NAME

prompter − prompting editor front end

SYNOPSIS

prompter [ −erase chr ] [ −kill chr ] [ −help ]

DESCRIPTION

This program is not called directly but takes the place of an editor and acts as an editor front end.  Prompter is an editor which allows rapid composition of messages.  It is particularly useful to network and low-speed (less than 2400 baud) users of MH.  It is an MH program in that it can have its own profile entry with switches, but it can’t be invoked directly as all other MH commands can; it is an editor in that it is invoked by an “−editor prompter” switch or by the profile entry “Editor: prompter”, but functionally it is merely a text-collector and not a true editor. 

Prompter expects to be called from comp, repl, dist, or forw, with a draft file as an argument.  For example, “comp −editor prompter” will call prompter with the file “draft” already set up with blank components.  For each blank component it finds in the draft, it prompts the user and accepts a response.  A <RETURN> will cause the whole component to be left out.  A “\\*(rq preceding a <RETURN> will continue the response on the next line, allowing for multiline components. 

Any component that is non-blank will be copied and echoed to the terminal. 

The start of the message body is prompted by a line of dashes.  If the body is non-blank, the prompt is “--------Enter additional text”.  Message-body typing is terminated with a <CTRL-D> (or <OPEN>).  Control is returned to the calling program, where the user is asked “What now?”.  See comp for the valid options. 

The line editing characters for kill and erase may be specified by the user via the arguments “−kill chr” and “−erase chr”, where chr may be a character; or “\nnn”, where nnn is the octal value for the character.  (Again, these may come from the default switches specified in the user’s profile.) 

A <DEL> during message-body typing is equivalent to <CTRL-D> for compatibility with NED.  A <DEL> during component typing will abort the command that invoked prompter. 

PROFILE COMPONENTS

prompter-next:editor to be used on exit from prompter

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  3 August 1983