I would suggest that, to replace nano, the #1 feature missing is: always show the most used keybindings at the bottom, just like nano does. IMHO the top feature of nano is that you don't need to remember commands and keybindings at all, the most important things you need are always reminded to you.
I have to say that is actually the main reason why I would be using nano. I know the basic commands for vim, as well as some extended keys for nano (save), but nano really helps for being able to not spend time outside of development to find keys for critical functions.
Micro does have a help option, which is haven't really read, only briefly checked out the exe a few hours ago.
I wouldn't call it critical, but it really speeds up the learning process, or for users thst only use the program once in a blue moon (because GUI)
This looks like it's aimed at being a better nano, not a better vim.
I like it a lot; I wouldn't be sorry to see it take off and get included in OS X, major linux distros, etc. Because right now if you don't want to use vi/vim, your only reliably available option is nano, and nano is a terrible editor.
It's 10MB uncompressed so at that point I'd hope Emacs would have finally become a "reliably available option" first (13MB on my system).
EDIT: why the downvote? Not trolling, just genuinely sad that with today's hard drive sizes it's not a given that Emacs is available virtually everywhere, like vi or nano are.
> This looks like it's aimed at being a better nano, not a better vim
I think that's the point. Seeing as nano replaced pico, and micro seems aimed at replacing nano. Also putting the SI prefixes in order of increasing size goes:
pico => nano => micro
If someone eventually writes a replacement for micro, it will be called milli, I imagine.
The advantage of Nano is that it is written in C, has zero required dependencies other than libc, and the compiled binary is 200 kilobytes. This makes it possible to include it in the base system, even on very tiny distros.
Instead of nano what I want is something like microsoft edit. Complete with all the CUA style shortcuts (alt-f for file menu, ctrl-s saves, ctrl-arrow keys for moving, shift arrow keys for highlighting).
Yes, this might be nonstandard for textmode in unix, but it will match all my GUI apps much better - and like most people I use a mix.
mcedit, the editor of the infamous Norton--err, Midnight Commander, was my best friend back in the good old days of writing php via ssh directly on the server of our university's LUG. It even supports block editing!
But please, instead of screaming upon being hit with that bright blue background, run mc, press F9, go to General > Appearance and select the dark or darkfar theme :) (and F10 to save config and exit)
Having said that, it breaks my heart a little to see nano bashed like that. (those of you who upvoted parent, I'm looking at you too!)
nano is 1) designed to be the best editor for slow connections, 2) Its source code is also quite easy to instrument. Eg. if you need a nano that is able to edit just a single file, someone familiar with application programming in C on linux can do it in no time.
I would fit in the same category of users like you. I've been using micro for a few months and I find it a very pleasant experience. My downsides so far are: haven't found a way to disable the somewhat aggressive mouse control, haven't found a way to disable coloring background (slow rendering on remote ssh) and paste buffers being messed up in recent releases. I just opened a 500mb csv which arguably was slower than using vi/vim but still fast enough and snappy after the initial load.
I’ve always wanted something like the old DOS edit or turbo vision editors with CUA key bindings, to the point where I maintained my own for several years around 2000. On Linux “ne” is not a bad choice, though I’d like an upgrade.
Remembered why I didn’t stick with it now, it doesn’t have menus and there was a bug that has been fixed, will try again.
In my opinion nano's biggest strength is that complete CLI beginners can use nano with almost 0 prerequisite knowledge. No reading man pages or tutorials, no accidentally hitting a key then having absolutely no idea how to get help, just "it's called nano and by the way ^ means ctrl".
I came across LE[0] the other day. Played around with it a bit - not bad[1]. It could end up being my replacement "simple" editor. Lots of nice additional features too (binary, hex, line drawings, colors, etc).
Project seems dead since 2014 (based on Wikipedia) but there's a github page[2] setup for it.
If people don't know how to use vi/m I highly recommend running the vimtutor command. I've been doing it in some boring tutorials and after a week I feel almost component at it.
> As the name indicates, micro aims to be somewhat of a successor to the nano editor by being easy to install and use in a pinch, but micro also aims to be enjoyable to use full time, whether you work in the terminal because you prefer it (like me), or because you need to (over ssh).
Just in case people are still making decisions about needing to use an editor because you are doing something over ssh.
Learn about sshfs! Use your preferred editor (or any program) locally for files you have ssh access to. It's not the right solution for everything, but for me it is for most things.
Unless this gets prepackaged in major distros by default ala `nano` then I honestly don't see the utility in investing in learning how to use this.
Installing Vim will be as easy as installing this, despite the "it's just a binary" blurb. I never install text editors without a package manager, or any program for that matter, so why would this 'feature' make a noticeable difference?
If the answer is then "good defaults built-in' such as col;or schemes, etc. I could see some utility there... especially to pop open a quick editor on my girlfriends or family members machine when I'm asked to fix something.
But then I already install (the wonderful) SpaceVim [1] on all my machines which solves this problem far more powerfully, with great defaults.
Note: I don't mean to be harsh or dismissive like many HN comments, these are honest questions from a real world use-case perspective. It's possible in the long-term it could overtake nano, I'm merely questioning it from a short term viewpoint.
Has anyone ever thought that the MS-DOS editor was one of the best CLI editors for complete beginners? I've always been disappointed that *nixs never ended up with something similar to edit. I suspected that irssi replaced ircii in a big way due to sane defaults, ease of configuration and a dash of color and I wondered if nano could've been replaced by similar principles.
"Micro's number one feature is being easy to install (it's just a static binary with no dependencies) and easy to use."
Ok after reading that one sentence I just closed the page. Why would I want an editor whose number one feature is "easy to install"? Like any other editor is hard to install by the way.
I wonder what the target audience is for an editor like this is.
Most folks who use Vim/Emacs seem loyal to their editor and are not in much need of alternatives. Those who don't have plenty of graphical ones—Sublime, VS, Atom.
We need a better cross-platform terminal! Not editor. The current state of cross-platform terminals is fairly poor. Other than Alacritty[0] there hasn't really been any new innovation here.
I think we need a standard which allows terminal application to be as featureful as full gui applications. And then get all the most common terminal emulators to follow it.
Terminals have been slowly improving. Bracketed paste is now universal (I pushed this into xterm). Micro is using shift-arrow for selection. JOE uses Ctrl-Arrow, because when it was implemented, Shift-Arrow did nothing on most terminal emulators.
So here's an example (pet peeve): in Micro (and JOE with mouse mode enabled), you can select text while holding the mouse key down. If you move the mouse out of the frame, it should autoscroll to keep selecting more text. Unfortunately terminal emulators send no codes when you move out of the frame. (I submitted a patch to fix this for xterm, but still not in...)
I understand how rewriting the wheel to thoroughly learn a new language can be exciting, but please avoid the “betterism”. No, just because you’ve rewritten something in go doesn’t mean it’s better, it’s just a case of building your little space where you can claim cred.
Fair point, but it might be better, so without comparing nano to micro yourself, it's hard to judge them, but it's true that 'better' is very subjective.
The source code for this is a really nice read, I just read the whole cmd/micro/micro.go like some prose. But one thing jumped at me:
if err != nil && !strings.HasPrefix(err.Error(), "function does not exist")
I wonder why most modern languages don't provide symbols a la Lisp or keywords a la Ruby, which would allow the above comparison to be a pointer comparison instead of a stribg one.
Edit: add the missing "don't" before "provide symbols".
It's a great editor,not everyone needs the superpowers of vim, the best part is that it's very easy to customize since Go is a very readable language (not on the level of Python but still).
One thing micro does very well is scrolling like GUI editors. It doesn't move the cursor with the scroll, and it will 'snap' back to where the cursor was if you begin to type. Always hated how other terminal based editors move the active cursors down/up on scroll.
I very much agree with the sentiment of Micro here - I'm very much of the Sublime/Atom ilk, but I also love living in tmux and my editor taking up minimal resources. So in the same way that you can introduce `vim-mode` into browsers (a la Vimium), you can introduce conventional `non-vim-mode` into Vim. Vim already has so much support for plugins, perhaps unprecedently so, then we can take advantage of that without creating a whole new editor.
This is what i gathered as well? Maybe an alternative for nano-users? I’m not sure which space this editor tries to fill. Non the less fun project and always interesting to see new terminal based applications.
We keep hearing about network effects in social media networks, but as an Engg who works with multiple systems (personal, work, EC2, EMR, etc etc.) I do feel that when it comes to text editing tools as well, there is a network effect that comes into play.
The only reason for me to switch to a different editor is if a majority of the systems I use have it preinstalled. Which means barebones vi/vim is still my best bet. My personal .vimrc is modified for my daily workflow, but doesn't stray too far away from barebones vim so that I always feel "at home" no matter which system I am on.
I've tried moving away to different editors, but find myself comign back to vim fairly quickly just because it is available everywhere!
[+] [-] danmaz74|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenryuu|8 years ago|reply
I wouldn't call it critical, but it really speeds up the learning process, or for users thst only use the program once in a blue moon (because GUI)
[+] [-] Lazare|8 years ago|reply
I like it a lot; I wouldn't be sorry to see it take off and get included in OS X, major linux distros, etc. Because right now if you don't want to use vi/vim, your only reliably available option is nano, and nano is a terrible editor.
[+] [-] julian37|8 years ago|reply
EDIT: why the downvote? Not trolling, just genuinely sad that with today's hard drive sizes it's not a given that Emacs is available virtually everywhere, like vi or nano are.
[+] [-] pyre|8 years ago|reply
I think that's the point. Seeing as nano replaced pico, and micro seems aimed at replacing nano. Also putting the SI prefixes in order of increasing size goes:
If someone eventually writes a replacement for micro, it will be called milli, I imagine.[+] [-] int_19h|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuaxo|8 years ago|reply
Yes, this might be nonstandard for textmode in unix, but it will match all my GUI apps much better - and like most people I use a mix.
[+] [-] plq|8 years ago|reply
But please, instead of screaming upon being hit with that bright blue background, run mc, press F9, go to General > Appearance and select the dark or darkfar theme :) (and F10 to save config and exit)
Having said that, it breaks my heart a little to see nano bashed like that. (those of you who upvoted parent, I'm looking at you too!)
nano is 1) designed to be the best editor for slow connections, 2) Its source code is also quite easy to instrument. Eg. if you need a nano that is able to edit just a single file, someone familiar with application programming in C on linux can do it in no time.
[+] [-] jbergstroem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|8 years ago|reply
Remembered why I didn’t stick with it now, it doesn’t have menus and there was a bug that has been fixed, will try again.
[+] [-] Sean1708|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] O1111OOO|8 years ago|reply
I came across LE[0] the other day. Played around with it a bit - not bad[1]. It could end up being my replacement "simple" editor. Lots of nice additional features too (binary, hex, line drawings, colors, etc).
Project seems dead since 2014 (based on Wikipedia) but there's a github page[2] setup for it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LE_(text_editor)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOGPQY9LGKc
[2] https://github.com/lavv17/le
[+] [-] emeraldd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] segmondy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spookyuser|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrkgnao|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gs1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColanR|8 years ago|reply
> As the name indicates, micro aims to be somewhat of a successor to the nano editor by being easy to install and use in a pinch, but micro also aims to be enjoyable to use full time, whether you work in the terminal because you prefer it (like me), or because you need to (over ssh).
[+] [-] freshhawk|8 years ago|reply
Learn about sshfs! Use your preferred editor (or any program) locally for files you have ssh access to. It's not the right solution for everything, but for me it is for most things.
[+] [-] dmix|8 years ago|reply
Installing Vim will be as easy as installing this, despite the "it's just a binary" blurb. I never install text editors without a package manager, or any program for that matter, so why would this 'feature' make a noticeable difference?
If the answer is then "good defaults built-in' such as col;or schemes, etc. I could see some utility there... especially to pop open a quick editor on my girlfriends or family members machine when I'm asked to fix something.
But then I already install (the wonderful) SpaceVim [1] on all my machines which solves this problem far more powerfully, with great defaults.
Note: I don't mean to be harsh or dismissive like many HN comments, these are honest questions from a real world use-case perspective. It's possible in the long-term it could overtake nano, I'm merely questioning it from a short term viewpoint.
[1] http://spacevim.org/
[+] [-] fouc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssijak|8 years ago|reply
Ok after reading that one sentence I just closed the page. Why would I want an editor whose number one feature is "easy to install"? Like any other editor is hard to install by the way.
[+] [-] JasonSage|8 years ago|reply
Most folks who use Vim/Emacs seem loyal to their editor and are not in much need of alternatives. Those who don't have plenty of graphical ones—Sublime, VS, Atom.
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|8 years ago|reply
[0] https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty
[+] [-] jhallenworld|8 years ago|reply
Terminals have been slowly improving. Bracketed paste is now universal (I pushed this into xterm). Micro is using shift-arrow for selection. JOE uses Ctrl-Arrow, because when it was implemented, Shift-Arrow did nothing on most terminal emulators.
So here's an example (pet peeve): in Micro (and JOE with mouse mode enabled), you can select text while holding the mouse key down. If you move the mouse out of the frame, it should autoscroll to keep selecting more text. Unfortunately terminal emulators send no codes when you move out of the frame. (I submitted a patch to fix this for xterm, but still not in...)
[+] [-] evmar|8 years ago|reply
https://github.com/evmar/smash/wiki/Related-projects
[+] [-] aumerle|8 years ago|reply
and as for moving the state of terminals forward:
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/blob/master/protocol-ext...
[+] [-] copperx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eecc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AsyncAwait|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antjanus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkya|8 years ago|reply
Edit: add the missing "don't" before "provide symbols".
[+] [-] type0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elzi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tombh|8 years ago|reply
I very much agree with the sentiment of Micro here - I'm very much of the Sublime/Atom ilk, but I also love living in tmux and my editor taking up minimal resources. So in the same way that you can introduce `vim-mode` into browsers (a la Vimium), you can introduce conventional `non-vim-mode` into Vim. Vim already has so much support for plugins, perhaps unprecedently so, then we can take advantage of that without creating a whole new editor.
[+] [-] chaoticmass|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girst|8 years ago|reply
(sorry for being so negative; this page really could benefit from a demo video)
[+] [-] hultner|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IncRnd|8 years ago|reply
It's also been mentioned a few times here on hn.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12388654
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14427473
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13735395
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13636239
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13633578
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13300940
[+] [-] jdlyga|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] douchescript|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madmax108|8 years ago|reply
The only reason for me to switch to a different editor is if a majority of the systems I use have it preinstalled. Which means barebones vi/vim is still my best bet. My personal .vimrc is modified for my daily workflow, but doesn't stray too far away from barebones vim so that I always feel "at home" no matter which system I am on.
I've tried moving away to different editors, but find myself comign back to vim fairly quickly just because it is available everywhere!