Re: Alt+Insert does not work, and nohelp gives too little help

Seb <[email protected]> Sun, 16 Aug 2020 15:50:32 +0200 (CEST)
Newsgroups gmane.editors.nano.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi Benno,


>> I had also missed ^T then |<cmd> from an earlier release, for which I 
>> have a remark: when doing this while no text is selected, I would 
>> expect the result to be inserted in the file, not to replace the whole 
>> file (which seems crazy to me).
> Hmmm...  When text is selected, you think it is okay to replace the 
> selected text with what comes out of the command?  But when *no* text is 
> selected, the result of the command should be inserted?  The latter 
> seems very strange to me: you process the entire buffer through a 
> command and then insert the processed result into the unprocessed 
> original?

Wait, what? If I want to process the entire file, I'll go ahead and 
select the entire file before typing ^T. If I type ^T without selecting 
anything, I assume nothing is selected.

Let's say I use Nano from within Mutt and I want to send the result of a 
command line. I can copy-paste, but ^T |cmd also looks appropriate to me.

>> I would use it for instance to check the results of numerical 
>> computations from within a TeX file, by copy-pasting the TeX code and 
>> calling a homegrown script.
>
> If I understand correctly: you have some TeX file with a numerical 
> computation and you want to compute its result with a script and then 
> insert this result after the computation?  What I would do: duplicate 
> the computation in the original file (select it, then M-6 and ^U), then 
> select the duplicate and run it through the script, so that it gets 
> replaced with the result.

Yes.

> The purpose of the |command construct is to filter / process / format / 
> manipulate / knead the selected text (or entire buffer) into a different 
> shape, replacing the original.

Isn't it the case with the example I gave above? A string is processed and 
gives another string... How it is processed and for what purpose seems 
irrelevant to ^T |cmd.

>>>> Alt+Insert shows a white-on-red error message "Unknown sequence".
>>> What does M-V M-Ins put in an empty buffer?  (You would probably
>>     ^[[2þ
> If you put the following in your nanorc:
>  bind M-' anchor main
> does typing <Esc> ' then place an anchor?

Yes, the message "[ Placed anchor ]" appears at the bottom.

> I'm guessing yes, as it works for me on urxvt.  But just being able to 
> place an anchor is useless when Alt+PgUp and Alt+PgDn don't work.  So, I 
> guess nano will have to recognize these deviant escape sequences from 
> urxvt.  :| Please report the "[ Unknown sequence ]" message for Alt+Ins 
> and Alt+PgUp/PgDn as a bug on Savannah.

Done.

>> URxvt.meta8: True
> This was enough to get ^V M-Ins to show ^[[2þ at a shell prompt. I don't 
> have the time to figure out what else I need to get ISO8859 characters 
> to show up inside nano.

"Normal" ISO-8859-1 characters show up just fine inside Nano: ±²³´µ¶· etc.


Kind regards,
Sébastien.