Re: where are docs for "ex"

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Jude Dashiell]

Hi Jim,

I wish!  I think it's a U.C.B. program and in 1989 it was still under
development.
Not the program itself, the tutorial files.  If I had more source info
than that
You'd have already had it.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

jude <jdashiel@clark.net>

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Jude Dashiell]

Right, that was copyright Regents of University California at Berkeley.
More than that I don't know.  Remember in 1989, the web didn't exist to
the point it does today.  Everything was ftp sites and gopher sites and
telnet sites.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

jude <jdashiel@clark.net>

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Lar Kaufman]

True, "ed" is the original unix editor, and has some obscure advantages
in that its command format is used by unix for file parsing.  For example,
when you run "diff" on two files, the output is an ed script that would
convert the first one to the second.  But nobody does that stuff anymore.
The "ex" editor is an "extended ed" enriched with features that everyone
wanted in the Berkeley Standard Distribution.  The ex and vi editors 
were, if I recall correctly, both written by Bill Joy, who later founded
Sun.  They were developed to meet students' needs, as opposed to the 
original ed, which was written by um, Dennis Ritchie? at Bell Labs. A
programmer's tool.

 -lar
"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. No
time for dancing or lovey-dovey, I ain't got time for that now. I sent a
message through the receiver, hope to get an answer someday. Why stay in
college? Why go to night school? Thought I'd be different this time." -D. Byrne

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Lar Kaufman]

OK, your vi is probably one of these: elvis, vim, or vile.  I'm an emacs
user so I don't have any of these on my system.  I don't know which you 
would have, but there should be documentation for it...  If you are lucky,
there is a "stripped" ex command on your distribution, and the most common
one distributed in Linux is called "hex".  Maybe you have a manpage for it?

 -lar
"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. No
time for dancing or lovey-dovey, I ain't got time for that now. I sent a
message through the receiver, hope to get an answer someday. Why stay in
college? Why go to night school? Thought I'd be different this time." -D. Byrne

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Lar Kaufman]

Hmm, looks like my email edit got scrambled.  Sorry about that.  The manpage
database is called "whatis" (usually "whatis" command is an alias for "man -k"
or "apropos" on a unix system) so you need to run "makewhatis" (or possibly
mkwhatis on some implementations) in order to build the manpage database.
The data collected in the database is taken from the summary line of the 
manpage, plus keyword line information if that has been built into the 
manpage.  I've been thinking about the need to put some of this data back 
into the manpages; at one time unix users depended on manpages a great deal
and documentation was enriched to use the available tools, but in the Linux
and FreeBSD worlds, many users aren't aware of these more subtle features of
unix, nor are software developers.  And if they come from a GNU universe, 
they are likely to be more familiar with Info pages, which are less tailored
for text-oriented utilization.  

Indeed, I will be happy to start building a repository of enriched manpages
and utilities for text and text-to-voice rendering, so if anyone wants to
contribute, you can pass your files to me.  I'll have to see whether I can
get my own homepage set up next week to allow retrieval of the pages; I'll
try to set up an ftp archive on ftp.walden.com if my services administrator
will cooperate.  

 -lar

"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. No
time for dancing or lovey-dovey, I ain't got time for that now. I sent a
message through the receiver, hope to get an answer someday. Why stay in
college? Why go to night school? Thought I'd be different this time." -D. Byrne

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Thanks, Lar,
That helps. I am surprised not to find VI in my man pages either, but it
is "ex" I am after right now! :-)


Chuck -- Second Sight Software
Now using Linux and PINE

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Dave Mielke]

On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Charles Hallenbeck wrote:
>but it
>is "ex" I am after right now! :-)

"ex" is much like "ed". you might, therefore, want to check out the man page
for "ed".

-- 
Dave Mielke               | 856 Grenon Avenue | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014     | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.ml.org | Canada  K2B 6G3   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Lar Kaufman]

ex in most implementations is a mode of vi; check the documentation for
your vi implementation.  If you have a complete manpage system, you can
search for such "hidden" documentation by invoking (in your case) 
   man -k vi
where the string following the -k flag is a keyword (or a phrase in quotes)
to search for, taken from a table of the summary lines of the manpages.  
However, in many Linux distributions, this table will not have been built

makewhatis command.

For more info on getting the most from the venerable textual online help
system, man, enter "man man".  Note in particular the $PAGER variable 
which you can set to a favored screen browser in your user environment.
(I set $PAGER=less.)  

 -lar
"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. No
time for dancing or lovey-dovey, I ain't got time for that now. I sent a
message through the receiver, hope to get an answer someday. Why stay in
college? Why go to night school? Thought I'd be different this time." -D. Byrne

Re: where are docs for "ex"

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Lar --
I get "nothing appropriate" from the following:
man -k ex
man -k vi
whatis ex
whatis vi
and my system doews not know anything about "makewhatis". This is a
Slackware 3.5 distribution. I wonder what I forgot to install?


Chuck -- Second Sight Software
Now using Linux and PINE

where are docs for "ex"

[Charles Hallenbeck]

Can someone please help me find documentation for "the EX" editor? 
I find no man pages for it, though it appears to be on my system.
Chuck -- Second Sight Software
Now using Linux and PINE