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nano, vi, vi materials ... Re: Assisting Elise S with editing grub.cfg

So, yeah, sure there's nano(1):

NANO(1)                     General Commands Manual                    NANO(1)
NAME
       nano - Nano's ANOther editor, an enhanced free Pico clone
SYNOPSIS
       nano [options] [[+line[,column]] file]...
DESCRIPTION
       nano  is  a small, free and friendly editor which aims to replace Pico,
       the default editor included in the non-free Pine package.   On  top  of
       copying  Pico's  look  and  feel, nano also implements some missing (or
       disabled by default) features in Pico, such as "search and replace" and
       "go to line and column number".

And sure, it can be used to get folks up to editing files on, e.g. Linux,
quite quickly - very easy to learn/use, etc.

However, too ... vi(1) - it's the standard Linux(/Unix/BSD) text editor.
As I often say of vi:
optimized for ease of use and speed by those proficient at it
not optimized for ease of learning it

So ... it's definitely not the easiest to learn, but after becoming
reasonably proficient at it, it's highly efficient and well optimized.
E.g. my highly experienced vi fingers do stuff so fast and efficiently in
vi, that if I have to stop and slow down and try to explain what I did and
what I typed in and the command or sequence of commands I used to do
what I did - or so much as think about it in any detail - that slows me
way down.  Also, often even working alongside coworkers that are quite
experienced in vi (like 3+ years using vi), not too uncommonly they'll
still see what I did on screen and how quickly and are still like:
"Wow!  How'd you do *that*!  Show me!"
And, I've even known folks that have been using EMACS for many years and
are highly proficient at it ... then take the time to learn vi, and
after a while end up concluding that vi is the superior text editor
for use (e.g. complaining about all the EMACS keystroke inefficiencies
of all the needed reaches for the Meta key all the dang time).
Or, as is oft said, EMACS is a perfectly good operating system that
just lacks a good text editor (EMACS is loaded with stuff and huge).

So, yeah, I couldn't navigate my way through nano very quickly at all.
I'd almost always pick vi - or even ex or ed - over nano.
And for those wondering, ex and vi are the same program - just different
modes (and one can switch between those modes within the program),
and ed is somewhat similar to ex in ex mode - ed being a bit simpler
(no visual mode) and well predates ex.

Anyway, vi(1) - I'm a relative expert in it.  And have given presentations
and training sessions on vi(1) ... numerous times even.
And, oooh, materials!  :-)
For the latest, have a look here:
http://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/unix/vi/
Probably start by having a peek at the README file(s) within,
that quite well explains what's there.

Oh, also ...
http://www.mpaoli.net/
... not exactly a high availability site.  So, if one finds it down
or inaccessible or whatever, probably just try again another hour
or another day or something like that.


From: goossbears <acohen36@gmail.com>
Subject: Assisting Elise S with editing grub.cfg
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 13:25:10 -0700 (PDT)



During today's BerkeleyLUG meetup on Jitsi, Rick M. and Michael P. (and one
or two others?) were assisting Elise S. with her splash screen bootup issue
on Ubuntu (yes, could've been Xubuntu or Lubuntu.)
IIRC, this involved assisting Elise with editing her computer's
/boot/grub/grub.cfg startup file as the root/superuser ('sudo') so that
she and others could view the startup messages present when the computer
starts loading X/L/Ubuntu.

Instead of using the slightly more difficult to use 'Vi' editor, might I
suggest that 'Nano' is and would have been a better choice to use in this
case? For the one or two of you reading this who weren't aware of this
already, "Nano <https://www.nano-editor.org/> is the default terminal-based
text editor <https://itsfoss.com/command-line-text-editors-linux/> in
Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions" [1].
~~~~~~~~~ quoting [2] ~~~~~~~~~~~
[Nano is] part of a family of text editors that includes the more robust
(but significantly more complex) vi and emacs. For most uses, nano is easy
to use and it doesn't require a significant learning curve. Just as with
the 1980s-era text-based word processors like WordStar, nano offers a
dynamic two-line command reference at the bottom of the terminal window.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Using 'nano' likely also fulfills the role (again, in the particular case
with Elise's simpler editing tasks) of the KISS Principle (see [3], [4],
[5] and similar references.)

-Aaron

References/excerpts
[1]https://itsfoss.com/nano-editor-guide/
[2]https://www.lifewire.com/beginners-guide-to-nano-editor-3859002
[3]http://principles-wiki.net/principles:keep_it_simple_stupid
[4]https://people.apache.org/~fhanik/kiss.html
[5]https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/kiss-keep-it-simple-stupid-a-design-principle


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