I M P R I N T The Newsletter of Digital Typography Vol. 1, No. 9 Sept 21, 1997 Contents copyright (c) 1997 by Robert A. Kiesling and the contributors of IMPRINT. All rights reserved. To subscribe, send news, or comment, email to: imprint@macline.com In this issue: vile(1) is not vi(1) and not emacs(1), but it runs on anything. GNU SCCS workalike in alpha testing. Where to find vi(1) information on the web. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From the editor: RealPoetik Sal Salasin's literary e-zine, RealPoetik, is not a magazine at all, or even an e-zine. It doesn't have a table of contents or -- save us, the editor's comments at the beginning of each edition. RealPoetik takes the form of a mailing list, where each week subscribers receive a poem or story or two. RealPoetik provides readers convenient, unobtrusive literary breaks from the grim business of reading e-mail. Stumbling over a poem while in the midst of a stack of e-mail messages is disconcerting at first, but refreshing. RealPoetik removes the encumberences that place literature outside of the mainstream. You don't have to jostle black-turtlenecked existentialists at a local cafe, or even set foot in Border's. Very little of Salasin's personal biases show, except that he formats each literary message with generous amounts of white space, to give each work the greatest amount of breathing room possible in the crowded on-line world. The aim is to provide english literature with a small "e", as a visit to the RealPoetik web page, http://www.wln.com/~salasin/rp.html, reveals. To subscribe to RealPoetik itself, send a message with the body "subscribe RPOETIK (your name)" -- without the quotes and parens -- to listproc@wln.com. For the anthology-minded, previous years of RealPoetik have been archived. Subscribers can contribute, but don't even need to visit the web page. It's easy to get an idea of the editor's tastes simply by reading the postings. Then, if inspiration strikes while reading, you dash off a few lines via e-mail to RealPoetik. Suddenly -- with Salasin's vetting -- you, too, are a poet. Happy reading, Robert Kiesling Editor, Imprint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vile(1) is not vi(1) and not emacs(1), but it runs on anything. The most recent release, of the vile(1) editor, 7.2c, isn't going to help the author's cause with vi(1) aficionados. For the record, the authors are Paul G. Fox, Tom Dickey, and Kevin Buettner, plus a slew of contributors. That means they can spread the blame around for vile(1) when it inevitably offends vi(1) purists. One need only look at vile's implementation of functions like :re-edit and :map, to see how these functions have been extended, or, in the former case, downplayed. Still, vile(1) is one of the most full-featured vi(1) workalikes around. vile(1) handily overcomes one large objection to vi: the inability to edit more than one file at a time. Admittedly, the original philosphy to vi(1) was to provide a "visual interface" to ex(1) and the Unix file system. At least, that's what I think "vi" means. Often there's no substitute for having more than one file on-screen, even on a text-mode display. On GUIs, one-file-only editing seems even more fatuous. Never mind that on Unix, one can run an instance of vi(1) for each file. That doesn't mean vi(1) should be a case of arrested software development. The vi(1) editing paradigm should be allowed to evolve, like other software designs. While the extensions don't get in the way of the familiar vi(1) editing functions, there's no mistaking vile(1) for emacs(1) or vi(1). It even has a *modeline*, furgawshsakes. Philosophizing aside, here's what's included in vile(1) release 7.2c (in no particular order): * X support and support for Athena, Motif, and OpenLook widgets. * User-definable editing modes. * Multiple buffer/multiple file editing. * Infinite undo. * Functions bound to command keys, a available from a vi(1)-like command line. * Support for real-mode DOS, and Watcom and DJGPP extenders. * Buildable as a console-mode Win NT and non-PM OS/2 application. * Macros to format Unix man pages in a separate window, e-mail replies, and read compiler error output. vile(1) builds easily under Linux. I wasn't able to compile it on other platforms. The documentation, however, looks uniformly good for all the OSs. The editor is derived from MicroEMACS 3.9 code. Based on previous experience with that code, a text-mode vile should be easy to build under DOS and its derivatives. vile(1) is so easy to build, and so frugal with system resources once it's installed, that it's worth investigating as a secondary or even primary editor. The latest vile(1) release is available via anonymous FTP from its home site, ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile/ But, I had better luck retrieving it from the mirror site at: ftp://id.wing.net/pub/pgf/vile/. So, take your pick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GNU SCCS workalike in alpha testing. The Free Software Foundation has announced the availability of CSSC, a workalike of the Unix Source Code Control System in a pre-release, alpha-test version. CSSC implements, at least partially, the commands admin, cdc, delta, get, prs, rmdel, sact, unget, and what. Unimplemented are comb, val, and vc. The package compiles successfully with g++ 2.7.2.1 on GNU/Linux and GNU Hurd, and with g++ 2.7.2.2 on Solaris 2.5.1 and Digital Unix 4.0. A test suite is included. The most recent patchlevel of CSSC is available from ftp://alpha.gnu.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/CSSC/. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Where to find vi(1) information on the web. With all the publicity that Emacs receives, one would think that the vi(1) editor is extinct. It simply isn't true. vi(1) with perl(1) is said to be a potent text processing combination that rivals elisp in power. The editor's modal approach is hard to beat if that's what your fingers are accustomed to, and there are certain things which vi(1) can do with regular expressions which emacs would be hard-pressed to match. If you use vi(1) and feel left out of the action, or you're merely curious, you can VIsit Thomer Gil's Vi Lover's Home Page, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html. Gil's page has information on vi(1) implementations, tutorials, pointers to macro libraries, and the vi(1) joke of the millenium. (I won't tell it here.) Do you want to find a vi(1) macro that plays the Towers of Hanoi? You'll find a pointer to it here. The page also contains Thomer's annotated bibliography to vi(1) literature, the vi FAQ, and a vi(1) poem. Also, as a tribute, no doubt, to vi's U.S. orgins, there's ordering information for a vi(1) reference mug. I haven't had this much fun since passing through Winslow, Arizona and looking for a Route 66 coffee cup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to IMPRINT, send a brief, human- readable message to imprint@macline.com. Back issues of IMPRINT are available via anonymous FTP from the Etext Archives: ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/IMPRINT/ and also via the World Wide Web: http://www.etext.org/pub/Zines/IMPRINT/ http://www.tesre.bo.cnr.it/Services/Local/IMPRINT/ http://www.terracom.net/~kiesling and can be requested via e-mail from: imprint@macline.com IMPRINT: The Newsletter of Digital Typography, ISSN 1094-8090, Madison, Wi., is copyright (c) 1997 by Robert A. Kiesling and its individual contributors. IMPRINT may be reproduced in its entirety for distribution by electronic media, provided that no fee is charged for the newsletter. Individual stories are copyrighted by their authors. Registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .