JOVE(1) JOVE(1)
NAME
jove - an interactive display-oriented text editor
SYNOPSIS
jove [-d directory] [-w] [-t tag] [+[n] file] [-p file] [files]
jove -r
DESCRIPTION
JOVE is Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs. It is based on
the original EMACS editor written at MIT by Richard Stall-
man. Although JOVE is meant to be compatible with EMACS,
there are some major differences between the two editors
and you shouldn't rely on their behaving identically.
JOVE works on any reasonable display terminal that is
described in the termcap file (see TERMCAP(5) for more
details). When you start up JOVE, it checks to see
whether you have your TERM environment variable set. On
most systems that will automatically be set up for you,
but if it's not JOVE will ask you what kind of terminal
you are using. To avoid having to type this every time
you run JOVE you can set your TERM environment variable
yourself. How you do this depends on which shell you are
running. If you are running the C Shell, as most of you
are, you type
% setenv TERM type
and with the Bourne Shell, you type
$ TERM= type ; export TERM
where type is the name of the kind of terminal you are
using (e.g., vt100). If neither of these works get some-
body to help you.
INVOKING JOVE
If you run JOVE with no arguments you will be placed in an
empty buffer, called Main. Otherwise, any arguments you
supply are considered file names and each is "given" its
own buffer. Only the first file is actually read in -
reading other files is deferred until you actually try to
use the buffers they are attached to. This is for effi-
ciency's sake: most of the time, when you run JOVE on a
big list of files, you end up editing only a few of them.
The names of all of the files specified on the command
line are saved in a buffer, called *minibuf*. The mini-
buffer is a special JOVE buffer that is used when JOVE is
prompting for some input to many commands (for example,
when JOVE is prompting for a file name). When you are
being prompted for a file name, you can type C-N (that's
Control-N) and C-P to cycle through the list of files that
were specified on the command line. The file name will be
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inserted where you are typing and then you can edit it as
if you typed it in yourself.
JOVE recognizes the following switches:
-d The following argument is taken to be the name of
the current directory. This can speed startup if
you are using a shell which does not automatically
maintain the PWD environment variable.
Recover looks for JOVE buffers that are left around and
are owned by you. (You cannot recover other peoples'
buffers, obviously.) If there were no buffers that were
modified at the time of the crash or there were but
recover can't get its hands on them, you will be informed
with the message, "There is nothing to recover." Other-
wise, recover prints the date and time of the version of
the buffers it has, and then waits for you type a command.
To get a list of the buffers recover knows about, use the
list command. This will list all the buffers and the
files and the number of lines associated with them. Next
to each buffer is a number. When you want to recover a
buffer, use the get command. The syntax is get buffer
filename where buffer is either the buffer's name or the
number at the beginning of the line. If you don't type
the buffer name or the filename, recover will prompt you
for them.
If there are a lot of buffers and you want to recover all
of them, use the recover command. This will recover each
buffer to the name of the buffer with ".#" prepended to
the name (so that the original isn't over-written). It
asks for each file and if you want to restore that buffer
to that name you type "yes". If you want to recover the
file but to a different name, just type the new name in.
If you type "no" recover will skip that file and go on to
the next one.
If you want to look at a buffer before deciding to recover
it, use the print command. The syntax for this is print
buffer where buffer again is either its name or the num-
ber. You can type ^C if you want to abort printing the
file to the terminal, and recover will respond with an
appropriate message.
When you're done and have all the buffers you want, type
the quit command to leave. You will then be asked whether
it's okay to delete the tmp files. Most of the time
that's okay and you should type "yes". When you say that,
JOVE removes all traces of those buffers and you won't be
able to look at them again. (If you recovered some
buffers they will still be around, so don't worry.) So,
if you're not sure whether you've gotten all the buffers,
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you should answer "no" so that you'll be able to run
recover again at a later time (presumably after you've
figured out which ones you want to save).
If you type ^C at any time other than when you're printing
a file to the terminal, recover will exit without a word.
If you do this but wish you hadn't, just type "jove -r" to
the shell again, and you will be put back with no loss.
GETTING HELP
Once in JOVE, there are several commands available to get
help. To execute any JOVE command, you type "<ESC> X com-
mand-name" followed by <Return>. To get a list of all the
JOVE commands you type "<ESC> X" followed by "?". The
describe-bindings command can be used to get a list con-
taining each key, and its associated command (that is, the
command that gets executed when you type that key). If
you want to save the list of bindings, you can set the
jove variable send-typeout-to-buffer to ON (using the set
command), and then execute the describe-bindings command.
This will create a buffer and put in it the bindings list
it normally would have printed on the screen. Then you
can save that buffer to a file and print it to use as a
quick reference card. (See VARIABLES below.)
Once you know the name of a command, you can find out what
it does with the describe-command command, which you can
invoke quickly by typing "ESC ?". The apropos command
will give you a list of all the command with a specific
string in their names. For example, if you want to know
the names of all the commands that are concerned with win-
dows, you can run "apropos" with the keyword window.
If you're not familar with the EMACS command set, it would
be worth your while to use run TEACHJOVE. Do do that,
just type "teachjove" to your shell and you will be placed
in JOVE in a file which contains directions. I highly
recommend this for beginners; you may save yourself a lot
of time and headaches.
KEY BINDINGS and VARIABLES
You can alter the key bindings in JOVE to fit your per-
sonal tastes. That is, you can change what a key does
every time you strike it. For example, by default the C-N
key is bound to the command next-line and so when you type
it you move down a line. If you want to change a binding
or add a new one, you use the bind-to-key command. The
syntax is "bind-to-key <command> key".
You can also change the way JOVE behaves in little ways by
changing the value of some variables with the set command.
The syntax is "set <variable> value", where value is a
number or a string, or "on" or "off", depending on the
context. For example, if you want JOVE to make backup
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files, you set the "make-backup-files" variable to "on".
To see the value of a variable, use the "print <variable>"
command.
INITIALIZATION
JOVE automatically reads commands from an initialization
file in your HOME directory, called ".joverc". In this
file you can place commands that you would normally type
in JOVE. If you like to rearrange the key bindings and
set some variables every time you get into JOVE, you
should put them in your initialization file. Here are a
few lines from mine:
set match-regular-expressions on
auto-execute-command auto-fill /tmp/Re\|.*drft
bind-to-key i-search-forward ^\
bind-to-key i-search-reverse ^R
bind-to-key find-tag-at-point ^[^T
bind-to-key scroll-down ^C
bind-to-key grow-window ^Xg
bind-to-key shrink-window ^Xs
(Note that the Control Characters can be either two char-
acter sequences (e.g. ^ and C together as ^C) or the
actual control character. If you want to use an ^ by
itself you must BackSlash it (e.g., bind-to-key grow-
window ^X\^ binds grow-window to "^X^").
SOME MINOR DETAILS
You should type C-\ instead of C-S in many instances. For
example, the way to search for a string is documented as
being "C-S" but in reality you should type "C-\". This is
because C-S is the XOFF character (what gets sent when you
type the NO SCROLL key), and clearly that won't work. The
XON character is "C-Q" (what gets sent when you type NO
SCROLL again) which is documented as the way to do a
quoted-insert. The alternate key for this is "C-^" (typed
as "C-`" on vt100's and its look-alikes). If you want to
enable C-S and C-Q and you know what you are doing, you
can put the line:
set allow-^S-and-^Q on
in your initialization file. If your communication link
doesn't pass C-S and C-Q, you can use C-\ and C-^ as syn-
onyms in most situations.
If your terminal has a metakey, JOVE will use it unless
you turn off the "meta-key" variable.
FILES
/usr/contrib/lib/jove.rc - system wide initialization file
~/.joverc - personal initialization file
TMPDIR - where temporary files are stored
/usr/contrib/lib/teach-jove - the interactive tutorial
SEE ALSO
ed(1) - for a description of regular expressions
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teachjove(1) - for an interactive JOVE tutorial.
DIAGNOSTICS
JOVE diagnostics are meant to be self-explanatory, but you
are advised to seek help whenever you are confused. You
can easily lose a lot of work if you don't know EXACTLY
what you are doing.
BUGS
Lines can't be more than 1024 characters long.
Searches can't cross line boundaries.
AUTHOR
Jonathan Payne
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