path: root/usr.bin/ee/ee.1

.\"
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd August 30, 1995
.Dt EE 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm ee
.Nd easy editor
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl  eih
.Op +#
.Op Ar
.Nm ree
.Op Fl eih
.Op +#
.Op Ar
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility
is a simple screen oriented text editor.  It is always in text insertion
mode unless there is a prompt at the bottom of the terminal, or a
menu present (in a box in the middle of the terminal).  The
.Nm ree
utility is the same as
.Nm ,
but restricted to editing the named
file (no file operations, or shell escapes are allowed).
.Pp
For
.Nm
to work properly, the environment variable
.Ev TERM
must be set to indicate the type of terminal being used.  For
example, for an
.Tn HP 700/92
terminal, the
.Ev TERM
variable should be set to "70092".  See your System Administrator if
you need more information.
.Pp
The following options are available:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl e
Turn off expansion of tab character to spaces.
.It Fl i
Turn off display of information window at top of terminal.
.It Fl h
Turn off highlighting of borders of windows and menus (improves
performance on some terminals).
.It Sy +#
Move the cursor to line '#' at startup.
.El
.Ss "Control keys"
To do anything other than insert text, the user must use the control
keys (the
.Li Control
key, represented by a "^",  pressed in conjunction with an
alphabetic key, e.g., ^a) and function keys available on the keyboard
(such as
.Em "Next Page" ,
.Em "Prev Page" ,
arrow keys, etc.).
.Pp
Since not all terminals have function keys,
.Nm
has the basic cursor movement functions assigned to control keys as
well as more intuitive keys on the keyboard when available.  For
instance, to move the cursor up, the user can use the up arrow key,
or
.Em ^u .
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It ^a
Prompt for the decimal value of a character to insert.
.It ^b
Move to the bottom of the text.
.It ^c
Get the prompt for a command.
.It ^d
Move the cursor down.
.It ^e
Prompt for the string to search for.
.It ^f
Undelete the last deleted character.
.It ^g
Move to the beginning of the line.
.It ^h
Backspace.
.It ^i
Tab.
.It ^j
Insert a newline.
.It ^k
Delete the character the cursor is sitting on.
.It ^l
Move the cursor left.
.It ^m
Insert a newline.
.It ^n
Move to the next page.
.It ^o
Move to the end of the line.
.It ^p
Move to the previous page.
.It ^r
Move the cursor to the right.
.It ^t
Move to the top of the text.
.It ^u
Move the cursor up.
.It ^v
Undelete the last deleted word.
.It ^w
Delete the word beginning at the cursor position.
.It ^x
Search.
.It ^y
Delete from the cursor position to the end of line.
.It ^z
Undelete the last deleted line.
.It ^[ (ESC)
Pop up menu.
.El
.Ss "EMACS keys mode"
Since many shells provide an Emacs mode (for cursor movement and other editing
operations), some bindings that may be more useful for people familiar with
those bindings have been provided.  These are accessible via the
.Em settings
menu, or via the initialization file (see below).  The mappings are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It ^a
Move to the beginning of the line.
.It ^b
Back 1 character.
.It ^c
Command prompt.
.It ^d
Delete character the cursor is sitting on.
.It ^e
End of line.
.It ^f
Forward 1 character.
.It ^g
Go back 1 page.
.It ^h
Backspace.
.It ^i
Tab.
.It ^j
Undelete last deleted character.
.It ^k
Delete line.
.It ^l
Undelete last deleted line.
.It ^m
Insert a newline.
.It ^n
Move to the next line.
.It ^o
Prompt for the decimal value of a character to insert.
.It ^p
Previous line.
.It ^r
Restore last deleted word.
.It ^t
Move to the top of the text.
.It ^u
Move to the bottom of the text.
.It ^v
Move to the next page.
.It ^w
Delete the word beginning at the cursor position.
.It ^y
Prompt for the string to search for.
.It ^z
Next word.
.It ^[ (ESC)
Pop up menu.
.El
.Ss "Function Keys"
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Next Page
Move to the next page.
.It Prev Page
Move to the previous page.
.It Delete Char
Delete the character the cursor is on.
.It Delete Line
Delete from the cursor to the end of line.
.It Insert line
Insert a newline at the cursor position.
.It Arrow keys
Move the cursor in the direction indicated.
.El
.Ss Commands
Some operations require more information than a single keystroke can
provide.  For the most basic operations, there is a menu that can be
obtained by pressing the
.Tn ESC
key.  The same operations, and more can be performed by obtaining the
command prompt (^c) and typing in one of the commands below.
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It ! Ns Ar cmd
Execute
.Ar cmd
in a shell.
.It 0-9
Move to the line indicated.
.It case
Make searches case sensitive.
.It character
Display the ASCII value of the character at the cursor.
.It exit
Save the edited text, and leave the editor.
.It expand
Expand tabs to spaces.
.It file
Print the name of the file.
.It help
Display help screen.
.It line
Display the current line number.
.It nocase
Make searches insensitive to case (the default).
.It noexpand
Don't expand tab to spaces when the TAB key is pressed.
.It quit
Leave the editor without saving changes.
.It read Ar file
Read the named
.Ar file .
.It write Ar file
Write the text to the named
.Ar file .
.El
.Ss "Menu Operations"
Pop-up menus can be obtained by pressing the
.Em escape
key (or
.Em ^[
if no
.Em escape
key is present).  When in the menu, the escape key can be
used to leave the menu without performing any operations.  Use the up and
down arrow keys, or
.Em ^u
for moving up and
.Em ^d
for moving down to move to the desired items in the menu, then press
.Em return
to perform the indicated task.
.Pp
To the left of each menu item is a letter, which if the corresponding
letter is pressed on the keyboard selects that menu entry.
.Pp
The main menu in
.Nm
is as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It leave editor
If changes have been made, the user will get a menu prompting whether or
not the changes should be saved.
.It help
Display a help screen, with all of the keyboard operations and commands.
.It file operations
Pop up a menu for selecting whether to read a file, write to a file, or
save the current contents of the editor, as well as send the contents of
the editor to a print command (see the section
.Sx "Initializing ee from a file" ) .
.It redraw screen
Provide a means to repaint the screen if the screen has been corrupted.
.It settings
Show the current values of the operating modes, and right margin.  By
pressing return when the cursor is on a particular item, the value can be
changed.  To leave this menu, press the
.Em escape
key. (See
.Sx Modes
below.)
.It search
Pop up a menu in which the user may choose to enter a string to search
for, or search for a string already entered.
.It miscellaneous
Pop up a menu that allows the user to format the current paragraph,
execute a shell command, or check the spelling of the text in the editor.
.El
.Ss "Paragraph Formatting"
Paragraphs are defined for
.Nm
by a block of text bounded by:
.Bl -bullet -width indent
.It
Begin or end of file.
.It
Line with no characters, or only spaces and/or tabs.
.It
Line starting with a period ('.') or right angle bracket ('>').
.El
.Pp
A paragraph may be formatted two ways:  explicitly by choosing the
.Em format paragraph
menu item, or by setting
.Nm
to automatically
format paragraphs.  The automatic mode may be set via a menu, or via the
initialization file.
.Pp
There are three states for text operation in
.Nm :
free-form, margins,
and automatic formatting.
.Pp
"Free-form" is best used for things like programming.  There are no
restrictions on the length of lines, and no formatting takes place.
.Pp
"Margins" allows the user to type in text without having to worry about going
beyond the right margin (the right margin may be set in the
.Em settings
menu, the default is for the margin to be the right edge of the
terminal).  This is the mode that allows the
.Em format paragraph
menu item to work.
.Pp
"Automatic formatting" provides word-processor-like behavior.  The user
may type in text, while
.Nm
will make sure the entire paragraph fits
within the width of the terminal every time the user inserts a space after
typing or deleting text.  Margin observation must also be enabled in order for
automatic formatting to occur.
.Ss Modes
Although
.Nm
is a 'modeless' editor (it is in text insertion mode all the
time), there are modes in some of the things it does.  These include:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It tab expansion
Tabs may be inserted as a single tab character, or replaced with spaces.
.It case sensitivity
The search operation can be sensitive to whether characters are upper- or
lower-case, or ignore case completely.
.It margins observed
Lines can either be truncated at the right margin, or extend on forever.
.It auto paragraph formatting
While typing in text, the editor can try to keep it looking reasonably well
within the width of the screen.
.It eightbit characters
Toggle whether eight bit characters are displayed as their value in angle
brackets (e.g. "<220>") or as a character.
.It info window
A window showing the keyboard operations that can be performed can be
displayed or not.
.It emacs keys
Control keys may be given bindings similar to emacs, or not.
.It 16 bit characters
Toggles whether sixteen bit characters are handled as one 16-bit quantities or
two 8-bit quantities.  This works primarily with the Chinese Big 5 code set.
.El
.Pp
You may set these modes via the initialization file (see below), or with a
menu (see above).
.Ss "Spell Checking"
There are two ways to have the spelling in the text checked from
.Nm .
One is by the traditional
.Xr spell 1
command, the other is with the
optional
.Xr ispell 1
command.
.Pp
Using
.Nm spell ,
the words that are not recognized will be placed at the top
of the file.  For the
.Nm ispell
option, the file is written to disk,
then
.Nm ispell
run on the file, and the file read back in once
.Nm ispell
has completed making changes to the file.
.Ss "Printing the contents of the editor"
The user may select a menu item which prints the contents of the editor.
The
.Nm
utility pipes the text in the editor to the command specified by the
initialization command
.Em printcommand
(see the section
.Sx Initializing ee from a file
below).  The default is to send the contents to
.Xr lp 1 .
.Pp
Whatever the user assigns to
.Em printcommand
must take input from
standard input.  See your system administrator for more details.
.Ss "Shell operations"
Shell commands can be executed from within
.Nm
by selecting the
.Em shell command
item in the
.Em miscellaneous
menu, or by placing an exclamation mark ("!") before the command to
execute at the
.Em command:
prompt.  Additionally, the user may direct the contents of the edit buffer
out to a shell operation (via a pipe) by using the left angle bracket
(">"), followed by a "!" and the shell command to execute.  The output of
a shell operation can also be directed into the edit buffer by using a
right angle bracket ("<") before the exclamation mark.  These can even be
used together to send output to a shell operation and read back the
results into the editor.  So, if the editor contained a list of words
to be sorted, they could be sorted by typing the following at the command
prompt:
.Dl ><!sort
This would send the contents of the editor to be piped into the
.Xr sort 1
utility and the result would be placed into the edit buffer at the current
cursor location.  The old information would have to be deleted by the user.
.Ss "Initializing ee from a file"
Since different users have different preferences,
.Nm
allows some
slight configurability.  There are three possible locations for an
initialization file for
.Nm :
the file
.Pa /usr/share/misc/init.ee ,
the file
.Pa .init.ee
in the user's home directory, or the file
.Pa .init.ee
in the current directory (if different from the home
directory).  This allows system administrators to set some preferences for
the users on a system-wide basis (for example, the
.Em print
command),
and the user to customize settings for particular directories (like one
for correspondence, and a different directory for programming).
.Pp
The file
.Pa /usr/share/misc/init.ee
is read first, then
.Pa $HOME/.init.ee ,
then
.Pa .init.ee ,
with the settings specified by the
most recent file read taking precedence.
.Pp
The following items may be entered in the initialization file:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It case
Set searches to be case sensitive.
.It nocase
Set searches to be insensitive to case (default).
.It expand
Cause
.Nm
to expand tabs to spaces (default).
.It noexpand
Cause
.Nm
to insert tabs as a single character.
.It info
A small information window is displayed at the top of the terminal
(default).
.It noinfo
Turn off the display of the information window.
.It margins
Cause
.Nm
to truncate lines at the right margin when the
cursor passes beyond the right margin as set by the user
while text is being inserted
(default).
.It nomargins
Allow lines to extend beyond the right margin.
.It autoformat
Cause
.Nm
to automatically try to format the current paragraph while
text insertion is occurring.
.It noautoformat
Turn off automatic paragraph formatting (default).
.It printcommand
Allow the setting of the print command (default: "lp").
.It rightmargin
The user can select a value for the right margin (the first column on the
screen is zero).
.It highlight
Turn on highlighting of border of information window and menus (default).
.It nohighlight
Turn off highlighting of border of information window and menus.
.It eightbit
Turn on display of eight bit characters.
.It noeightbit
Turn off display of eight bit characters (they are displayed as their decimal
value inside angle brackets, e.g., "<220>").
.It 16bit
Turns on handling of 16-bit characters.
.It no16bit
Turns off handling of 16-bit characters.
.It emacs
Turns on emacs key bindings.
.It noemacs
Turns off emacs key bindings.
.El
.Ss "Save Editor Configuration"
When using this entry from the
.Em settings
menu, the user may choose to save the current configuration of
the editor (see
.Sx Initializing ee from a file
above) to a file named
.Pa .init.ee
in the current directory or the user's home directory.  If a file named
.Pa .init.ee
already exists, it will be renamed
.Pa .init.ee.old .
.Sh CAVEATS
THIS MATERIAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS".  THERE ARE
NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH REGARD TO THIS
MATERIAL, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  Neither
Hewlett-Packard nor Hugh Mahon shall be liable
for errors contained herein, nor for
incidental or consequential damages in
connection with the furnishing, performance or
use of this material.  Neither Hewlett-Packard
nor Hugh Mahon assumes any responsibility for
the use or reliability of this software or
documentation.  This software and
documentation is totally UNSUPPORTED.  There
is no support contract available.  Hewlett-Packard
has done NO Quality Assurance on ANY
of the program or documentation.  You may find
the quality of the materials inferior to
supported materials.
.Pp
Always make a copy of files that cannot be easily reproduced before
editing.  Save files early, and save often.
.Ss "International Code Set Support"
The
.Nm
utility supports single-byte character code sets (eight-bit clean), or the
Chinese Big-5 code set.  (Other multi-byte code sets may function, but the
reason Big-5 works is that a two-byte character also takes up two columns on
the screen.)
.Sh WARNINGS
The automatic paragraph formatting operation
may be too slow for slower systems.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /usr/share/misc/init.ee -compact
.It Pa /usr/share/misc/init.ee
.It Pa $HOME/.init.ee
.It Pa .init.ee
.El
.Sh AUTHORS
The software
.Nm
was developed by
.An Hugh Mahon .
.Pp
This software and documentation contains
proprietary information which is protected by
copyright.  All rights are reserved.
.Pp
Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996 Hugh Mahon.
.Sh "SEE ALSO"
.Xr ispell 1 ,
.Xr lpr 1 ,
.Xr spell 1 ,
.Xr termcap 5 ,
.Xr terminfo 5 ,
.Xr environ 7