NAME
jove - an interactive display-oriented text editor
SYNOPSIS
jove [ -d directory ] [ -l libdir ] [ -s sharedir ] [ -ls bothdir ] [
-J ] [ -j ] [ -wn ] [ -t tag ] [ +n file ] [ +/pattern file ] [ -p file
] [ file... ]
jove -r
DESCRIPTION
JOVE is Jonathan’s Own Version of Emacs. It is based on the original
EMACS editor written at MIT by Richard Stallman. Although JOVE is
meant to be compatible with EMACS, there are some major differences
between the two editors and you shouldn’t rely on their behaving
identically.
JOVE works on any reasonable display terminal that is described in the
termcap file (see TERMCAP(5) for more details). When you start up
JOVE, it checks to see whether you have your TERM environment variable
set. On most systems that will automatically be set up for you, but if
it’s not JOVE will ask you what kind of terminal you are using. To
avoid having to type this every time you run JOVE you can set your TERM
environment variable yourself. How you do this depends on which shell
you are running. If you are running the C Shell, as most of you are,
you type
% setenv TERM type
and with the Bourne Shell, you type
$ TERM= type ; export TERM
where type is the name of the kind of terminal you are using (e.g.,
vt100). If neither of these works get somebody to help you.
INVOKING JOVE
If you run JOVE with no arguments you will be placed in an empty
buffer, called Main. Otherwise, any arguments you supply are
considered file names and each is ‘‘given’’ its own buffer. Only the
first file is actually read in — reading other files is deferred until
you actually try to use the buffers they are attached to. This is for
efficiency’s sake: most of the time, when you run JOVE on a big list of
files, you end up editing only a few of them.
The names of all of the files specified on the command line are saved
in a buffer, called *minibuf*. The mini-buffer is a special JOVE
buffer that is used when JOVE is prompting for some input to many
commands (for example, when JOVE is prompting for a file name). When
you are being prompted for a file name, you can type ^N (that’s
Control-N) and ^P to cycle through the list of files that were
specified on the command line. The file name will be inserted where
you are typing and then you can edit it as if you typed it in yourself.
JOVE recognizes the following switches:
-d dirname
dirname is taken to be the name of the current directory. This
is for systems that don’t have a version of C shell that
automatically maintains the CWD environment variable. If -d is
not specified on a system without a modified C shell, JOVE will
have to figure out the current directory itself, and that can be
slow. You can simulate the modified C shell by putting the
following lines in your C shell initialization file (.cshrc):
alias cd ’cd \!*; setenv CWD $cwd’
alias popd ’popd \!*; setenv CWD $cwd’
alias pushd ’pushd \!*; setenv CWD $cwd’
-l libdir
Allows the user to specify the directory in which binary files
required by JOVE can be found (default /usr/lib/jove).
-s sharedir
Allows the user to specify the directory in which initialization
files required by JOVE can be found (default /usr/lib/jove).
-ls bothdir
Allows the user to specify the directory in which binary files
and initialization files required by JOVE can be found.
-J Inhibits reading of the system-wide initialization file
(/usr/lib/jove/jove.rc).
-j Inhibits reading of the user’s initialization file (~/.joverc).
+n Reads the file designated by the following argument, and
positions point at the nth line instead of the (default) first
line. This can be specified more than once but it doesn’t make
sense to use it twice on the same file; in that case the second
one wins. If no numeric argument is given after the +, the
point is positioned at the end of the file.
+/pattern
Reads the file designated by the following argument, and
positions point at the first match of the pattern.
-p file
Parses the error messages in file. The error messages are
assumed to be in a format similar to the C compiler, LINT, or
GREP output.
-t tag Runs the find-tag command on tag (see ctags(1)).
-wn Divides the window into n windows (if n is omitted, it is taken
to be 2). Subsequent files in the list are read in and
displayed in succeeding windows.
RECOVERING BUFFERS AFTER A CRASH
The -r option of jove runs the JOVE recover program. Use this when the
system crashes, or JOVE crashes, or you accidently get logged out while
in JOVE. If there are any buffers to be recovered, this will find
them.
Recover looks for JOVE buffers that are left around and are owned by
you. (You cannot recover other peoples’ buffers, obviously.) If there
were no buffers that were modified at the time of the crash or there
were but recover can’t get its hands on them, you will be informed with
the message, ‘‘There is nothing to recover.’’ Otherwise, recover
prints the date and time of the version of the buffers it has, and then
waits for you type a command.
To get a list of the buffers recover knows about, use the list command.
This will list all the buffers and the files and the number of lines
associated with them. Next to each buffer is a number. When you want
to recover a buffer, use the get command. The syntax is get buffer
filename where buffer is either the buffer’s name or the number at the
beginning of the line. If you don’t type the buffer name or the
filename, recover will prompt you for them.
If there are a lot of buffers and you want to recover all of them, use
the recover command. This will recover each buffer to the name of the
buffer with ‘‘.#’’ prepended to the name (so that the original isn’t
over-written). It asks for each file and if you want to restore that
buffer to that name you type ‘‘yes’’. If you want to recover the file
but to a different name, just type the new name in. If you type ‘‘no’’
recover will skip that file and go on to the next one.
If you want to look at a buffer before deciding to recover it, use the
print command. The syntax for this is print buffer where buffer again
is either its name or the number. You can type ^C if you want to abort
printing the file to the terminal, and recover will respond with an
appropriate message.
When you’re done and have all the buffers you want, type the quit
command to leave. You will then be asked whether it’s okay to delete
the tmp files. Most of the time that’s okay and you should type
‘‘yes’’. When you say that, JOVE removes all traces of those buffers
and you won’t be able to look at them again. (If you recovered some
buffers they will still be around, so don’t worry.) So, if you’re not
sure whether you’ve gotten all the buffers, you should answer ‘‘no’’ so
that you’ll be able to run recover again at a later time (presumably
after you’ve figured out which ones you want to save). If there were
more than one crashed JOVE session, quit will move you on to dealing
with the next one instead of exiting.
If you type ^C at any time other than when you’re printing a file to
the terminal, recover will exit without a word. If you do this but
wish you hadn’t, just type ‘‘jove -r’’ to the shell again, and you will
be put back with no loss.
GETTING HELP
Once in JOVE, there are several commands available to get help. To
execute any JOVE command, you type ‘‘<ESC> X command-name’’ followed by
<Return>. To get a list of all the JOVE commands you type ‘‘<ESC> X’’
followed by ‘‘?’’. The describe-bindings command can be used to get a
list containing each key, and its associated command (that is, the
command that gets executed when you type that key). If you want to
save the list of bindings, you can set the jove variable send-typeout-
to-buffer to ON (using the set command), and then execute the describe-
bindings command. This will create a buffer and put in it the bindings
list it normally would have printed on the screen. Then you can save
that buffer to a file and print it to use as a quick reference card.
(See VARIABLES below.)
Once you know the name of a command, you can find out what it does with
the describe-command command, which you can invoke quickly by typing
‘‘ESC ?’’. The apropos command will give you a list of all the command
with a specific string in their names. For example, if you want to
know the names of all the commands that are concerned with windows, you
can run ‘‘apropos’’ with the keyword window.
If the initialization file has provided specific keybindings for your
terminal, it should also be possible to view the keyboard layout with
the keychart macro.
If you’re not familiar with the EMACS command set, it would be worth
your while to use run TEACHJOVE. Do do that, just type ‘‘teachjove’’
to your shell and you will be placed in JOVE in a file which contains
directions. I highly recommend this for beginners; you may save
yourself a lot of time and headaches.
KEY BINDINGS and VARIABLES
You can alter the key bindings in JOVE to fit your personal tastes.
That is, you can change what a key does every time you strike it. For
example, by default the ^N key is bound to the command next-line and so
when you type it you move down a line. If you want to change a binding
or add a new one, you use the bind-to-key command. The syntax is
‘‘bind-to-key <command> key’’.
You can also change the way JOVE behaves in little ways by changing the
value of some variables with the set command. The syntax is ‘‘set
<variable> value’’, where value is a number or a string, or ‘‘on’’ or
‘‘off’’, depending on the context. For example, if you want JOVE to
make backup files, you set the ‘‘make-backup-files’’ variable to
‘‘on’’. To see the value of a variable, use the ‘‘print <variable>’’
command.
INITIALIZATION
JOVE first reads the system-wide initialization file
(/usr/lib/jove/jove.rc) which provides reasonable defaults for your
installation and loads standard macros. It will normally observe your
TERM environment variable in order to provide terminal-specific key
bindings and a map of your keyboard (see the standard ‘‘keychart’’
macro).
JOVE then automatically reads further commands from the initialization
file called ‘‘.joverc’’ (‘‘jove.rc’’ under MSDOS) in your HOME
directory. In this file you can place commands that you would normally
type in JOVE. If you like to rearrange the key bindings and set some
variables every time you get into JOVE, you should put them in your
initialization file. Here are a few lines from mine:
set match-regular-expressions on
1 auto-execute-command auto-fill /tmp/Re\|.*drft
bind-to-key i-search-forward ^\
bind-to-key i-search-reverse ^R
bind-to-key find-tag-at-point ^[^T
bind-to-key scroll-down ^C
bind-to-key grow-window ^Xg
bind-to-key shrink-window ^Xs
(Note that the Control Characters can be either two character sequences
(e.g. ^ and C together as ^C) or the actual control character. If you
want to use an ^ by itself you must BackSlash it (e.g., bind-to-key
grow-window ^X\^ binds grow-window to ‘‘^X^’’).
ENVIRONMENT
If the variable LC_CTYPE (see environ(5)) is not set in the
environment, the operational behavior of JOVE for the LC_CTYPE locale
category is determined by the value of the LANG environment variable.
If LC_ALL is set, its contents are used to override both the LANG and
the LC_CTYPE variable. If none of the above variables is set in the
environment, the "C" (U.S. style) locale determines how JOVE behaves.
LC_CTYPE
Determines how JOVE handles characters. When LC_CTYPE is set to
a valid value, JOVE can display and handle text and filenames
containing valid characters for that locale. In particular,
characters will be correctly recognised as upper or lower case
and displayed if printable. However JOVE cannot display or
handle Extended Unix Code (EUC) characters which are more than 1
byte wide. In the "C" locale, only characters from 7-bit ASCII
are valid (all characters with the eighth bit set being
displayed in octal). In the "iso_8859_1" locale (if supported by
the OS), the full Latin-1 alphabet is available. The JOVE
variable ‘‘lc-ctype’’ can be used to change the locale while
JOVE is running.
SOME MINOR DETAILS
You should type ^\ instead of ^S in many instances. For example, the
way to search for a string is documented as being ‘‘^S’’ but in reality
you should type ‘‘^\’’. This is because ^S is the XOFF character (what
gets sent when you type the NO SCROLL key), and clearly that won’t
work. The XON character is ‘‘^Q’’ (what gets sent when you type NO
SCROLL again) which is documented as the way to do a quoted-insert.
The alternate key for this is ‘‘^^’’ (typed as ‘‘^‘’’ on vt100’s and
its look-alikes). If you want to enable ^S and ^Q and you know what
you are doing, you can put the line:
set allow-^S-and-^Q on
in your initialization file.
If your terminal has a metakey and you turn on the ‘‘meta-key’’
variable, JOVE will use it to generate commands which would otherwise
start with an ESC. JOVE will automatically turn on ‘‘meta-key’’ if the
METAKEY environment variable exists. This is useful for if you have
different terminals (e.g., one at home and one at work) and one has a
metakey and the other doesn’t. However, if a locale which recognises
8-bit characters is in force, a metakey may be better used to generate
the extra characters (so leave the ‘‘meta-key’’ variable off).
FILES
/usr/lib/jove/jove.rc — system-wide initialization file
/usr/lib/jove/jove.rc.$TERM — terminal-specific initialization file
/usr/lib/jove/keychart.$TERM — terminal-specific help file
/usr/lib/jove/macros — standard macros file
~/.joverc — personal initialization file
/var/tmp — where temporary files are stored
/usr/lib/jove/teach-jove — the interactive tutorial
/usr/lib/jove/recover — the recovery program
/usr/lib/jove/portsrv — for running shells in windows (pdp11 only)
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
TERM — your terminal type
METAKEY — if defined, sets the ‘‘meta-key’’ variable
SHELL — the shell to be used by the ‘‘shell’’ and other commands
COMSPEC — (on MSDOS) used if SHELL is not defined
MAIL — to initialize the ‘‘mailbox’’ variable
JOVELIB — overrides /usr/lib/jove unless overridden by -l
JOVESHARE — overrides /usr/lib/jove unless overridden by -s
TMPDIR — overrides /var/tmp as directory for temporary files
LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG — to set the locale
SEE ALSO
ctags(1) — to generate tags for the find-tag command and the -t command-line
option
ed(1) — for a description of regular expressions
teachjove(1) — for an interactive JOVE tutorial.
DIAGNOSTICS
JOVE diagnostics are meant to be self-explanatory, but you are advised
to seek help whenever you are confused. You can easily lose a lot of
work if you don’t know EXACTLY what you are doing.
BUGS
Lines can’t be more than 1024 characters long.
Searches can’t cross line boundaries.
AUTHOR
Jonathan Payne
24 June 1993