[Alpine-info] Pico

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2011, Joshua Miller wrote:


> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 3:57 PM, James Freer <jessejazza3.uk at gmail.com>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 use vim almost exclusively, so take my advice with a grain of salt :-)

>

> nano --softwrap <file>

> this will do a softwrap, and I think it's what you're talking about.



I sent my last message before seeing the one above.  Joshua makes a good 
point:  The --softwrap (-$) option was not available in my old nano 
(2.0.4, March 2009), so I didn't even know about it until now.  Looking at 
the newer version of Nano, I also see that there is an M-$ (Alt-$) toggle 
for that feature so that you can turn it on and off during an editing 
session.  When a long line is not soft-wrapped, you'll see a $ on the far 
right, but when it is soft-wrapped there will be no $.  That is not a 
perfect approach to the problem because a line might exactly fit the 
screen width and then you might think it is wrapped.

So, again, I think Nano is a better choice than Pico.

Mike