If you're using elvis to view this file, you can search for a topic simply by using the / command. To limit the search to topic lines only, begin the regular expression with "^<dt>.*". For example you could search for "spaces" in a topic line via the following:
/^<dt>.*spaces
Sometimes there are multiple topics that use the same word or phrase. If the first one that it finds isn't the one you want, then you can use the n command to find the next one.
In addition, the lib/elvis.ali script distributed with elvis
contains a "howto" alias which loads this file and searches for a given topic.
The aliases from that file are loaded automatically, so
you should be able to display any topic in a
a separate window via a command such as this:
:howto spaces
knownsyntax() function to check the
language, like this:
:if knownsyntax(filename) == "perl" :then set ccprg="perl -c ($1?$1:$2) 2>&1 | perlerr"
(The perlerr perl script converts perl's error messages
into a form that elvis can parse.
It is given in the Tips chapter.)
You could also use the dirext() function instead of
knownsyntax(); it doesn't depend on the
lib/elvis.syn file.
As a last resort, you might consider using the x flag of
the :s command.
~/.exrc
file changes the default for all buffers/windows.
However, the lib/elvis.brf and lib/elvis.arf files typically change some of those options, so the defaults might not be used very long before they're changed.
.elvisrc and runs it if it exists;
else it looks for .exrc and runs that.
If you want elvis to run both of them, then add the following line
to your .elvisrc file:
:source ~/.exrc
(Elvis ex history) buffer to "tab".
You can do that via the following command:
:(Elvis ex history)set inputtab=tab
(Elvis regexp history) buffer, like this:
:(Elvis regexp history)set inputtab=tab
.exrc file
(or elvis.rc for non-Unix systems).
The command is:
:set inputtab=identifier
After that, each time you hit the <Tab> key elvis will search through the tags file for any matching tags, and add as many characters as possible. If it completes the entire tag name, it does not append a space or other character, which is a little different from other types of name completion. Also, in the syntax display mode it will not attempt completion if the partial word happens to be a complete keyword or otherword.
In elvis, you can set the inputtab option to "spaces" to make the <Tab> key insert the appropriate number of spaces into a line. This works even if the cursor isn't in the line's indentation whitespace.
In addition, the autotab option controls the shifting commands (the :< and :> commands in ex, and the < and > operators in visual mode). To make those commands use only spaces, autotab should be off.
:set inputtab=spaces noautotab
To convert existing files to use only spaces, you should use an external
program such as "col -bx" under Unix.
However, you almost certainly do not want to change the
tabstop option because most other
software, and most printers and terminals, also assume that tabs are 8
characters wide.
If you edit files with tabstop set to 4 or 5, then your
files will look very strange when viewed with anything other than elvis,
or by anyone other than you.
So leave tabstop=8.
Instead, set the shiftwidth option to the desired indentation amount, and either get in the habit of typing ^T to increase indentation, or :map! the <Tab> key to ^T in input mode.
:set shiftwidth=5 :map! ^V^I ^V^T
Note that when you're typing in the above :map command,
you'll need to type an extra ^V before each ^V
or ^T.
Also, this map has the unfortunate side-effect of making the <Tab> increase indentation even if the cursor is somewhere later in the line (unless you type ^V before it). This is one good reason to skip the map, and get in the habit of using ^T to increase indentation. The autotab option helps here, too.
:(1
Or you can switch to "main.c" like this:
:(main.c
Of course, the buffer must exist before you can switch to it. Another thing to keep in mind is, switching buffers doesn't necessarily force you to save the old buffer first. Any changes you made to the old buffer are not lost -- you can switch back to the original buffer again if you wish.
:(1)split
Or, create a window showing the "main.c" buffer:
:(main.c)split
(Elvis cut buffer X), where X is the name
of the cut buffer (a single letter or digit).
Consequently, you could create a window showing cut buffer "a
like this:
:(Elvis cut buffer a)split
Of course, the "a cut buffer must exist for this to work.
Since the name is so long, elvis supports a special short-hand notation
for cut buffer names.
In parentheses, if the first character is " and the remainder of the buffer
name is a single letter, then elvis uses the buffer which contains that
cut buffer's contents.
The following command also creates a window showing the "a
cut buffer:
:("a)sp
Elvis doesn't store "undo" versions for cut buffers, and you can't yank a buffer into itself. Other than that, editing should be pretty normal. The type of data in the buffer (characters, lines, or rectangle) is stored in an option named putstyle.
-Gtermcap flag.
If you do this often, you may wish to create a shell script, alias, or shell
function which runs elvis with -Gtermcap.
Here's an example of shell script:
#!/bin/sh exec elvis -Gtermcap "$@"
If you never want to use the "x11" user interface, then you should probably reconfigure elvis to leave it it out. This will make elvis considerably smaller. To do this, go into the directory where elvis' source code resides and execute the following shell commands:
make clean configure --with-x=no make
.exrc file:
:set blinktime=0
:color cursor red on green
.exrc file, you can set the
normalfont,
boldfont, and
italicfont options to anything you want.
These settings will override the defaults.
If you set only the normalfont and leave the others unset,
then elvis will derive the others from the normal font.
:set normalfont=7x14
If you just want to use a smaller size of the Courier font, you can use
the :courier alias.
It takes a single parameter: the point size of the font to use.
The default font is 18-point Courier, and most systems also have 14-point
Courier fonts which works well.
:courier 14
The simplest way to change the font is to pass elvis a
-fc fontname parameter.
I suggest you use that to experiment with the available fonts, to find
one you like.
(You can use the standard xlsfonts program to list the available
fonts.)
To make the change permanent, you can either set the controlfont option in your ~/.exrc file, or you can set the elvis.control.font resource in your ~/.Xdefaults file.
:!xeyes >/dev/null 2>&1 &
If you want to write data out to the program (:w !program)
then it becomes even more complex.
This is because pipes can only contain a finite amount of data, so when
elvis is redirecting stdin as well as stdout/stderr, it uses a temporary
file for stdin.
Elvis deletes that file as soon as the program returns -- which, for a program
run in parallel, happens immediately even though the program hasn't had a chance
to read the data from that file yet.
The solution is to write the data into a temporary file sequentially, and
then start a parallel command line which runs the program and then deletes
the temporary file, like this:
:w !cat >$$; (xv $$; rm $$) >/dev/null 2>&1 &
Yes, that's nasty. I plan to clean that up some day, by making elvis smart enough to avoid reading stdout/stderr when the command line ends with a '&' character.
However, by using the "termcap" interface inside an xterm,
you should be able to run interactive programs such as "crypt" or "pgpv"
exactly as you can under vi.
In an xterm (or any other terminal emulator), just run
"elvis -Gtermcap" instead of plain "elvis".
But it you really want to do this, then you should add the following line to the end of your lib/elvis.arf file:
try cd (dirdir(filename))
#!/bin/sh".
One nice trick is to use the x flag of elvis'
:s command.
It not only detects text, but can incorporate that text into the commands.
For example, to compute the total of all numbers in all lines, you could...
:set t=0 :%s/\<[[:digit:]]\+\>/let t = t + &/gx :set t?
Note that this series of commands does not affect the edit buffer.
The x flag prevents the substitution from taking place;
the replacement text is executed instead.
You can also use the :try command to run a search command, and then use :then and :else to act differently depending on whether the search succeeded or not.
:try /Yow! :then echo Zippy was here :else echo Where in the world is Zippy the Pinhead?
You can also use the current("word") and line()
functions to fetch the word at the cursor
location, or a whole line, respectively.
:let w=current("word")
:let l=line(1)
!) and
the long option name, followed by a ? character.
(For non-Boolean options, the ? is optional.)
:set! wrapmargin?
This will produce output like "win.wm=0", indicating that the short name is "wm", the group name is "win" (so each window has its own margin), and the value is 0.
elvis -r" to start a new elvis process on the
old session file, and then use the :buffer
command to list the buffers.
You can then use other commands to save those buffers; for example, to
save a buffer named "main.c" into a file named "main.c.recovered", you
would give this command:
:(main.c)w main.c.recovered
However, it is usually possible to construct a little "filter" program to convert other error message formats into one that elvis can recognize. The Tips chapter has an example of how to make elvis handle PERL's error messages.
If you're having trouble displaying non-ASCII characters, then you may want to look into the nonascii option. Also, on Unix systems you should verify that your terminal is configured correctly (8 bits, not 7 -- and the Latin-1 character set is installed).
The most straightforward way to do this is to use the !{default}% notation. Specifically, !{.}% will make any command in an alias default to using just the current line, and !{%}% will make any command default to using all lines.
Here's a simple word-counting alias which uses this technique to count the words in all lines by default...
alias wcw {
local w=0
!{%}% s/\w\+/let w=w+1/gx
calc w
}
Note that the :g command can be used with an address range. This is often convenient.
Here's an alias which uses this technique to search for the longest line (assuming all characters are of equal width -- no tabs or control characters)...
alias widest {
local w=0 l
!%g/^/ {
if strlen(line()) > w
then let w = strlen(line())
then let l = current("line")
}
calc "Line "l" is the longest, at "w" characters."
}
The most straightforward method is to build an alias which performs a series of substitutions. The problem with this method is that it must be rewritten for each type of input text. Here's an example of a fairly simple alias that converts plain text to HTML. (There is a more powerful version of this alias in the standard distribution's elvis.ali file.)
alias makehtml {
"Convert plain text to HTML
local report=0
"
"Protect characters which are special to
try !(%)%s/&/\&/g
try !(%)%s/</\</g
try !(%)%s/>/\>/g
"
"Convert blank lines to <p> tags
try !(%)s/^$/<p>/
"
"If converting the whole file, then add <html>...</html>
if "!%" == ""
then {
$a </body></html>
1i <html><body>
}
}
The other way is simpler and more versatile, but it requires the use of an external file. It uses the :lpr command with lptype=html. Since elvis' print mechanism supports all of elvis' display modes, you can use this technique to convert any type of text (or even a hex dump of a binary file) into HTML.
:set lptype=html lplines=0 nolpheader :lp foo.html
:map B c<strong>^P</strong>^[(Note: When typing that :map command into elvis, you'll need to type <Ctrl-V><Ctrl-P> to get the ^P, and <Ctrl-V><Esc> to get the ^[ character.)
For general bug reports, you should contact the primary author, Steve Kirkendall, at kirkenda@cs.pdx.edu.
Either way, be sure to mention the version of elvis you're using (as reported by "elvis --version"), and your operating system.