GNU nano 6.0 Text Editor Is Out with New Color Names, Suspension Enabled by Default

GNU nano 6.0

The GNU nano 6.0 open-source command-line text editor is now available as the first stable update in the 6.x series of this powerful CLI editor that ships with almost all GNU/Linux distributions.

GNU nano 6.0 is here to introduce various new features and improvements to the popular command-line text editor, including a new --zero option for hiding the title bar, status bar, and help lines, and using all rows of your terminal emulator as the editing area.

This release also introduces 14 new color names, including crimson, beet, brick, brown, ocher, plum, rosy, sage, sand, sea, sky, slate, tawny, and teal, as well as the ability to specify colors as three-digit hexadecimal numbers, in the rgb format.

Another interesting change in GNU nano 6.0 is the enablement of suspension by default, which can be invoked with ^T^Z. This change replaces the -z, --suspendable, and 'set suspendable' options, but those who really want to suspend nano with a single keystroke still have the ability to put 'bind ^Z suspend main' in their nanorc file.

Other than that, GNU nano will now hard-wrap lines when pasting a few words (without a line break) with automatic hard-wrapping enabled, supports clearing the current filename by toggling Append or Prepend, and includes the YAML syntax file in the source tarball.

Last but not least, this release updates the --wordbounds to affect the word count as shown by M-D, allowing GNU nano to count words as the ‘wc’ option does. If this option is not enabled, GNU nano will now count words in a more human way, seeing punctuation as space, by default.

You can download GNU nano 6.0 right now from the official website. Check out the release announcement page for more details about the changes included in this release, which should also appear soon in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution.

Last updated 2 years ago

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