[plug] text editors.. pico

[Bernard Blackham]

On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, Scott Campbell wrote:

> firstly i want to say what a huge success the inatallfest was!!! I went
> there with no clue about linux, and left with half a clue :)

Mission accomplished :)


> but, one thing i did not quite understand, on alot of documentation and
> sorts, its said edit this file and enter this into it, and delete that line
> and so on ....
> 
> but how do you actually edit the file, what is the name of a text editior?
> and some basic commands?

The most common text editor on Linux & UNIX clones machines (that i've
seen) is either emacs or vi/vim, both of which are horribly hard to use
for newbies... powerful yes, but quite irritating for simple tasks.
They're probably already installed though.

Can anybody else comment here... How is nano/pico for long lines? I know
they like to wrap them at around 70 or 80, but if it's not the intended
result, what do you do?

For serious text editing (oxymoronic?), I use vim (Vi IMproved). Learn the
basic commands and you should be fine. There's a lot of stuff it can do,
macros, etc., but learn the basics first (type :h).

> I have tried a bit, but all i have learnt is that pico is not installed :((
> I am running debian ...

Pico usually comes with the mail client PINE, but Debian (2.2) also comes
with a program called Nano - a clone of pico with a few more features.  
To install it you can type "apt-get install nano" and you'll probably be
asked for the CD's. 

If you find any software that isnt installed then in most cases you can
just type "apt-cache search whatever", and it'll give you a list of
matching packages. Then to install one, type "apt-get install
packagename".

There's an far more friendly program called aptitude, which is a front-end
for the apt-cache/apt-get/apt-blah tools. There's a few key combo's you'll
need to know, have a look at /usr/doc/aptitude/README when it's installed.

Enjoy :)

Bernard.

-- 
 Bernard Blackham
 dagobah at mad.scientist.com