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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday September 16 2018, @01:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the nano-news dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

A new major release of open source text editor GNU nano is here. GNU nano 3.0 reads files 70% faster and brings several other features.

GNU nano is one of the most popular terminal based text editors. Those who keep forgetting how to exit Vim, seek refuge with GNU nano. It's a godsend for beginners who have to deal with editing in the command line while the experienced nano fans just swear by it.

I wouldn't normally consider a new version of a text editor really newsworthy but a 70% read speed increase is interesting to investigate even if only for an example of how not to do things from the prior versions.

Source: https://itsfoss.com/nano-3-release/


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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday September 16 2018, @10:41PM (4 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Sunday September 16 2018, @10:41PM (#735758) Journal
    "My point is the interface sucks. It *works* for a teletype interface. But we have much better interfaces now."

    Really? Name one.

    "An interface that lets you totally fuck up your doc if you type a few commands in is not a good one."

    Why not?

    The alternative is a program that *does not* let you do what you want to your document.

    You may want your computer to spend all it's time second-guessing and correcting you, fine, but don't pretend that's anything other than your own preference for absolute laziness.

    I want a program that will do exactly what I tell it to do, when I tell it to, without any backtalk. Not one that's programmed to protect me from myself by refusing to do anything the slightest bit unusual.

    And so what if you messed up your document by issuing the wrong command? You know every modern editor has checkpoint files and undo functions, right? They'll save you from yourself even if you aren't smart enough to save a copy before trying something you don't know how to do.

    "It is 'powerful' but a very silly interface."

    Sounds more like a silly user to me.

    "If I (who has 30+ years in this industry) cannot sit down at your interface and figure out what to do you did something *very* *very *very* wrong. "

    See above.

    Having used them for decades in no way makes it impossible for you to be misusing them, and blaming them for your failures.

    Which of course is the entire point of your rant. You want programs with training wheels. You want programs that won't let you make mistakes. Because you don't actually do anything that you'd need a PC for in the first place, and you don't like being reminded that you're stupid.

    Sounds like computers just aren't for you, really.

    "Intuitive interfaces save everyone a lot of time."

    Name one.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday September 17 2018, @02:09PM (3 children)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Monday September 17 2018, @02:09PM (#735965) Journal

    ...are you some kind of perfect AI? Because generally, humans are capable of recognizing that we all do occasionally make mistakes. A well-designed interface MUST at the very least prevent small mistakes from cascading into larger problems. Hell, even the humble 'rm' command does this -- I can't just say "Remove this file", I have to either add confirmation in the form of additional command-line switches (ie, -f) or I have to wait for rm to give a confirmation prompt and then tell it that yes, I really do want to delete that file.

    "It does what you tell it without getting in your way" is an argument which is at least fifty years out of date. We can do both. If you have to choose between power and safety or you have to choose between power and discoverability, it probably means your interface sucks from the ground up. It's not some fundamental law of physics forcing that choice; it's being stuck in a bad UI paradigm.

    Once upon a time, computers were so expensive and difficult to get access to that it made sense to force the human to perform some of the work that the computer was capable of doing itself. Today that is no longer true; certainly not for something as simple as a text editor at least.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday September 17 2018, @06:25PM (2 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Monday September 17 2018, @06:25PM (#736106) Journal
      "...are you some kind of perfect AI?"

      AIs do not feel pain. Your stupidity pains me. Therefore I am not an AI, perfect or otherwise.

      "Because generally, humans are capable of recognizing that we all do occasionally make mistakes."

      Which is why we have both manual and automatic backups, as well as undo functions. Your point?

      "A well-designed interface MUST at the very least prevent small mistakes from cascading into larger problems."

      The only thing the interface MUST do is make the function available to the user. Of course a well-designed interface manages to do much more than that - but it must do the essentials first, or it fails.

      It is not the function of the interface to prevent small mistakes from cascading into larger problems. That sounds like something a process overseer would do.

      "Hell, even the humble 'rm' command does this -- I can't just say "Remove this file", I have to either add confirmation in the form of additional command-line switches (ie, -f) or I have to wait for rm to give a confirmation prompt and then tell it that yes, I really do want to delete that file"

      Or you can create an alias or you can patch and recompile. That's the point. Power is in your hands. The function of the interface is simply to put it there.

      "It's not some fundamental law of physics forcing that choice; it's being stuck in a bad UI paradigm."

      And that's something I've been saying for years. The PARC-APPLE-MS-GNOME style GUI was a bad idea. It's fundamentally bad, rotten to the core, based on a number of falsehoods, and it has never worked as advertised. Recent 'developments' have only made it worse, as they amount to regressions aimed at transforming the point and drool interface into the new and fashionable fingerpaint interface.

      "Once upon a time, computers were so expensive and difficult to get access to that it made sense to force the human to perform some of the work that the computer was capable of doing itself. Today that is no longer true; certainly not for something as simple as a text editor at least."

      And this is where you're fundamentally wrong. Expense may have had something to do with it but that was not the primary reason for it. The reason it makes sense for the human to perform some work in order to learn to use the computer is because the computer is a complex machine which requires knowledge and skills to use properly. THAT has not changed one bit as prices have come down, despite all the untold millions (billions? trillions?) that have been spent over the years polishing the GUI turd.

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday September 17 2018, @07:36PM (1 child)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Monday September 17 2018, @07:36PM (#736141) Journal

        And that's something I've been saying for years. The PARC-APPLE-MS-GNOME style GUI was a bad idea. It's fundamentally bad, rotten to the core, based on a number of falsehoods, and it has never worked as advertised. Recent 'developments' have only made it worse, as they amount to regressions aimed at transforming the point and drool interface into the new and fashionable fingerpaint interface.

        Agreed, that's why I use Enlightenment and a couple thousand lines of custom shell scripts to get the interface exactly how I like it. That includes a number of features designed to prevent me from doing something stupid, because I've made the mistake in the past and I don't want to do it again. I'll take the half second to press "Yes, I really want to delete that" over the five minutes of digging a copy out of my backups. Plus the backup is nightly, not instant, so it won't save the work I did in the past six hours. My git repo helps a bit too, but I don't always want to check in twenty times in one hour just because I was testing something. Easier to pull it local, fuck around for a bit, and push it back once you've got something that actually works.

        And this is where you're fundamentally wrong. Expense may have had something to do with it but that was not the primary reason for it. The reason it makes sense for the human to perform some work in order to learn to use the computer is because the computer is a complex machine which requires knowledge and skills to use properly. THAT has not changed one bit as prices have come down, despite all the untold millions (billions? trillions?) that have been spent over the years polishing the GUI turd.

        That's not what I said. I absolutely agree that you should learn what the hell the computer is doing before you use it. But it's like my car -- I sometimes give up direct control over my acceleration to the cruise control. I know that it means I have less control; I also know that it means the car will react faster in case it starts losing traction because it's got a much better reaction time than I do and it already knows the most appropriate *immediate* reaction to that event. I give over control not because I don't want to know how it works, but because I do know that it works better that way.

        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday September 17 2018, @07:54PM

          by Arik (4543) on Monday September 17 2018, @07:54PM (#736151) Journal
          "That includes a number of features designed to prevent me from doing something stupid, because I've made the mistake in the past and I don't want to do it again."

          That's fine. YOU put those limitations on yourself, that's still how it's supposed to work, it's doing exactly what you told it to do (even when it second-guesses you.) No problem with that at all.

          "Plus the backup is nightly, not instant, so it won't save the work I did in the past six hours."

          What program are you using that doesn't keep checkpoint files? Emacs has done that since the 70s IIRC, it was an old feature before I ever saw it at any rate.

          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?