ee(1)

NAME

ee - easy editor

SYNOPSIS

ee [-eih] [+#] [file ...]
ree [-eih] [+#] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

The ee utility 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 termi

nal). The ree
utility is the same as ee, but restricted to editing the

named file (no
file operations, or shell escapes are allowed).

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.

The following options are available:

-e Turn off expansion of tab character to spaces.

-i Turn off display of information window at top of

terminal.

-h Turn off highlighting of borders of windows and

menus (improves

performance on some terminals).

+# Move 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 conjunc

tion 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 in

tuitive keys on
the keyboard when available. For instance, to move the cur

sor up, the
user can use the up arrow key, or ^u.

^a Prompt for the decimal value of a character to in

sert.

^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 in

sert.

^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 cur

sor.

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

Do not 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 cor

responding
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 Display a help screen, with all of the keyboard op

erations and

commands.

file operations

Pop 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

Provide a means to repaint the screen if the screen

has been corrupted.

settings

Show the current values of the operating modes, and

right margin.
By pressing return when the cursor is on a particu

lar item, the
value can be changed. To leave this menu, press the

escape key.
(See Modes below.)

search Pop up a menu in which the user may choose to enter

a string to

search for, or search for a string already entered.

miscellaneous

Pop 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:

+o Begin or end of file.

+o Line with no characters, or only spaces and/or tabs.

+o Line starting with a period ('.') or right angle

bracket ('>').

A paragraph may be formatted two ways: explicitly by choos

ing the format
paragraph menu item, or by setting ee to automatically for

mat paragraphs.
The automatic mode may be set via a menu, or via the ini

tialization 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 behav

ior. The user
may type in text, while ee will make sure the entire para

graph 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

Toggle 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
quantities or two 8-bit quantities. This works pri

marily with
the Chinese Big 5 code set.

You may set these modes via the initialization file (see be

low), 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 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.
The ee utility 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(1).

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 ex

clamation 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(1)
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 cur

rent 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 set

tings for particular directories (like one for correspondence, and a dif

ferent 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 Set searches to be case sensitive.

nocase Set searches to be insensitive to case (default).

expand Cause ee to expand tabs to spaces (default).

noexpand

Cause ee to insert tabs as a single character.

info A small information window is displayed at the top

of the termi

nal (default).

noinfo Turn off the display of the information window.

margins

Cause 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

Allow lines to extend beyond the right margin.

autoformat

Cause ee to automatically try to format the current

paragraph
while text insertion is occurring.

noautoformat

Turn off automatic paragraph formatting (default).

printcommand

Allow 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

Turn on highlighting of border of information window

and menus
(default).

nohighlight

Turn off highlighting of border of information win

dow and menus.

eightbit

Turn on display of eight bit characters.

noeightbit

Turn 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 er

rors contained
herein, nor for incidental or consequential damages in con

nection with
the furnishing, performance or use of this material. Nei

ther HewlettPackard 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

The ee utility 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

AUTHORS

The software ee was developed by Hugh Mahon.

This software and documentation contains proprietary infor

mation which is
protected by copyright. All rights are reserved.

Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996 Hugh Mahon.

SEE ALSO

ispell(1) (ports/textproc/ispell), lpr(1), spell(1), term

cap(5),
terminfo(5), environ(7)

BSD August 30, 1995

BSD