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Imprint No 09
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.
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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For the anthology-minded, previous years of RealPoetik have been
archived.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
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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.
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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/.
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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.
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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.
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