Subject: Re: nano and TERM
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Gareth Pearce" <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 18:42:44 +0100

> Hmm, unable to reproduce your problem here
> so far, prehaps some more details would be useful.
> Gareth - nano packaging type guy.

Thank you for getting back to me. This is what I meant.

When Cygwin is installed (i.e. after running setup, filesystems are mounted,
registry entries are made, etc, etc) all the supplied applications (such as
nano) operate very nicely in the default bash console window and, it turns
out, in a rxvt window. I have experimented with the "-tn" terminal switch
available with rxvt but to be honest have found most settings (e.g. -tn
cygwin, -tn rxvt, -tn vt100; or no setting at all) to be completely
irelevant: things just work. (Though I remember -tn linux turned out to be a
doomed selection.) Well done all the packagers.

Also, nano and pico and a few other things work seamlessly, and with no
obvious differences, in a Windows DOS box. Especially the command-line stuff
like ls, find, md5sum, diff, cmp, ... This is because I have put
c:\Cygwin\bin in my Windows PATH (early). This offers a huge and valuable
extension to the supplied Windows command structure.

(I know http://www.nano-editor.org supply a zipped version of nano claimed
to be "for Windows" but since on un-zipping the provision, it turns out to
include cygwin1.dll, I deduce it's the same, ot not much different to, the
entity maintained by Gareth. So, since nano works in all possible required
environments that I can think of (Cygwin-bash, Cygwin-rxvt, Windows-DOS) I
have not bothered with this zipped item.)

My reason for writing was to report (very unclearly, I now perceive) the
following.

Occasionally it suits me to umount -A and also change the name c:\Cygwin to
c:\SomethingElse. (Don't ask. I'm interested in sparse systems. Particularly
in extending the Windows command structure through simply making available
the contents of c:\SomethingElse\bin\, and *without* setting up Cygwin in
the mounted registry sense.) It seems to me that as long as
c:\SomethingElse\bin is in the Windows PATH, then one still has the luxury
of Cygwin's applications. Certainly I find am still able to use ls, find,
md5sum, cmp, diff, ..., loads of others, ..., and pico.

I am more or less certain that I have successfully used nano in these
circumstances. But currently I am getting the error message earlier
described: "Error opening terminal : cygwin".

Fergus

P.S. I know. This is saying "Thank you for supplying an item intended to be
used under prevailing circumstances A. I want to use it under prevailing
circumstances B, but I find I can't. Kindly mend it so I can." I really am
not saying this, and I hope I have no unreasonable expectations. But I guess
what I am saying is: (a) I'm sure I could once, and (b) other not dissimilar
things seem to work OK under prevailing circumstances B. Is there any
possibility that nano could be looked at, because it is SUCH a useful
editor. THANK YOU.

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