix terminal software for MS-DOS, with the bottom status bar. Not exactly the same, but again quite similar in the approach to have you just quick glance at the bottom of your screen for a HUD.