Re: [Nano-devel] [PATCH 3/3] docs: an attempt at updating the documentation for the changed defaults

[David Ramsey]

Benno Schulenberg:
> Thanks.  The first one (in nano.c) was removed by patch 0001, but I
> will move it to patch 0002, to have all the rootwrapping removal in
> one patch. The second one (in rcfile.c) I indeed overlooked.

No problem.

> But, starting to change the documentation, I realized that things
> become quite confusing when some options are set by default while all
> others are not.  The options in a nanorc file are still manageable,
> but how do we say in the 'nano --help' output that --nonewlines and
> --morespace and --smooth are in fact no-ops because they are the
> default?  What would be needed here is to have the opposite options.
> So I am thinking of adding:
>
> -e, --emptyline (below title bar),
> -f, --finalnewline,
> -j, --jumpyscrolling.
>
> Their counterpart options would continue to be recognized but would be
> deprecated (in the man pages and other docs) and would not be listed
> in the help text.
>
> Any opinions on that?

Having no-ops is bad; something like this works for me.

> The --nowrap option doesn't need a counterpart because it already has
> one: --fill=<number>.  (Although that options is really two things in
> one: it sets the fill width for justifying, and switches on automatic
> hard-wrapping.)

I've found that double functionality more and more annoying lately.  I prefer
to keep hard line wrapping off and justify everything afterwards (and if
wrapping is off by default, many more people will do this), and --fill's
turning on hard-wrapping means that I have to type more when I want to change
fill without turning on hard-wrapping.

Specifically, my nanorc turns off hard-wrapping and sets fill to -1, but
so many other things assume a fill of 72.  This means that if I want to
set fill to 72 temporarily, but keep hard-wrapping off, I have to use:

nano -r 72 -w

because the former option "helpfully" turns off the latter.  Pico keeps
them separate and doesn't have this problem.

> But if later such a counterpart would be needed:
>
> -b, --breaklonglines.

Since we're changing options anyway, I say make --fill stop turning on
hard-wrapping and add something like this to turn it on instead.  The
documentation for fill can be easily changed to mention that it affects
both justify and hard-wrapping, but the latter only when hard-wrapping
is enabled.  It currently doesn't mention that fill affects justify.