Re: [RFC PATCH v1 0/1] Avoid accidentally overwriting macro recording

Hi Benno—

On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 11:07 AM Benno Schulenberg <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> Op 11-02-2026 om 16:03 schreef Charles Mirabile:
> > Part of the reason I like nano is that I can use it without much
> > customization, [...]
>
> What customization of nano /do/ you use?

Genuinely no dotfile, I used to use one, but because you can toggle
basically every setting within the running editor if you know the
keybinds well enough, I basically stopped caring and bringing it
forward through time across different systems / reinstalls. I had to
go digging in a backup of a decommissioned system to even find my old
nanorc, but it was just

set autoindent
set mouse
set multibuffer
set casesensitive
set speller "/usr/bin/codespell -w -i 3"
bind ^Z suspend main

You can toggle the first two in the editor at runtime, the second two
you can just remember to pick the right option when you are in the
context menu, and the last two I can live without, Just put the editor
in bg and run codespell without interactive mode then apply the edits
by hand, I don't run the speller enough to really care, and binding
control+z is actually just reverting to how things used to be, but I
just live with control+t control+z instead.

I am probably an outlier in that I don't really use dotfiles for any
of my tools and would rather just learn to live with the defaults of
the programs I choose because I don't have to maintain them. As a
result maybe it is drastic for me to jump to suggesting to change
defaults when I hit a rough spot instead of just using a modified
config, but I thought that this behavior change was pretty harmless
and inconsequential.

>
> > In addition I think
> > cancelling the recording if you stop it immediately is perfectly
> > intuitive and helpful.
>
> It might be.  Intuitions differ from person to person.  See if you
> can get votes for the change in behavior.

Someone else already replied to my patch in favor of it. Obviously
that is only a sample size of two, but it felt validating, so I was
kind of surprised when you shot it down.

>
> > It is not hard to e.g. just restart the editor
>
> Come on!  "Just"?!  The user might have several files open, plus
> state in her head -- that's not a time to go closing an editor.

You are correct, I should not have said it like that.

>
> > or record a macro that
> > invokes control+c to show the status line or something if you really
> > want to clear a harmful macro.
>
> Yes, they really want.  Why do you paint it as something silly?

I personally have never recorded a "harmful" macro - I have made
mistake while recording and had to re-record, but because I was
recording something, I knew what I wanted, and so it was obvious when
it went wrong, I could undo and then re-record the macro I actually
wanted until I got it right and then use it.

I on the other hand accidentally nuke a useful macro and have to
re-record at least once a month, not the end of the world, but way
more common for me personally.

Actually they kind of tie into each other, when I make a mistake with
my macro and have to try again that is already kind of frustrating
(but obviously only my own fault) and then I am primed to kind of
hurry through re-recording it to fix the tiny mistake I made which
makes me more susceptible to then make this exact error where I then
overwrite the macro I just finished when I finally do get it right
which I can only describe as infuriating (again only my mistakes, but
the tool could help save me from myself).

>
> > This feature is in my opinion perfectly
> > intuitive and discoverable while being easy to work around if you
> > truly do wish for a no-op macro.
>
> You're pushing hard.  I don't like that.

I am genuinely sorry I didn't mean to be argumentative, I guess I was
just proud of what I thought was an elegant UX solution to something
that has been driving me crazy for years, and got a little heated
trying to defend it - I probably didn't need to jump in and argue in
response to three different chunks of your email especially when some
of my suggestions were poorly worded and not very helpful (oh *just*
restart the entire editor).

The last thing I want to do is make your day worse, I really really
appreciate all the work you do on nano, I was shocked when I looked at
the git log and couldn't find a single patch by someone else just by
hitting page down a few times without using `/` and searching for
`Author: [^B]`. I certainly don't want this to feel like some sort of
XZ utils pressure campaign or something. We can let this patch sit and
see if other folks chime in; I agree we don't need to rush into
things. I can run my own patched binary, or see if my distro would be
interested in picking it up.

>
>
> Benno
>

Best—Charlie