Elvis 1.4, part 0 if 8
Steve Kirkendall
kirkenda at eecs.cs.pdx.edu
Tue Dec 4 08:24:56 AEST 1990
Here comes version 1.4 of Elvis, my vi clone. Major differences between
1.3 and 1.4 are...
- Elvis now runs under OS-9/68k and Coherent.
I'm backing off of the Turbo-C compatibility claim, slightly, because
nobody here has had a chance to test it lately.
- The various "Makefile.XXX" files have all been merged into a single file
called "Makefile.mix". This was done to simplify maintenance on it. You
should copy "Makefile.mix" to "Makefile" and then edit "Makefile" to
select the correct group of settings for your system.
- A new program is included in the source file "alias.c". This is a tiny
program which simply runs Elvis. It is meant to be used on systems such
as MS-DOS which don't support UNIX-style file links. The idea here is
that instead of having four copies of Elvis on your hard disk (elvis, vi,
view, and ex) you can instead have one copy (elvis) plus three of this
little guy (vi, view, and ex). This should save a few hundred Kbytes of
disk space.
- Another new program, called "refont", has also been added. It translates
or removes the control sequences for switching to boldface or underlined
character sets. This is important, because some of the documentation now
has Epson-compatible escape sequences embedded in it. Refont will allow
you to print the documentation on non-Epson printers.
- The documentation has been updated. All documentation has been moved into
a subdirectory called "doc". The manual was one big file for 1.3, but for
1.4 I broke it into many smaller files; each section of the manual is in a
separate file. These filenames all end with ".doc". They contain some
Epson-compatible escape sequences, as I warned earlier.
Also, I'm including unformatted "man" pages for all commands. These must
be run though "nroff -man" before they will look right. Their filenames
end with ".man".
- Elvis is generally more complete. Some things I remember off-hand...
+ You can now give a line number to the ":e" command: :e +65 foo
+ You can now append to a named cut buffer, via "Ayy
+ A limited @ macro facility has been added.
+ The :abbr command has been added.
+ When searching in visual mode, you can put a slash at the end of the
regexp, and add a delta: /something/+3
+ Several new ":set" options have been added, including showmatch, autoprint,
and edcompatible. I did *NOT* add ":set number" yet, but I plan to.
The options are now sorted down the columns, instead of by the rows.
- Many of the tables are now dynamically allocated, so you don't need to
worry about getting a "table full" error message. The ":map" table is
the only one I haven't changed yet.
- At compile time, you can now configure elvis to start up with some useful
digraphs already defined. Also, the digraph table is now ignored unless
you ":set digraph".
- You still can't invoke two Elvis processes on the same file, but now you
can (usually) be creating two different new files in the same directory,
al least. The true fix for this limitation will have to wait for version
1.5, I'm afraid...
- A new set of commands has been added to allow Elvis to scan the error
messages emitted by a compiler. When you say ":make" or ":cc", elvis runs
the compiler and saves the error messages in a file named "errlist".
After the compiler quits, Elvis starts reading "errlist" and stops when it
locates an error message. Elvis then switches to the file that caused the
error, moves the cursor to the proper line, and displays the error message
on the status line. Hitting the `*' key will move you to the next error.
Much better than the BSD "errors" program!
- More care has been taken regarding function type declarations and such.
The "lint" program almost likes Elvis now.
- The names of some TERMCAP capabilities have been changed, in order to
improve the behaviour of Elvis when used with TERMINFO. In particular,
TERMINFO victims will now be able to see boldface characters.
- Elvis now has a new and improved set of bugs. Most of the old bugs have
been fixed. Most of the new bugs are so subtle that I haven't found them
yet.
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Steve Kirkendall kirkenda at cs.pdx.edu Grad student at Portland State U.
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