Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Ian Scott wrote:

> > > 
> > > e3 was standard on BL1 (ramdisk).  Since it has no
> > > library dependencies, it also works on BL2 (or any
> > > other Linux running on i386).
> > 
> 
> Does anyone understand the intricacies of the different modes in e3?
> 
> I have used e3 before and found I could switch between vi emacs and pico
> modes - I like this as I am a dyed in the wool unixhead, and I like vi and
> emacs.
> 
> But the version in BL1 seems stuck in pico mode. Does anyone know if it is
> possible to change it.


I think it s is stuck in wordstar mode - the default as compiled.

Only plain e3 from my package works in BL1.  I had to add 'tail' from the 
appropriate version of SW to make e3pi (pico version) work.

I compiled the complete version for Bl2 but only included e3 and e3pi in 
my little package. 

I had to replace 'tail' from SW71 with 'tail' from SW32 (txtutils) to get
it to work with BL1.  

I did not include the other modes in my little package but if you want I
can send them to you.  I don't know what they will need to work.  Plain e3
(wordstar) did not need tail or any other additions.

To compile your own version you need the source code, nasm.tgz, diffs.tgz 
(diff.tgz?) and to put a line in Makefile SHELL=bash or else install echo 
from sh-utils.  This went very quickly even though I had never compiled 
assembly language or much of anything else before.  Just type 'make' and 
then 'make test'.  Make install did not work for me.  Feel free to email 
me for help - I was very proud of myself to get this working. 

It is more than 3 editors - Wordstar, pico, vi, emacs, and possibly some 
others.  I think I found the source code online with more info.  

You can choose to compile with a different default than wordstar, or use 
the very small additional files like e3pi for the different modes.  

> 
> If not, might that be a good argument for putting the newly compiled e3 into
> BL3?  Having 3 editors for the price of one seems a good proposition to me.

e3 is 9K but when you start adding other things it gets larger.  Tail is 
24K and I don't know what the emacs and vi versions might require.  Pico 
(nano) is 48K and Steven likes it.  We can easily add e3 even to the 
ramdisk version by copying it to /tmp.  

I like the fact that e3 has a functional delete key so you don't need to 
remember to use Ctl-D, and you can move around faster in the file.  


> 
> Ian
>