 So for the last week or so I have been using nano now I am a longtime Vim user as I stated in the challenge video Which you can watch in the cards linked above or in the video description and I love them I've a long time proponent and elitist when it comes to my usage of VIMS So switching to nano has been it has been a challenge I don't want to give away too much on my thoughts on nano today because I'm still Only a week into the challenge and if you were to ask me my thoughts on nano right now They'd be somewhere along the lines of You know that would be my thoughts on nano right now This has not been a very productive week when it comes to actually me doing work and that has been very Very frustrating But again I don't want to review nano because I don't have much positive to say about it yet And I'm hoping that by using it in other three weeks I can at least find something good to say about it, but we're not there yet So what I wanted to do today was talk about the nano configuration file No, I know what you're thinking Matt you can configure nano. I had no clue if this was even possible Well, it is actually possible and there are a ton of different things you can do inside of the nano configuration file Which are fairly neat and fairly comprehensive and way more expansive actually than I would even have thought was possible So today what I'm going to do is take you through the nano configuration files Talk about some of the things that I've changed Which is still fairly surface level honestly, and then we'll talk about the overall Customizability of nano. So let's go ahead and jump in. So this is the nano RC file Now if you want to find out where this is by default You'll have to go to either slash Etsy slash nano RC, which is where it lives By default or you can run this command here and put it in your home directory That's what I've done simply because I don't want to have to run root every time I want to make a change So I've run this command here I've put the nano RC in my home directory and that's what you're looking at here now the one thing I will give it Super credit for is that they've done a good job when it comes to making sure you know exactly what each of these Options allow you to do so they have really good commenting here, which is very nice And they haven't gone overboard so it's not like the kitty configuration file Which I showed you in another video where they've basically put the entire documentation Inside of the configuration file here with the nano RC file Basically, they've just given you a couple lines of what the command or the setting does and they moved on with their lives That's very very good. Now the basic way the Configuration file is set up is that at the top of the file you have your basic Options for nano and that goes on for about 250 lines or so after that after about the 250th line or so You're gonna get into key bindings Which I consider actually more important than all the rest because the default configuration key bindings for nano are Mostly garbage, so I've made some changes here. So these these are the first changes that I'll go over So I've changed bindings for exit and save and I've wanted to make sure that those are default now Some of these are the way they are by default anyways, but I wanted to make sure they were hard-coded and for changes for me I've changed the search key from control f to control slash Which is more of a vim binding although not really I haven't really decided whether or not I like that or not I'm still kind of getting used to it I also changed the fine next key binding so that it's control n instead of I think it's control g by default I'm not actually sure what it was before but I wanted to again be closer to what it is in vim And then I've made sure that the z and y do the undo and redo which I think is actually default But again, I'm not sure I just uncommented them so that that's the way they are So those are the changes that I've made in terms of key bindings The good news is that everything is changeable when it comes to key bindings because like I said the default ones I don't really care for some of them are fine. I'm not a big fan of control x and stuff like that So I've changed everything to control q in order to quit So I've done that and there are some other ones here for More complex key bindings that allow you to edit those. I haven't done anything with those So those of all just left the same. So those are the key bindings and like I said, you can make changes to all of those Which is good. I was surprised that that existed. I was surprised at the configuration file existed So I you can't be all that surprised that I was surprised that this existed It's like midnight. I can't words are really hard right now. So just forgive me Anyways, we're gonna go back to the top here and we'll go through some of the things that I've changed So I've changed this one here to be uncommented Basically what this does is that it will make sure that words wrap at faces instead of between words Which is really weird one of the stupidest things that nano does is by default when you get to the end of the line It just continues on forever and ever and into infinity and beyond So that's just the default way it does it and I can't stand that because no nano Text editor in the world should ever That's not useful for anyone Ever it should be it should have some kind of wrap by default But it doesn't instead you have to set up soft wrap, which is another one that I've changed down here somewhere Unfortunately, the biggest problem I have with the nano configuration files Honestly that the things aren't together right so you have things dealing with wrap and stuff like that up here And then you have more wrap options down here if you can find them And that's actually right here around line 150 so you can see that those two lines which really should go together Which is quite far apart from each other, you know So that's not great and there's a lot of that stuff here where you know some things where you think would go together Are kind of actually fall apart So i'm not sure Exactly how they've decided to organize this it feels like they've kind of added them as they created them sometimes Which is not a it's not great for Figuring things out shall we say so I've changed this to set soft wrap so that the words do not go off on a line Into infinity I want them to be to wrap like this the only problem Of course when you have this set is that when you copy this so if I were to Copy some of this stuff and then paste it literally anywhere else the formatting is really weird Like it sets it up into columns for some reason and it's it it feels like it's not full lines So copying stuff from nano even if you're copying stuff like into a buffer from Like outside of you outside of nano using like x-clip still It copies them really really weird the best example I have of this is on my patreon And i'm going to show you guys an early access to a blog post so you guys are going to see this So this this is what i'm talking about see how these lines are really really short It should go all the way over here, but it doesn't instead it looks like this and this was copied from nano So that's not that's not great So copying stuff from nano is really weird and that's because of that soft wrap option So yeah, don't really care for that. I'm not sure if there's a way to to fix that or not Another one that I've changed is this set position log And unfortunately it doesn't work because what it this is supposed to do is when you save a file It's supposed to then return you to that position when you return to it But it doesn't work so if I hit save here and then you know exit out of this and then go back It should actually work that time It's very inconsistent because the last time I tried it it didn't work So i'm not sure what's going on there. Maybe i'm just doing something wrong Which is always possible another thing that i've changed which i'm not going to try to find here actually is I've added line numbers. So if I hit control slash, which is my search function now I'll I'll do line see if I can find the the line Option turns out lines is a really popular word. So the set line number options is actually right here So I've set that as well. Basically those are the only changes that I've made so far other than the ui So I've added the line numbers, but I've removed the really stupid Fairly useless title bar that goes along nano by default and that's done by let's see if I can find it Okay, so this this line here set minibar basically what that does is that suppresses the title bar So it makes that go away and then it shows the file name plus the cursor position In the bottom bar So the top bar of nano as far as I'm aware all it does is show the word nano and then the version of nano I've removed that that's another thing that I've changed and I've removed the help along the bottom so by default if you've ever used nano before you'll know that the bottom of the screen is taken up by Keybinding tips for you if you need to learn how to you know exit nano or save a file or whatever It tells you how to do that with some tips along the bottom I wanted that gone. So I got that gone by setting this option here Now let's talk about some of the things that I haven't changed yet So honestly the biggest surprise that I've had with nano so far other than the weird pasting outside of nano is the Number of options that it actually has so you can change how nano functions in many different ways So you can change it so that the control right and control delete key bindings change from the beginning to the end of words So you can choose how that works you can set up an auto indent You can set up a backup file so that backup backs up. I'm not sure how that functionality works I haven't looked it up yet But if it's anything like vim basically what vim does is that it backs up periodically to a buffer And then if you were to quit accidentally or whatever you could theoretically get your your text back early some of it back So I'm assuming maybe it works a little bit like that if you have it set up properly But it doesn't look like it's set up by default you can change how nano does searches so that it's case sensitive by default Or not case sensitive by default There's several options for displaying information in the status bar Which is the bar there along the bottom and then there's a lot of options for how the cursor functions as well so Not only the cursor, but how commands that are Based on where the cursor is how those commands work The cut from cursor is one one such option and there are several others as well If you wanted a scroll bar, you could set a scroll bar You can set it so that instead of scrolling per line it can we'll scroll by half screen Which is basically like a page jump you can I was just set line numbers, which I've shown you There are several options for how the mouse functions inside of nano as well So if you wanted to change how the mouse functions inside of nano you can do that I've not changed any of those because I'm not using the mouse I refuse to do that as you can see there is another option here for how searches Act this is another example of how oddly they have options inside of the nano configuration file Because there was a there is an option for search like an online like 10 or 12 or something like that and here We are on line 133 and there's another one right and then there's another one even below this So the the real big criticism I have of nano in terms of the configuration file is that the It's not well organized right it's all over the place So there's search options, you know here here and here all the way throughout They're not together like you'd expect and it makes things hard to find and Really makes you kind of forces you to go through the whole damn thing Technically nano does have a spell check and I've uncommented this line But I have not gotten it to work yet. So I'm not sure Exactly what you know how it works. I haven't honestly tried all that hard to do it yet, but Supposedly there is a spell check here somewhere I'm not sure how that actually works as I said and it does allow you for those of you who are interested in changing the number of spaces A tab is constituted as you can change that as well They do seem to have grouped the two options for tabs here together, which is nice And then finally we get into the colors. So by default the colors are As such as they are they don't really inherit anything from your Terminal color scheme at all. So, you know, that's something you won't be able to get done unless you do it explicitly And if you want syntax highlighting, you have to install like a plugin in order to do that I have not done that yet because I didn't really care to do so But you can get syntax highlighting in nano if you want Other than that, there are certain things here in terms of colors that you can change The one thing that I will say is that I don't really I don't think I changed any of these I think they're all default default. I just went through And uncommented them because I wanted to make some changes I think the times that I've tried tried to change something It didn't really go through up. So I was probably doing something wrong or it was pulling from something different I don't know but if you wanted to change colors inside a nano, this is how you do it So I didn't go through this line by line That would have taken quite a while But if you are a nano user And you didn't know that there was a nano configuration file Now you know If you did know that there was a nano configuration file in the comment section below I'd love to hear some of the options that you consider essential because maybe there's some Options here that I haven't uncommented that would be really useful So I'd love to hear from you in the comments section below You can follow me on massive on or obviously those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon on patreon.com slash the linux cast links for libera pay and youtube will be in the video description as well Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon youtube because they're all absolutely amazing without you the chance to Not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it. Seriously guys Totally awesome. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time