Elvis 2.1_4 is now available
Steve Kirkendall
"elvis 2.1_4". It is available for downloads from:
ftp://ftp.cs.pdx.edu/pub/elvis/README.html (main site)
ftp://ftp.false.com/pub/elvis/README.html (mirror)
The new elvis 2.1_4 differs from the original release of elvis 2.1 in the
following ways:
Buffer bugs
Several people reported that elvis complained about the '#'
being used in initialization scripts (even though '#' doesn't
appear anywhere in those scripts), or that sometimes a buffer
would get scrambled. These problems have now been fixed, thanks
mostly to William Plant. He tracked the problem down to the use
of FEATURE_LITRE in scan.c.
This was a significant bug! The '#' thing was only one
manifestation of a dangerous bug. Other manifestations could
mangle buffers, cause core dumps, etc. This bug fix alone is
probably enough to justify downloading 2.1_4.
Cygwin support
The Win32 version of elvis 2.1_3 (or earlier) didn't work very
well under Cygwin's bash shell. elvis 2.1_4 should fix that.
Specifically...
* Cygwin sets the TERM environment variable to "cygwin", which
elvis will now recognize as a synonym for "console".
* Elvis now supports the mount table produced by the Cygwin
mount utility.
Windows98 chokes on vi.exe, etc.
An apparent bug in recent versions of Windows causes the vi.exe,
view.exe, and ex.exe programs to run in the background. (Those
programs worked in Windows95, but choked in Windows98 and NT.)
To work around this, I replaced the execvp() call with a
spawnvp() call followed by an exit() call. It'll waste a little
RAM now, but at least it works.
This bug also hit Cygwin's bash shell, when run under Windows98
or NT. I've tested 2.1_4 under bash, and it works now.
Running external programs under Win32
The new osprg module introduced in 2.1_3 seemed to cause more
problems than it solved, so I switched back to the previous
version. You may still have some problems running 16-bit filter
programs... but at least :make works, and the screen looks right
after the program exits.
Screen glitch in MS-DOS with NANSI.SYS
The screen wasn't always drawn correctly when using one of the
better ANSI drivers, and setting TERM=nansi (or whatever). This
was due to a bug in the nansi termcap entry in tinytcap.c; it
should be fixed now.
Scrolling after :split
Previously there was a bug which showed up when you have two
windows open on the same buffer. Inserting text in one window
could cause the other window to scroll after each keystroke.
This has been fixed.
Name completion with spaces
There were some problems when attempting filename completion on
files whose names contain spaces. The bug responsible for this
has been fixed.
Ctags/elvtags
Some bugs in the ctags/elvtags program have been fixed. Mostly
these only occured when you're using long lines.
Display modes
The "tex" and "syntax" display modes should work a little better
now. I added some TeX markups, and enhanced the "syntax" display
mode to handle PERL slightly better. Also, some users have
contributed syntax descriptions for new languages.
:make
The :make, :cc, and :errlist commands were treating any
alphanumeric word as a filename, without checking to see if it
even exists. It was supposed to verify that the name was an
existing, readable/writable (or just readable if noanyerror),
non-binary file... and now it will.
POSIX compatibility tweaks
The := command, when invoked without line number, should display
the total number of lines in the buffer. Previous versions of
elvis didn't do that correctly, but 2.1_3 did. Unfortunately,
that fix broke the :.= command, which is supposed to display the
current line number. Version 2.1_4 should both of those right,
finally.
The ^F and ^B paging commands are supposed to leave two lines of
overlap, but previous versions of elvis have only kept one line
of overlap. (NOTE: I considered adding an option to control the
overlap, because if you have a 24-line screen and 66-line pages,
then then it would be nice to leave 1 line of overlap because
three ^Fs or ^Bs would equal one page. If you believe an option
would be useful, please let me know.)
The $ command accepts a count argument, and moves forward (count-1)
lines before moving to the end.
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The only new features (since 2.1_3) are...
:switch/:case/:default commands
Elvis now has a :switch command for doing a multi-way branch in
a readable way. I believe this is justified, since the current
:if/:then/:else commands would require you to use deeper and
deeper nested braces to achieve the same effect. The old way:
if os=="unix"
then echo Unix
else {
if os=="win32"
then echo Windows95/98/NT/2000
else {
if os=="msdos"
then echo MS-DOS
else {
if os=="os2"
then echo OS/2
else echo Who?
}
}
}
The new way:
switch os
case unix echo Unix
case win32 echo Windows95/98/NT/2000
case msdos echo MS-DOS
case os2 echo OS/2
default echo Who?
"html" printer type
Setting the lptype option to "html" causes the :lpr command to
write HTML output, instead of normal printer control sequences.
This give a good way to generate WYSIWYG HTML code from any of
elvis' display modes. It required minimal changes to the code,
too -- basically, I just created a new printer type that uses
"<b>" to start bold font, "<i>" to start italics, and so on,
instead of some printer-dependent escape sequence.
"makehtml" alias
There is a new :makehtml alias which attempts to convert plain
text to HTML. It works pretty well, though you'll still need to
hand-edit the results in many cases. You might want to compare
the output of :makehtml to that of the "html" lptype, to see
which one fits your needs better.
"smarttab" option
I added VIM's "smarttab" alias. When set, this causes the <Tab>
key to act like ^T when pressed in the indentation area of a
line. Elsewhere in the line, <Tab> is treated normally. Now you
can do things like ":set smarttab shiftwidth=4" to change your
indentation levels while leaving the tabstop option unchanged.
The current implementation is a little half-assed though -- you
can't backspace over the indentation. Instead, you must hit ^D
to reduce the indentation level.
--
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Steve Kirkendall kirk...@cs.pdx.edu Hanger-On at Portland State U.