ee(1) ee(1)
NAME
ee - easy editor
SYNOPSIS
ee [-e] [-i] [-h] [+#] [file ...]
ree [-e] [-i] [-h] [+#] [file ...]
DESCRIPTION
The command ee 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 command ree is the same as ee, but restricted to editing the named
file (no file operations, or shell escapes are allowed).
An editor with similar user-friendly qualities but more features is
available and is called aee.
For ee to work properly, the environment variable TERM must be set to
indicate the type of terminal being used. For example, for an HP
700/92 terminal, the TERM variable should be set to "70092". See your
System Administrator if you need more information.
Options
The following options are available from the command line:
-e Turns off expansion of tab character to spaces.
-i Turns off display of information window at top of terminal.
-h Turns off highlighting of borders of windows and menus (improves
performance on some terminals).
+# Moves the cursor to line '#' at startup.
Control keys
To do anything other than insert text, the user must use the control
keys (the Control key, represented by a "^", pressed in conjunction
with an alphabetic key, e.g., ^a) and function keys available on the
keyboard (such as Next Page, Prev Page, arrow keys, etc.).
Since not all terminals have function keys, ee 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 ^u.
^a Prompt for the decimal value of a character to insert.
^b Move to the bottom of the text.
^c Get the prompt for a command.
^d Move the cursor down.
^e Prompt for the string to search for.
^f Undelete the last deleted character.
^g Move to the beginning of the line.
^h Backspace.
^i Tab.
^j Insert a newline.
^k Delete the character the cursor is sitting on.
^l Move the cursor left.
^m Insert a newline.
^n Move to the next page.
^o Move to the end of the line.
^p Move to the previous page.
^r Move the cursor to the right.
^t Move to the top of the text.
^u Move the cursor up.
^v Undelete the last deleted word.
^w Delete the word beginning at the cursor position.
^x Search.
^y Delete from the cursor position to the end of line.
^z Undelete the last deleted line.
^[ (ESC) Pop up menu.
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 settings menu, or via the initialization file (see below). The
mappings are as follows:
^a Move to the beginning of the line.
^b Back 1 character.
^c Command prompt.
^d Delete character the cursor is sitting on.
^e End of line.
^f Forward 1 character.
^g Go back 1 page.
^h Backspace.
^i Tab.
^j Undelete last deleted character.
^k Delete line.
^l Undelete last deleted line.
^m Insert a newline.
^n Move to the next line.
^o Prompt for the decimal value of a character to insert.
^p Previous line.
^r Restore last deleted word.
^t Move to the top of the text.
^u Move to the bottom of the text.
^v Move to the next page.
^w Delete the word beginning at the cursor position.
^y Prompt for the string to search for.
^z Next word.
^[ (ESC) Pop up menu.
Function Keys
Next Page
Move to the next page.
Prev Page
Move to the previous page.
Delete Char
Delete the character the cursor is on.
Delete Line
Delete from the cursor to the end of line.
Insert line
Insert a newline at the cursor position.
Arrow keys
Move the cursor in the direction indicated.
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 ESC key. The same operations, and more can be
performed by obtaining the command prompt (^c) and typing in one of the
commands below.
!cmd Execute cmd in a shell.
0-9 Move to the line indicated.
case Make searches case sensitive.
character
Display the ascii value of the character at the cursor.
exit Save the edited text, and leave the editor.
expand Expand tabs to spaces.
file Print the name of the file.
help Display help screen.
line Display the current line number.
nocase Make searches insensitive to case (the default).
noexpand
Don't expand tab to spaces when the TAB key is pressed.
quit Leave the editor without saving changes.
read file
Read the named file.
write file
Write the text to the named file.
Menu Operations
Pop-up menus can be obtained by pressing the escape key (or ^[ if no
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 ^u for moving up and ^d for moving down to move to
the desired items in the menu, then press return to perform the
indicated task.
To the left of each menu item is a letter, which if the corresponding
letter is pressed on the keyboard selects that menu entry.
The main menu in ee is as follows:
leave editor
If changes have been made, the user will get a menu
prompting whether or not the changes should be saved.
help Displays a help screen, with all of the keyboard operations
and commands.
file operations
Pops 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 Initializing ee from a file).
redraw screen
Provides a means to repaint the screen if the screen has
been corrupted.
settings
Shows 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 escape key. (See Modes below.)
search
Pops up a menu in which the user may choose to enter a
string to search for, or search for a string already
entered.
miscellaneous
Pops 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.
Paragraph Formatting
Paragraphs are defined for ee by a block of text bounded by:
• Begin or end of file.
• Line with no characters, or only spaces and/or tabs.
• Line starting with a period ('.') or right angle bracket
('>').
A paragraph may be formatted two ways: explicitly by choosing the
format paragraph menu item, or by setting ee to automatically format
paragraphs. The automatic mode may be set via a menu, or via the
initialization file.
There are three states for text operation in ee: free-form, margins,
and automatic formatting.
"Free-form" is best used for things like programming. There are no
restrictions on the length of lines, and no formatting takes place.
"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
settings menu, the default is for the margin to be the right edge of
the terminal). This is the mode that allows the format paragraph menu
item to work.
"Automatic formatting" provides word-processor-like behavior. The user
may type in text, while ee 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.
Modes
Although ee 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:
tab expansion
Tabs may be inserted as a single tab character, or replaced
with spaces.
case sensitivity
The search operation can be sensitive to whether characters
are upper- or lower-case, or ignore case completely.
margins observed
Lines can either be truncated at the right margin, or extend
on forever.
auto paragraph formatting
While typing in text, the editor can try to keep it looking
reasonably well within the width of the screen.
eightbit characters
Toggles whether eight bit characters are displayed as their
value in angle brackets (e.g. "<220>") or as a character.
info window
A window showing the keyboard operations that can be
performed can be displayed or not.
emacs keys
Control keys may be given bindings similar to emacs, or not.
16 bit characters
Toggles whether sixteen bit characters are handled as one
16-bit quantity or two 8-bit quantities. This works
primarily with the Chinese Big 5 code set.
You may set these modes via the initialization file (see below), or
with a menu (see above).
Spell Checking
There are two ways to have the spelling in the text checked from ee.
One is by the traditional spell(1) command, the other is with the
optional ispell(1) command.
Using spell, the words that are not recognized will be placed at the
top of the file. For the ispell option, the file is written to disk,
then ispell run on the file, and the file read back in once ispell has
completed making changes to the file.
Printing the contents of the editor
The user may select a menu item which prints the contents of the
editor. ee pipes the text in the editor to the command specified by
the initialization command printcommand (see the section Initializing
ee from a file below). The default is to send the contents to "lp".
Whatever the user assigns to printcommand must take input from standard
input. See your system administrator for more details.
Shell operations
Shell commands can be executed from within ee by selecting the shell
command item in the miscellaneous menu, or by placing an exclamation
mark ("!") before the command to execute at the 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:
><!sort
This would send the contents of the editor to be piped into the sort
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.
Initializing ee from a file
Since different users have different preferences, ee allows some slight
configurability. There are three possible locations for an
initialization file for ee: the file /usr/share/misc/init.ee, the file
.init.ee in the user's home directory, or the file .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 print command), and the user to
customize settings for particular directories (like one for
correspondence, and a different directory for programming).
The file usr/share/misc/init.ee is read first, then $HOME/.init.ee,
then .init.ee, with the settings specified by the most recent file read
taking precedence.
The following items may be entered in the initialization file:
case Sets searches to be case sensitive.
nocase Sets searches to be insensitive to case (default).
expand Causes ee to expand tabs to spaces (default).
noexpand
Causes ee to insert tabs as a single character.
info A small information window is displayed at the top of the
terminal (default).
noinfo Turns off the display of the information window.
margins
Causes ee 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).
nomargins
Allows lines to extend beyond the right margin.
autoformat
Causes ee to automatically try to format the current
paragraph while text insertion is occurring.
noautoformat
Turns off automatic paragraph formatting (default).
printcommand
Allows the setting of the print command (default: "lp").
rightmargin
The user can select a value for the right margin (the first
column on the screen is zero).
highlight
Turns on highlighting border of information window and menus
(default).
nohighlight
Turns off highlighting of border of information window and
menus.
eightbit
Turns on display of eight bit characters.
noeightbit
Turns off display of eight bit characters (they are
displayed as their decimal value inside angle brackets,
e.g., "<220>").
16bit Turns on handling of 16-bit characters.
no16bit
Turns off handling of 16-bit characters.
emacs Turns on emacs key bindings.
noemacs
Turns off emacs key bindings.
Save Editor Configuration
When using this entry from the settings menu, the user may choose to
save the current configuration of the editor (see Initializing ee from
a file above) to a file named .init.ee in the current directory or the
user's home directory. If a file named .init.ee already exists, it
will be renamed .init.ee.old.
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.
Always make a copy of files that cannot be easily reproduced before
editing. Save files early, and save often.
International Code Set Support
ee 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.)
WARNINGS
The automatic paragraph formatting operation may be too slow for slower
systems.
FILES
/usr/share/misc/init.ee
$HOME/.init.ee
.init.ee
AUTHOR
The software ee was developed by Hugh Mahon.
This software and documentation contains proprietary information which
is protected by copyright. All rights are reserved.
Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2001 Hugh Mahon.
SEE ALSO
termcap(4), terminfo(4), environ(5), spell(1), ispell(1), lp(1), aee(1)
ee(1)
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