It's not just customisable, it's also insanely scriptable. Any action that you can do in nano itself corresponds to a command, and you can create "string macros" that you can bind to key combinations. Additionally it can execute external commands on any nano buffer and return the result. Combining the two is very powerful.

E.g. I have a configuration which allows me to use nano while editing pdf side-by-side, and be able to click on the pdf and land in the correct line in nano, and vice-versa. (and obviously compiling the latex document itself happens via a custom keystroke).

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ssivark a day ago | parent [-]

Interesting. Since this kind of scriptable customization sounds like bread & butter emacs -- what tips the scales towards nano, for you?

	▲	tpoacher a day ago \| parent [-]
		Simple. I don't know emacs that well :) I didn't even know emacs had a terminal mode until I looked this up; my main experience with emacs was when I was writing prolog and the IDE was emacs based. I didn't find it as nice to use back then so I never gave it a serious shot. By comparison nano is everywhere and was super-simple to configure and spruce-up with custom functions, so it just stuck with me. As for other competitors, when comparing to vim, I find it much simpler to use, and to the surprise of most vim users I speak to, equally powerful (at least for my needs).