How to ‘UnJustify!’ text in GNU nano

editorsnano

I enjoy using nano as a respite from my usual GTK-based text editor. I like the simplicity of the interface, and using CTRL-K is the fastest way I know of to edit down long textfiles.

However, I have one major gripe: whenever I justify text using CTRL-J, the editor prints the smug little message Can now UnJustify! — yet I have not been able to find a way to unjustify text. Pressing M-U (which a Google search could reveal, M-U not being mentioned at all in the program's help files) simply seems to cause a glitch. The keyboard becomes unresponsive. Am I missing something?

Best Answer

If you press Ctrl+U immediately after Ctrl+J, the justification is undone. Nano in fact tells you (the ^U shortcut description at the bottom changes from UnCut Text to UnJustify). No, I won't blame you for not noticing that. You can't unjustify if you've typed anything after Ctrl+J. Yes, that's pretty underwhelming (far from a general undo).

This works for me in nano version 2.5

bind    ^]          cutwordleft         main
bind    ^\\         cutwordright        main

This works for me in nano version 2.9.3

bind    ^]          cutwordleft         main
bind    ^\          cutwordright        main

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I'm pretty sure you cannot do that in nano. The closest you could get would be line wrapping, precisely "soft wrapping": Esc+$.

This will wrap lines so you could see them all on the screen.

_{Source: https://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v2.9/nano.html (search for --softwrap)}

You could get this kind of behaviour with vim, though, the editor is more configurable. See: https://ddrscott.github.io/blog/2016/sidescroll/

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