Copyright (C) 1992, 1993 by Rush Record
Copyright (C) 1993, 1994 by Charles Sandmann (sandmann@clio.rice.edu)
This file is part of ED.
ED is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms
of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.
ED is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with ED
(see the file COPYING). If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 675
Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
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ABOUT ED
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ED is an EDT look-alike editor that is portable to many platforms. If you use
EMACS, you'll probably hate it, but it does have some nice features.
ED will:
o Let you edit files on other hosts, if you are connected to the Internet.
o Display many files on the screen simultaneously.
o Save key definitions and other editor settings on command.
o Let you mark your spot in a file, and return to it easily.
o Let you put tab stops wherever you want them.
o Let you use wildcards in search strings.
o Let you redefine the keys on your terminal.
o Let you say things like: ED *.dat, if you want to edit all .dat files.
o Allow you to teach it how to talk to different terminals.
o Calculate the value of algebraic expressions that include math functions.
o Sort a file or a portion of a file.
o Let you read the network news.
ED is free software, see the file COPYING for details.
ED is available from riceng.rice.edu, username rhrsoft, password rhrsoft.
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IF BAFFLED
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If all the wonderful help that appears below fails miserably, which seems not
unlikely, and your local guru can't get ED running, send e-mail to:
sandmann@clio.rice.edu
or write to
Charles Sandmann
527 Asheboro
Katy, TX 77450
and I'll help if I can. The known bugs are listed in the file edbugs in
this distribution and on the above FTP site. If in doubt, check the FTP
site since edbugs is kept up to date there.
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UNPACKING ED
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If you are on a VMS system (or any other system with ZIP), you should have a
zip file called ED-vvv.zip (vvv is the version). To unpack it, get a copy of
Info-ZIP UNZIP 5.0 (or PKUNZIP 2.04g on DOS) and say:
$ unzip ED-vvv.zip
This will create a subdirectory of your current directory called "ED-vvv"
which will contain the needed files.
If you are on a unixy system, you could have a file called ED-vvv.tar.Z (it
might originally be called ED-vvv.taZ, in this case mv it to ED-vvv.tar.Z). To
unpack it, create a temporary directory, cd to it, move ED-vvv.tar.Z to it, and
say:
uncompress < ED-vvv.tar.Z | tar xf -
If you are on a unixy system, you could have a file called EDtarvvv.zip. To
unpack it, create a temporary directory, cd to it, move EDtarvvv.zip to it.
You need either GZIP or Info-Zip UNZIP to extract this file.
For GZIP, say:
gunzip < EDtarvvv.gz | tar xf -
For Info-UnZip, just say:
unzip EDtarvvv.zip
tar xf ED-vvv.tar
You should definitely read the COPYING file before you even *think* about
selling any code that uses ED source in any way. ED is free, but you cannot
use any of its source code in any commercial product.
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BUILDING ED ON A UNIX-Y SYSTEM
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To build ED, you need a compiler for the C language. There are a lot of
different models around, and we can't guarantee that all of them will build ED
successfully. To try to minimize the distinctions, you should run a shell
script called 'autoconfigure', which tries to understand the situation on your
machine.
Autoconfigure creates two files: 'compiler' and 'config.h'. compiler has
specifics on how to run the C compiler on your machine. config.h has some
special C code that allows ED to be built on different kinds of hardware.
There can be problems with using autoconfigure. For example, the NeXT machine
comes with a C-library that contains the 'sbrk' function, but it doesn't work
right. On some Linux and BSD386 systems, mmap is available but does not seem
to work properly. If the compiler built with autoconfigure has compilation
problems or does not run correctly (indicates the file is empty when you
know it isn't) try running configure or specifying "#define NO_MMAP" and
"#define NO_SBRK" in the config.h file. If you want to use 8-bit character
display (for national character sets, for example) you need to add the
line "#define USE_NCS" to your config.h file. If you compile in a POSIX
environment you will also need to "#define NO_TERMSIZE", and potentially
CUSERID_ENV if cuserid() is not in the library. In any case, if autoconfigure
doesn't work right for your system, let me know and I will try to fix
it in the next release.
Once you have successfully run autoconfigure (or configure, if that's
appropriate), you need to run make (gmake for BSD386 systems). On Solaris 2.x
systems use the command "make -f makefile.solaris2". Make will compile
all the .c files and build a file called 'a.out', which is the ED executable
program. Once you have built the program you should create a directory to hold
the program and some other files (or move it to a standard shared location such
as /usr/local/bin). Move the program (you can call it what you like, perhaps
"ed" would be a good idea), *.ed, ed.setup and ed.hlp to that directory:
mkdir ~/ED
mv a.out ~/ED/ed
cp load.key *.ed ed.setup ed.hlp ~/ED
Note: if you cp a.out instead, remember to chmod 755 ~/ED/ed !
At this point you should review the files in the set_size subdirectory. These
files help you set up the terminal size information and setting up aliases
for the editor. You may also need to link vt100.ed or vt200.ed to different
file names for use with different TERM variables that behave as a superset of
these terminals (ie vt220.ed, vt320.ed, etc).
If you have a local directory for man pages, you may want to move ED.1 into
that directory so there will be man support for ED.
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BUILDING ED ON A VMS SYSTEM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, your VAX must have a C compiler. You can say HELP CC to determine
whether you do. If no help is available, you probably don't. In that case, you
should either find a system that has one or buy one. If all else fails,
contact us to get a binary (olb or exe) distribution.
VMS systems don't have unix-style networking by default - you have to buy
software from a third party to enable it. And, of course, these manufacturers
pay no attention whatever to one another, with the result that the programmer's
interface varies somewhat from one manufacturer to another. We currently
support the networking of three manufacturers: WOLLONGONG, MULTINET and UCX. If
you have another variety, you'll have to provide us with either documentation
for it, or access to your system so we can get it up and running.
What all this is leading up to is that you need to run a command procedure
called MAKE.VMS. This procedure calls another procedure (CONFIGURE.COM), which
determines which kind of networking you have, and a few other details for the C
compiler. CONFIGURE.COM creates two files: 'config.h', which has information
the C compiler uses, and 'vmslink.com', which is the command procedure that
runs the linker when ED is being built. Unless you have a Vax 4000 series
machine, I suggest you submit make.vms as a batch job.
When CONFIGURE.COM completes, MAKE.VMS tries to compile and build ED. If no
nasty error messages appear, it probably worked. Now decide where you want
the ED files to live and move them there:
$ CREATE/DIRECTORY SYS$LOGIN:[ED]
$ COPY ED.EXE,*.ED,ED.HLP,LOAD.KEY SYS$LOGIN:[ED]
$ COPY ED.SETUP-VMS SYS$LOGIN:[ED]ED.SETUP
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BUILDING ED ON A DOS LIKE SYSTEM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, a DOS PC must have the GCC port to DOS, DJGPP. Version 1.10 or
later is required to run under Windows or an OS/2 DOS session. You will also
need the event library from LIBGRX for the keyboard handling (or define the
symbol NO_EVENTS when compiling TTYPUT.C). A binary distribution for DOS is
also available. There is currently not a TCP/IP package that works with DJGPP,
so the FTP and NEWS functions are disabled.
To build the image you execute MAKE_DOS.BAT (which creates config.h and runs
the compiler). You may want to edit this file to change the coff2exe binding
step (if you would rather stub the image with the extender).
To build ED under NT, you need the Microsoft SDK. It is as simple as saying
"nmake -f makefile.nt" if you unpacked the files on a FAT partition. If you
are using HPFS or NTFS, you will need to fix the makefile to reflect the
longer file names. A binary distribution is available if you don't want to
bother or don't have the SDK. The NT distribution has FTP file editing
enabled but does not currently support NEWS.
An fully prototyped version of ED has also been built with BORLAND C, but it
is limited to 32 Kbyte files and not very suitable for real work. So far
everyone I know has 386+ systems so noone thinks it's worth the effort to fix.
Native OS/2 versions have also been built with GCC/2, but it is not as easy,
since you have to link to the KBD and VIO routines. Contact us for more
instructions for building the OS/2 native version.
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FILES ED USES
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ED uses four auxiliary files, which are ordinary text files (whatever that
means on your platform). They are:
1) Your editor setup file, usually called ~/ed.setup (or SYS$LOGIN:ED.SETUP
on VMS systems). If you invoke ED and it cannot open the setup file, it
copies it from the directory that contains the ED program itself. You must
specify the name of your startup file on the command line when you run ED.
2) Your journal file, which is specified in your setup file. Typically it's
called ~/ed.jou (or SYS$LOGIN:ED.JOU on VMS systems).
3) Your terminal description file, whose name depends on what kind of term-
inal or terminal emulator you are using. Several examples come with the
program. You specify the terminal file on the command line when you run
ED. If you don't know what kind of terminal you have, try the vt100.ed
file. (Note that ED can create new description files for you if you use
the -z command-line option.)
4) The editor help file, called ed.hlp. This file should be in the same
directory as the executable program.
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HOW TO GET ED RUNNING
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There are some files in the set_size subdirectory which contain example
code for inclusion in csh and ksh startup files for defining an alias
under unix systems. There is also a program which helps to make sure
the terminal size is set properly.
First, define an alias (VMS users: symbol) to run the editor. I do this as
follows on unix systems (assuming directory name you used above was ED or
/usr/local/bin and the program was ed).
with the csh shell (depending on your setup):
alias ed '~/ED/ed ~/ED/$TERM.ed ~/ed.setup `stty size`'
alias ed '/usr/local/bin/ed /usr/local/bin/$TERM.ed ~/ed.setup 0 0'
or with the Korn shell:
alias ed='/usr/local/bin/ed /usr/local/bin/${TERM}.ed ~/ed.setup 0 0'
The rows and columns sizing parameters are such that they can be set using
the `stty size` command, or the editor internally tries to determine these
values if 0 0 are specified. For some shells you may not be able to create
an alias, and you may need to create a command script with this information.
Note: Some systems (IRIX) do not support the "stty size" command.
For these systems you may be able to use the C shell command:
eval `resize`
This defines the variables LINES, and COLUMNS, then define the C shell alias:
alias ed '~/ED/ed ~/ED/$TERM.ed ~/ed.setup $LINES $COLUMNS'
Then, to edit file.name, I say ed file.name.
On VMS I use something like the following (note that this assumes you put all
of ED's files in your home directory):
$ Ed:==$SYS$LOGIN:ED SYS$LOGIN:VAXSTATION.ED SYS$LOGIN:ED.SETUP 0 0
Note that you can say things like:
ed file1.dat a*.b x.y xyzzy.tmp *.c
and all the named files will be loaded by ED, one after the other.
The ed.setup file enables some non-EDT extensions you might not like. If you
want close EDT emulation until you learn to love the extensions, use edt.setup.
Many popular defined keys are defined in the file load.key. For example:
GOLD-O : open a new file window
GOLD-M : switch to other file window
GOLD-C : close current file window
GOLD-S : create a system/subprocess/DCL window (also GOLD-D)
GOLD-B : toggle the box cut paste mode
GOLD-X : calculate expression on current line and paste it into line
CTRL-A : toggle insert/overstrike mode
CTRL-B : make current window one line bigger
You may modify this file (maybe merge it with your own command key file
created with the "unload" command) and then issue the command "load load.key".
At this point the keys defined in a volatile state. To save them permanently,
issue the command "store keys", which puts them in your ed.setup file.
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WHY IT DIDN'T WORK
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ED is supposed to spit out informative error messages if something's wrong when
you try to run it. The main things that can go wrong are:
1) You specified the terminal file or setup file wrong. Be sure that TERM is
defined in your environment if you're on a unix system (if you're using the
above alias).
2) You don't have write access to the directory where ED wants to put the
ed.setup file. This is unlikely, unless you really don't have write access
to your home directory.
3) You don't have write access to the directory where ED wants to put the
journal file. You can fix this by changing the first line of your ed.setup
file to point to a directory you have write access to.
4) You specified the terminal rows and columns incorrectly. On most systems,
you can specify them both as zero to get a reasonable default behavior.
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DIRECTORY BROWSING
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If you specify the name of a directory, instead of a file, ED enters 'diredit
mode.' In this mode, ED lists the files in the named directory (along with some
details about each file). To view a file, move the cursor to it and press the
'a' key (or the 'b' key, if you want to look at it in binary mode). You can hit
'a' on ".." (or "[-]" under VMS) to move up one level in the directory
hierarchy.
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USING ED ON THE INTERNET
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If your workstation is connected to the Internet, ED can open files and
directories on other computers. You do this by using the following syntax:
/host.domain:/dir1/dir2.../dirn/file
or
/user@host.domain:/dir1/dir2.../dirn/file
If you use the first form, ED tries to connect with the username "anonymous"
and passes your username and host as the password. If you use the second form,
ED prompts you to enter a password. If you leave off the directories, ED puts
you in the top level directory, "/" (or "[000000]" on VMS).
From within ED, you can hit ^Z and say 'help ftp' to get more complete
information about using ED in the internet.
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WHAT'S EDT?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you don't know how to use EDT, well, you have much to learn in order to use
ED. Unlike EMACS, ED uses the keypad (at the right end of the keyboard) to do
everything. Some keys move the cursor, some kill (delete) text from the file,
some insert previously killed text into the file. You can, from within ED, hit
control-Z and say HELP KEYPAD to get more information, but it isn't a very good
way to learn it all.
If I still haven't discouraged you, here's a brief description. (The expression
[x] means keypad key x. This description assumes a VT100-style keypad.)
MOVING THE CURSOR
If your keyboard has arrow keys, you can use those to move around. If not, the
[0], [1], [2], [3], [7] and [8] keys move you around as follows:
1) All these keys understand a 'direction' of motion that you can change with
the [4] and [5] keys. When you first get into ED, you are 'going forward,' and
pressing any movement key moves the cursor forward in the file. The [5] key
changes the direction to 'going backward,' which means the same keys now move
you backward through the file. The [4] key can set you going forward again.
2) The [3] key moves one character at a time.
3) The [1] key move one word at a time.
4) The [2] key moves to the end of a line.
5) The [0] key moves to the beginning of a line.
6) The [7] key moves to a page boundary.
7) The [8] key moves one 'section' of lines (default: 18 lines).
KILLING TEXT
Whenever you kill text in ED, the killed text goes into an internal buffer,
from which you can generally retrieve it later on. There are four such buffers:
o the CHAR buffer holds one character, and it gets loaded when you use the
DELETE key or the [,] key.
o the WORD buffer holds one 'word' (which may be arbitrarily long) and gets
loaded when you use the ^J key or the [-] key.
o the LINE buffer holds one 'line' (which may be arbitrarily long) and gets
loaded when you use the [PF4] key or the [PF1]-[2] combination.
o the PASTE buffer holds any arbitrary chunk of text (possibly many lines) and
gets loaded when you use the [6] key.
For each buffer, there are keystroke combinations that cause ED to insert the
contents of the buffer into the file at the cursor position. More about that
later, first the keys that kill:
1) The Delete key kills the character to the left of the cursor.
2) The [,] key kills the single character the cursor is on.
3) The [-] key kills from the cursor to the beginning of the next word.
4) The [PF4] key kills from the cursor to the end of the current line,
including the end of the line itself.
5) The [6] key kills the 'select range,' which is an arbitrary area in the file
that you define using the 'select marker.' This works as follows:
a) You press the [.] key. This puts the select marker at the cursor
position.
b) You move the cursor somewhere else.
c) You press [6] to kill everything from the cursor to the marker.
The [6] key will also kill the search string, if the cursor is currently
sitting on the search string. See FINDING STRINGS below for more about the
search string.
UNKILLING TEXT
To insert text, you just type. There is an 'overstrike' mode, but it is not
enabled by default. The Delete key lets you back up. The [,], [-] and [PF4]
keys save the text they kill in buffers that you can later 'unkill,' or insert,
into the file. You do this by pressing the [PF1] key (also called the GOLD key)
and then pressing [,], [-] or [PF4]. Similarly, pressing GOLD [6] unkills
whatever you last killed with the [6] key. This is how you move big blocks of
text around.
Pressing [PF2] immediately before killing something causes what would be killed
to be copied to the appropriate buffer, without actually removing the text from
the file.
Note that ^J (otherwise known as 'delete previous word') loads what it kills
into the WORD buffer (the same one [-] kills into). Also, [PF1]-[2] (otherwise
known as 'delete to end of line') kills into the LINE buffer (the same one [PF4]
kills into).
REPEAT COUNTS
Any keystroke can be issued to ED with a 'repeat count,' which, in effect,
makes it as if you had pressed the key many times. You enter a repeat count by
pressing GOLD, then typing in a number, then pressing a key (or a GOLD-key
combination). For example, to insert 27 'a' characters, you would press GOLD,
type 27 (on the main keyboard), and press a.
FINDING STRINGS
To search for a string, press GOLD [PF3]. ED will prompt you for a search
string. Type something in, and press [4] to search forward or [5] to search
backward. It beeps if the string is not found. If it does find the string, it
moves the cursor there. To find the next occurrence of the string (in the
current direction) just press [PF3]. See the SET SEARCH help topic for more
about searching.
SAVING CHANGES
To save your changes, press control-Z to get into command mode, and say E and
hit RETURN. The file is updated on disk, and you get a prompt for another file
name. To get out of ED completely, just hit RETURN one more time.
To get out of a file without saving changes, type control-Z and say Q and hit
RETURN. All your changes are thrown away.
MULTI-WINDOW EDITING
ED lets you open 'windows' into other files while you're editing. To do this:
1) Press GOLD [PF2]. You get a prompt that says Open,Close,Move,Spawn>. Say O
and hit RETURN.
2) Enter a file name and press RETURN. The screen splits and you get popped
into the file you named.
3) To move between windows, say GOLD [PF2] and say M and hit RETURN. The cursor
moves to the other window. You can have as many windows as you like. You can
say ML (meaning, Move Last) instead of M to move to the window above the
current window, or MN (for Move Next) to move to the one below. Similarly, you
can say MNN to move two windows down, etc.
4) To close a window, say GOLD [PF2] and say C and hit RETURN. The window the
cursor is in is closed. You cannot close the main window. You can say CN or CL
to close the window below or above.
5) To create a window with another process (so you can do directories etc) say
GOLD [PF2] and say S and hit RETURN. Log out of this window to close it. On VMS
systems, you can use the ATTACH command to return to ED, leaving the process
window on the screen. You can then move back into the process window, and it
will return you to the still-waiting process.
6) To update a file you windowed into, move the cursor into the window, say
control-Z, and type W (meaning, WRITE) and hit RETURN. The contents of the
window are written to disk. You can say W filename to write the window to a
specific file.
DEFINING KEYS
By all means, read the help topic 'defining_keys' in the online help. You can
define keys in ED very easily, and the key definition can include *any* editor
commands. You can, for example, say e *.c, and when the first .c file comes up,
you can define a key that does some edits and then does control-Z and EXIT.
At this point (in the second .c file) you terminate the key definition. Now
when you press the defined key, it edits one more file and pops you into the
next one. You could now enter a huge repeat count and press the defined key,
and the edits would be performed on all the remaining .c files. When there are
no more .c files (or the edits fail for some reason), the defined key stops.
Once you have defined some keys, you can store them in your setup file, using
the STORE command. Once you do this, the key definitions become part of your
setup, so you don't have to define them any more - ED just comes up with them
already defined.
MORE HELP
There is an online help facility built into ED. To get into it, press control-Z
and say H and hit RETURN. A list of topics appears. Type the name of a topic to
get more information, or hit RETURN to work your way back up one level. You can
abbreviate topic names. A list of important topics:
SHOW - shows editor settings.
SET - sets editor settings.
STORE - saves editor settings and key definitions in your setup file.
RESTORE - restores editor settings and key definitions from your setup file.
recovery - how to recover edits from the journal file (after a crash).
recall_commands - describes command recall.