elvis-common 2.2.0-11.1 / usr / share / elvis / manual / elvis.man

.TH elvis 1
.SH NAME
elvis \- a clone of the ex/vi text editor
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B elvis
.RB [ -V ...]
.RB [ -a ]
.RB [ -r ]
.RB [ -e ]
.RB [ -i ]
.RB [ -s | - ]
.RB [ -b ]
.RB [ -R ]
.RB [ -S | -SS ]
.RB [ -f
.IR session ]
.RB [ -o
.IR logfile ]
.RB [ -G
.IR gui ]
.RB [ "-c \fIcommand\fP" | +\fIcommand\fP ]
.RB [ -t
.IR tag ]
.RB [ -w
.IR scroll ]
.RB [ -B
.IR blksize ]
.RI [ file ]...
.SH VERSION
Elvis 2.2_0
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
.B Elvis
is a text editor.
It is intended to be a modern replacement for the classic
.IR ex / vi
editor of UNIX fame.
.B Elvis
supports many new features, including multiple edit buffers, multiple
windows, multiple user interfaces (including an X11 interface), and a
variety of display modes.
.PP
To exit
.BR Elvis,
you can give the command ":q" in each of its windows.
If you've modified the buffer in a window, and you want to abandon those
changes, then give the command ":q!" instead.
.SH "HELP PAGES"
For more information please take a look at 
.BR Elvis '
help pages.
These pages should have been installed together with
.BR Elvis .
To view the help pages, start
.B Elvis
and give the command ":help".
.PP
If this does not show you the main help file
then something is wrong.
Perhaps the help pages were installed in the wrong place.
In that case, search for a file named "elvis.html" using either GNU's
.BR locate (1)
or the standard
.BR find (1)
program.
Hopefully this will show you where the file is located.
You can then view it with...
.nf

	:sp /\fIdirectory\fP/elvis.html
.fi
.PP
If the help pages aren't installed on your system but you have
access to the Internet, then you can view the help pages via HTTP
by running...
.nf

	:sp http://elvis.vi-editor.org/elvisman/elvis.html
.fi
.SH OPTIONS
.IP \fB-V\fR
"Verbose" mode, causes
.B Elvis
to output more status messages.
You can use multiple \fB-V\fP flags to get even more detailed
information.  
\fB-VVV\fP can be handy when
.B Elvis
isn't initializing itself quite the way you
expected.
See also the
.BI -o logfile
option, described below.
.IP \fB-a\fR
Instructs
.B Elvis
to load all files named on the command line \fIsimultaneously\fR
with a separate window for each.
.IP \fB-r\fR
This is used for recovering an edit session after a crash.
Each
.B Elvis
process uses a single "session file" to store the contents of all edit buffers.
While
.B Elvis
is running, a flag is set near the beginning of the session file
so that other
.B Elvis
processes won't try to use it at the same time.
If an
.B Elvis
process dies abnormally, though, it will leave the session file
lying around with that flag set;
the \fB-r\fR flag allows
.B Elvis
to open a session file even if it is marked
as being in use.
.IP \fB-e\fR
Causes
.B Elvis
to start each window in ex mode, instead of visual command mode.
Invoking
.B Elvis
as "ex" implies this.
.IP \fB-i\fR
Causes
.B Elvis
to start each window in input mode, instead of visual command mode.
Novice users may prefer this.
.IP \fB-b\fR
This sets the "binary" option, which
causes new buffers to be marked as "readeol=binary".
Without \fB-b\fR,
.B Elvis
will try to guess the format by examining the first
hundred bytes or so of the file.
.IP \fB-R\fR
This sets the "defaultreadonly" option, which
causes all new buffers to be marked as "readonly" so you won't accidentally
overwrite the original file.
.IP \fB-S\fR
Sets security=safer, making
.B Elvis
paranoid about certain potentially harmful commands.
The intent is to protect the user against writing by malicious scripts.
The ./.exrc file and modelines are executed with security=safer temporarily
regardless of whether \fB-S\fR was given.
The \fB-S\fR flag is just used to make
.B Elvis
permanently paranoid, for the duration of this process.
.IP \fB-SS\fR
Sets security=restricted.
This is more extreme security than "\-S".
The intent is to protect the system against reading by malicious users.
.IP "\fB-f \fIsession\fR"
Makes
.B Elvis
use the session file named "\fIsession\fR" instead of the default
file.
Session files are discussed in the description of the \fB-r\fR flag, above.
.IP "\fB-o \fIlogfile\fR"
Redirects messages and trace information out to
.I logfile
instead of going to stdout/stderr as usual.
This is useful under Windows95, where stdout/stderr don't show anywhere.
If you're having trouble configuring WinElvis, try running "WinElvis \-VVV \-o log"
and then you can find the trace and error messages in the file "log".
.IP "\fB-G \fIgui\fR"
Makes
.B Elvis
use the named \fIgui\fR user interface instead of the default.
To see a list of supported user interfaces, give the command "elvis \-?".
.IP "\fB-c \fIcommand\fR"
After loading the first file, interpret \fIcommand\fR as an ex command line.
Several ex command lines can be sent in one line, separated by "|".
This is good to know, because only a single
.BI -c command
or
.BI + command
flag can be used.
.IP "\fB-s\fR"
Read an \fIex\fR script from stdin, and execute it.
This is similar to the \fB-Gscript\fR flag, except that \fB-s\fR has the
additional side-effect of bypassing all initialization scripts.
.IP "\fB-t \fItag\fR"
Causes editing to begin at the location where the given \fItag\fR
is defined.
See the
.BR ctags (1)
command for more information about tags.
.IP "\fB-w \fIscroll\fR"
This sets the "window" option, which has very little effect in
.BR Elvis .
.IP "\fB-B \fIblksize\fR"
If a new session file is created, this causes it to use blocks of size
.IR blksize .
.PP
In addition, the following options are also supported to maintain backward
compatibility, although their future use is discouraged.
.IP "\fB+\fIcommand"
Like \fB-c\fI command\fR, this causes the ex \fIcommand\fR to be executed
after the first file is loaded.  If the \fIcommand\fR is omitted, it is
understood to be "$", which causes the cursor to move to the last line of
the file.
.IP "\fB-"
Like \fB-s\fR, this causes
.B Elvis
to read a script from stdin and execute it.
.SH "TERMCAP INTERFACE"
.PP
The termcap interface is the one you'll use most often on non-graphic terminals.
It looks and acts a heck of a lot like the traditional vi.
The biggest addition is the support for multiple windows.
For more information on how to use multiple windows, start
.B Elvis
and give
the command ":help ^W".
The short form of that help is:
^Ws splits the screen to form an additional window,
^Wq closes the window, and
^W^W switches the cursor from one window to another.
.PP
If your terminal supports ANSI color escape sequences, then you can
use the ":color" command to assign different colors to various fonts.
You must assign a "normal" color first, e.g., ":color normal yellow on blue".
.PP
The DOS and (text mode) Win32 version of the termcap interface support the mouse.
The mouse behaves almost exactly like the X11 mouse, described below.
The only differences are that the mouse can't be used to cut & paste
to the clipboard, and on a two-button mouse you can simulate a middle button
by simultaneously pressing the left and right buttons.
.SH "X11 INTERFACE"
.PP
The x11 interface is used under X-Windows on UNIX systems.
It provides a scrollbar and mouse support, and allows you to
select which fonts to use.
.SS "X11 Options"
.PP
To specify a normal font, use \fB-font\fI fontname\fR or \fB-fn\fI fontname.\fR
Proportional fonts are not properly supported, but they aren't rejected with an error message either.
If you don't specify a normal font, then
.B Elvis
will use a font named "fixed"
by default.
(This default can be overridden by a "set font=..." command in the
.I elvis.ini
file.
The default
.I elvis.ini
file does this, making the new default font be 18-point Courier.)
.PP
To specify a bold font, use \fB-fb\fI fontname.\fR
The specified font should have the same size character cell as the normal
font, but
.B Elvis
does not verify this.
If you don't specify a bold font, then
.B Elvis
will fake it by smearing the
normal font rightward one pixel.
.PP
To specify an italic font, use \fB-fi\fI fontname.\fR
The specified font should have the same size character cell as the normal
font, but
.B Elvis
does not verify this.
If you don't specify an italic font, then
.B Elvis
will fake it by sliding the
top half of the normal font rightward one pixel.
.PP
If you want to use Courier fonts, there is a shortcut:
\fB-courier\fI size\fR will use the normal, bold, and italic versions of
the Courier font in the requested size.
.PP
You can force
.B Elvis
to use only black and white with the \fB-mono\fR flag;
this is the default if your display only has one bitplane.  For color
displays, \fB-fg \fIcolor\fR and \fB-bg \fIcolor\fR can be used to set
the normal text color and the background color, respectively.
.PP
.B Elvis
has a built-in icon, which is generally a good thing.
Some window managers won't allow you to assign a new icon to a program that
has a built-in one, so
.B Elvis
has a \fB-noicon\fR flag which disables the
built-in icon.
.PP
The \fB-fork\fR client causes
.B Elvis
to run in the background, so that your
shell prompt returns immediately.
.PP
The \fB-client\fR option causes
.B Elvis
to look for an already-running
.B Elvis
process on the same X server and, if there is one, send the new arguments to it.
This causes the old
.B Elvis
process to create new windows for file arguments.
The new
.B Elvis
process then exits, leaving the old one to do the real work
and allowing your shell program to prompt for a new command immediately.
For the sake of uniformity,
if \fB-client\fR fails to find an existing
.B Elvis
process, then a new
.B Elvis
process
starts up as though you had used the \fB-fork\fR argument instead.
.PP
The \fB-client\fR option is implemented in an interesting way:
the client
.B Elvis
simply sends a series of ex commands to an existing window of the server
.BR Elvis .
For each file name argument, the client
.B Elvis
sends a ":split \fIfile\fR"
command.
For \fB-t\fItag\fR, the client
.B Elvis
sends a ":stag \fItag\fR" command.
For \fB-c\fIcommand\fR, the client
.B Elvis
simply sends the \fIcommand\fR,
and this results in some quirks.
First, the server
.B Elvis
temporarily sets security=safer while the
command is executed, for security reasons.
Second, the command is executed by the server's existing window, not the
new one, so (for example) "elvis \-client \-c 20 foo" creates a new window for the file
"foo", and then moves the OLD WINDOW's cursor to line 20 of whatever file
it was showing.
.SS "X11 Mouse"
.PP
I've tried to reach a balance between the mouse behavior of
.BR xterm (1)
and what makes sense for an editor.
To do this right,
.B Elvis
has to distinguish between clicking and dragging.
.PP
Dragging the mouse always selects text.
Dragging with button 1 pressed (usually the left button) selects characters,
dragging with button 2 (the middle button) selects a rectangular area, and
dragging with button 3 (usually the right button) selects whole lines.
These operations correspond to
.BR Elvis '
v, ^V, and V commands, respectively.
When you release the button at the end of the drag, the selected text is
immediately copied into an X11 cut buffer, so you can paste it into another
application such as xterm.
The text remains selected, so you can apply an operator command to it.
.PP
Clicking button 1 cancels any pending selection, and moves the cursor to
the clicked-on character.
Clicking button 3 moves the cursor without canceling the pending selection;
you can use this to extend a pending selection.
.PP
Clicking button 2 "pastes" text from the X11 cut butter.
If you're entering an ex command line, the text will be pasted into the
command line as though you had typed it.
If you're in visual command mode or input mode, the text will be pasted into
your edit buffer.
When pasting, it doesn't matter where you click in the window;
.B Elvis
always inserts the text at the position of the text cursor.
.PP
Double-clicking button 1 simulates a ^] keystroke,
causing
.B Elvis
to perform tag lookup on the clicked-on word.
If
.B Elvis
happens to be displaying an HTML document, then tag lookup
pursues hypertext links so you can double-click on any underlined text
to view the topic that describes that text.
Double-clicking button 3 simulates a ^T keystroke,
taking you back to where you did the last tag lookup.
.PP
If your mouse has a scroll wheel, then
.B Elvis
can be configured to use it.
For instructions on doing this, start
.B Elvis
and give the command ":howto scrollwheel".
.SH "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES"
.PP
.B Elvis
has commands which can examine any environment variable.
Because of this, a comprehensive list of environment variables isn't
possible.
The following list contains the environment variables which have
hardcoded meaning in
.BR Elvis .
.IP "BASH or BASH_VERSION"
Under Unix/Linux,
.B Elvis
tests for the presence of these variables to decide
whether or not the /bin/sh shell supports process control,
especially the ^Z key.
The values of these variables doesn't matter, only the fact that they exist.
.IP COLUMNS
For the "termcap" user interface, this overrides the number of columns specified
in the termcap/terminfo entry.
.IP DISPLAY
For the "x11" user interface, this indicates which display it should run on.
.IP ELVISBG
If set to "light" or "dark", its value is used as the default value for the
background option.
.IP ELVISGUI
If set, its value is used to select the default user interface.
You can still override it by using the
.BI -G gui
command line flag.
.IP ELVISPATH
If ELVISPATH is defined in the environment, then its value is copied into
the elvispath option, which is a list of directories that
.B Elvis
should search
through when looking for its support files.
If ELVISPATH is undefined,
.B Elvis
will use a default list which usually
includes the your home directory, and maybe a system-wide default location.
.IP EXINIT
If defined, the value of this option is typically interpreted as a
series of EX commands when
.B Elvis
starts up.
This behavior isn't built into
.B Elvis
though;
it is handled by the standard
.I elvis.ini
file.
.IP HOME
This is your home directory.
Its value is used as the default value for the home option, which is used
in ~ substitution in file names.
.IP "HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH"
For Windows, if HOME is unset then HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH are checked;
if they're set then they're concatenated to form the default value of the
home option.
.IP INCLUDE
The "syntax" display mode uses this as a list of directories to search through
when looking for a header file such as <stdio.h>.
.IP "LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, and LANG"
If LANG is defined, then
.B Elvis
will look for its message translations in
.IR $LANG/elvis.msg ,
and only use just plain
.I elvis.msg
if it can't find
.IR $LANG/elvis.msg .
The LC_MESSAGES and LC_ALL environment variables work similarly, and
take precedence over LANG.
.IP LINES
For the "termcap" user interface, this overrides the number of lines specified
in the termcap/terminfo entry.
.IP LOGNAME
This stores your login name.
It is used when reading via the FTP protocol, to choose the default
login information.
.IP OLDPWD
This stores the name of the previous directory you were in.
Its value is stored in the prevdir option, which is used for ~- substitution
in file names.
.IP PATH
The usual search path for programs.
.IP SESSIONPATH
This is a list of directories where
.B Elvis
might be able to create the
session file.
.B Elvis
uses the first writable directory from the list, and ignores
all others.
.IP "SHELL or COMSPEC"
This is the name of your command-line interpreter.
.B Elvis
needs to know this so you can run programs from inside
.BR Elvis .
SHELL is used in Unix/Linux, and COMSPEC is used in MS-DOS.
.IP TAGPATH
This is a path for
.I tags
files, used by the :tag command.
For Microsoft it is semicolon-delimited; for all others it is colon-delimited.
Each entry in the path can be either a filename, or the name of a directory
containing a file named
.IR tags .
.IP TERM
For the termcap interface, this is the name of the terminal's termcap/terminfo
entry.
Also, if its value is "kvt" or ends with "\-r" or "\-rv", then the background
option will be "light" by default; else it will be "dark".
.IP TERMCAP
For the termcap interface, this can either store the name of a termcap file
or the actual contents of a termcap entry.
.IP TMP
This is where
.B Elvis
stores its temporary files other than session files.
.IP WINDOWID
.B Elvis
uses this when choosing the default value of the background option.
If the WINDOWID environment variable exists, then
.B Elvis
assumes it is running in an xterm-like terminal emulator, and
those emulators usually have a light background.
.IP "XENVIRONMENT, XFILESEARCHPATH, and XUSERFILESEARCHPATH"
These are used by the "x11" user interface, when loading
.BR Elvis '
resources.
.SH FILES
.TP
.I ~
This is your home directory.
Whenever
.B Elvis
sees a ~ at the start of a pathname,
it replaces the ~ with the value of the "home" option.
The "home" option is initialized from the HOME environment variable;
if HOME is unset then some operating systems will set "home" to the
the directory where the
.B Elvis
program resides.
.TP
.I lib
In this man-page, "lib" is a placeholder for the name of a directory
in which
.BR Elvis '
configuration files reside.
The "elvispath" option's value is a list of directories that
.B Elvis
will
check for each configuration file.
.TP
.I elvis*.ses
These are the default names for sessions files.
Session files store the contents of all edit buffers for a given
edit session.
You can instruct
.B Elvis
to use a specific session file via the
.BI -f session
command-line flag.
Note that sessions specified via
.BI -f session
normally reside in the current directory, but when
.B Elvis
chooses its own session file name, it will place it in the
first writable directory named in the SESSIONPATH environment variable.
.TP
.I tags
This file stores the tags for the files in a directory.
It is used by the :tag command, among others.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.ini
This file contains EX commands which are executed whenever
.B Elvis
starts up.
.B Elvis
searches through the ELVISPATH for the file.
.TP
.IR ~/.exrc ", " ~/.elvisrc ", or " ~\eelvis.rc
The \fI.exrc\fR or \fI.elvisrc\fR (for UNIX) or \fIelvis.rc\fR (for non-UNIX)
file in your home directory will generally be executed as a series of
EX commands,
unless the EXINIT environment variable is defined.
This behavior isn't built into
.B Elvis
though; it is handled by the standard \fIelvis.ini\fR file.
.TP
.IR .exrc ", " .elvisrc ", or " elvis.rc
The \fI.exrc\fR or \fI.elvisrc\fR (for UNIX) or \fIelvis.rc\fR (for non-UNIX) file in the
current directory is interpreted as a series of EX commands,
but only if the \fBexrc\fR option has been set.
This behavior isn't built into
.BR Elvis ;
it is handled by the standard \fIelvis.ini\fR file.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.brf
This file contains EX commands which are executed
.BR B efore
.BR R eading
a
.BR F ile.
Typically this is used to distinguish a binary file from a text file
by examining the file name extension of the file.
The "readeol" option is then set accordingly.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.arf
This file contains EX commands which are executed
.BR A fter
.BR R eading
a
.BR F ile.
If the current directory doesn't contain an \fIelvis.arf\fR file, then
.B Elvis
searches through the ELVISPATH for the file.
Typically, this is used to set the \fBbufdisplay\fR option for a buffer,
based on the file name extension of the file.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.bwf
This file contains EX commands which are executed
.BR B efore
.BR W riting
a
.BR F ile.
Typically,
.I lib/elvis.bwf
is used to perform an RCS "checkout" command before writing a file.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.lat
This contains a series of ":digraph" commands which set up the digraph
table appropriately for the ISO Latin-1 symbol set.
The
.I lib/elvis.ini
file executes this script during initialization,
except under OS/2, MS-DOS, or text-mode Win32.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.pc8
This contains a series of ":digraph" commands which set up the digraph
table appropriately for the PC-8 symbol set.
This is the normal symbol set for MS-DOS, OS/2, and text-mode Win32
(although the graphical Win32 uses
.IR lib/elvis.lat ).
The
.I lib/elvis.ini
file executes this script during initialization under MS-DOS.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.msg
This file's data is used for mapping the
.BR Elvis '
terse error messages into verbose messages.
.TP
.I lib/elvistrs.msg
.B Elvis
doesn't use this file directly;
it is simply meant to serve as a resource from which you can extract
the terse form of one of elvis' messages;
you can then add the terse form and your own custom verbose form to the
.I lib/elvis.msg
file.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.syn
This file controls how
.BR Elvis '
"syntax" display mode highlights the text
for a given language.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.x11
This file contains a series of ex command.
This file is sourced by
.I lib/elvis.ini
if
.B Elvis
is using its X11 user interface.
It configures up the toolbar and default colors.
.TP
.I lib/elvis.ali
This contains a set of aliases.
If your copy of
.B Elvis
is configured to support aliases (i.e., if it isn't
the MS-DOS version) then these aliases will be loaded automatically.
They are partly intended to serve as examples of what aliases can do
and how to write them,
but mostly these aliases are intended to be truly useful.
To see a list of the aliases, give the command ":alias".
.TP
.I lib/elvis*.html
These files contain the online documentation.
.TP
.I lib/*.man
These contain the man pages -- shorter summaries of the programs,
with descriptions of the command-line flags.
.TP
.IR guix11/*.xpm " and " guix11/elvis.xbm
These contain icon images for use with X-windows.
The "elvis.xbm" image is a 2-color bitmap, and it is compiled into
.BR Elvis .
The other files, such as "elvis.xpm," contain color images.
The "insticon.sh" shell script (which is invoked as part of the "make install"
operation) tries to copy these into appropriate directories.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR ex (1),
.BR vi (1),
.BR ctags (1)
.PP
You should also view the on-line documentation, via ":help".
.SH AUTHOR
Steve Kirkendall
.br
kirkenda@cs.pdx.edu