[Alpine-info] Pico

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011, James Freer wrote:


> [using xubuntu 10.04] - the question is regarding the use of Pico for 

> text 'word' editing rather than programming lines.

>

> I hope it's alright to ask a quick question about Pico on here. It's 

> quite basic.

>

> Whilst using Alpine having got used to Pico i've decided to use it for 

> editing. Until now i've been using Leafpad for basic editing. It seems 

> the graphical editors automatically wordwrap any file if the option 

> wordwrap is ticked in Options > wordrap.

>

> In Pico if one does ^J and saves the file the wordwrap is set next time 

> the file is opened. If i use Leafpad and uncheck the wordrap option the 

> opened file is wordwrapped.

>

> So how is the text file altered by Pico [i've compared with nano and so 

> it appears this is the case with most text editors]. I was wondering if 

> there was an option for opening all files with wordwrap set like there 

> is with nano [according to man pico there isn't unless i missed it!].



I was going to say this...

If you really want to use Pico instead of someothing more powerful like 
emacs, I recommend that you use Nano instead of Pico.  Nano clones Pico 
but improves on it.  It does syntax highlighting.  Look for good .nanorc 
files on the web.

...but then I realize that you've seen Nano.  I wonder if you realize that 
Nano is a Pico clone.  It's not really an independent product that you can 
use for comparison purposes to get an idea of what different editors are 
like.

I still recommend Nano instead of Pico.  What would be the advantage of 
using Pico instead of Nano?

There are two kinds of wrapping -- one is just an appearance of wrapping 
on the screen so that long lines don't go off the screen to the right. 
The other is adding newlines (or carriage-return/newlines in Windows) to 
actually change the file by making long lines into multiple shorter lines.

There is an option to control where lines wrap, and another to turn off 
automatic wrapping.  I don't think it is possible to turn off the ^J wrap 
feature, but it would be nice if it were possible.  Here are the options I 
use with nano:

nano -BFHRScikmwz -T8 -r74

-w turns off auto wrapping and -r makes it wrap at 74 columns if I use ^J. 
If you don't want it to wrap, but you hit ^J by mistake, hit ^U right away 
before moving your cursor and that will undo the accidental wrap.

Mike