TSE: vimode

[knud van eeden]

Hello,

> J. David Boyd wrote: > "vimode"?   Why? 1. vimode.zip is a TSE macro one can download from the TSE Pro macros online. 2. See: https://www.semware.com/html/tseprofilesd.php 3. I created a vimode.s which compiles  (warning: but in case of run it only on a different 'test' TSE because quickly testing I could not get out of the program and had to restart TSE). attached: "vimode.s" 4. Description: vimode.zip 8372 1995-02-22 A TSE emulation of the unix vi command mode. Based on an earlier version posted by Charlie Harris. vi has some interesting movement and text replacement commands that might be of interest to someone who has no interest in using the vi interface itself. Version by Arnold Hennig. Uploaded by: Arnold Hennig 5. Mind map:

6. Explanation taken from vimode.s:

/*

Charlie Harris posted his origional version of viTSE at an

opportune time for me, since I have had reason to start working

with a UNIX environment, but had found it difficult to learn the

editors without spending more time than I had available with

which to get nothing done, and most of my real work is with text.

His TSE vi emulation has allowed me to gradually familiarize

myself with the basic vi command set without having to come to a

comlete stop to do it.

I have also been gradually improving and adding commands as I go

along, and have recently undertaken the task of overhauling the

results of my efforts in order to put them into postable shape.

Because of differences in our primary goals, Charlie Harris and I

have taken different paths in the updating of viTSE, and anyone

interested in working with this command set may want to look at

both versions. I have expanded on the origional structure of

viTSE using a Process() with an exclusive keydef as the basic

Command mode, while he has changed to the use of a case statement

to define his key commands within a proc. His new implementation

makes possible the implementation of the dot command, while mine

makes possible the proper use of numeric input to movement

commands.

I made the statement recently that I thought that the dot command

could be implemented without too much difficulty, but this was

based on an erroneous understanding of the dot command. It is

really a variant of the famous "undo" and just as intractable,

which is why Charlie Harris found himself obliged to change his

approach in order to implement it.

I find the vi mode to be just as clumsy as its reputation for

general text entry and manipulation, but it has a good set of

movement and text change commands for the editing of existing

text. With movement by paragraph, sentence, word, or to a

specified letter in the middle of an extra long word, and with

the option to specify how many words, lines, or whatever to move,

it is easy to get to anyplace within the text.

And the commands to leave command mode and insert text allow

specifying insert, overwrite, or a combination of the two (eg.

write over two words and insert the rest of the new text before

the third word, etc).

NOTES:

1. My implementation isn't exact, either, although with a few

   stated exceptions (as noted in the source code), I have tried

   to make it as much so as possible.

2. I have had some difficulty with the sentence movement macros.

   They sometimes leave you in the wrong place, although general-

   ly not far from where you should be. This happens when the

   sentence crosses a line, but it doesn't always happen. In any

   case, with this in mind, they are useable in their present

   form, and perhaps someone else can show me what I'm missing.

   In any case I'll eventually change them, but I have to let

   them go for a while. Working on a problem too long tends to

   create mental blocks.

3. Most of the movement commands take numeric input. You type the

   number first, and it does not appear anywhere on the screen.

   When you type the command, it will do it that many times. On

   the help screen (Alt-F1), I have indicated an ³ for those

   commands which behave differently if no number is supplied.

   The c (change) and d (delete) commands require a second,

   cursor movent command, and can take the numeric input either

   first, or in between (eg. 3cw == c3w).

4. The proper implementation of the y (yank to buffer) and p

   (paste) commands would be built similiarly to the c and d

   commands, but a little more complex because they also take a

   letter buffername. I have not bothered to implement these,

   although I have thought about it, because I use viTSE mostly

   for editing existing text, and can always use the similiar TSE

   functions instead. I have deleted the rudimentary versions

   from this file so as not to create confusion as to their

   behaviour.

7. Commands:

-----------cut here -----------cut here -----------cut here-----------*/

/****************************** viTSE() ********************************/

helpdef vihelp

     Title = "vi commands"

     x = 5

     y = 2

"Cursor Movements:             h   Left"

"  w   Word forward            j   Down"

"  b   Word backward           k   Up"

"  W/B (by nonwhite group)     l   Right"

"  e   to end of word          H   to Top of Screen"

"  f(chr) forwd to char        L   to Bottom of Screen"

"  t(chr) to char before       M   to Middle of Screen"

"  F(chr) backwd to char       0   to BegLine"

"  )   Sentence forward        $   to EOL"

"  (   Sentence backward       |   to ³Col"

"  }   Paragraph forward       G   to ³Line (EOF)"

"  {   Paragraph back          %   to ³% of File"

"-----------------------------------------------------"

" Edit Commands                C  Change to EOL"

"   i  Insert at Cursor        c(mvmt)  Change text"

"   I  Insert at BegLine       d(mvmt)  Del text"

"   a  Append at cursor        D  Del to EOL"

"   A  Append to EOL           o  Open new line"

"   r  Replace Char            O  Open line above"

"   R  Overwrite Mode          <  Shift text left"

"   s  Subst., then insert     >  Shift text right"

"   S  Substitute from BOL     ~  Flip Case"

"   x  Del Char                =  Wrap Paragraph"

"   X  DelChars Left           u  Undelete"

"   J  JoinLines               U  Undo Cursor Line"

"-----------------------------------------------------"

"Colon Mode Commands           :wq   Write & Quit"

"   :q   QuitFile              :edit EditFile"

"   :w   Write                 :n    Nextfile"

"-----------------------------------------------------"

"Screen Movements:            Search"

"  ^F  Page Forward             /  Find"

"  ^B  Page Backward            ?  BackwdFind"

"  ^U  Up ³lines (½ Page)       n  Repeat Find"

"  ^D  Down ³lines (½ Page)     N  Backwrd RptFind"

"  ^E  ScrollDown"

"  ^Y  ScrollUp               Special Functions"

"  z(+,.,-) make (top,middle,    %  Matching Brace"

"          bottom) of screen     m  BookMark"

"  ^G  Show File Info            '  GotoMark"

"  ^L  Update Screen             ZZ Save & Exit"

end vihelp

[knud van eeden]

FYIO:

I wrote earlier about this viTSE / vimode.s the following:

"

Q. TSE: Vi: Mode: Emulator: vimode.s

A.

[kn, ri, su, 24-10-2010 17:55:50]

> VI

I was browsing yesterday a bit further on that text editors org pages,

and came across a description of the advantages of VI (which is

currently also the current favorite text editor of the author of those

pages).

===

One of the interesting feature of VI was that it was multi-platform.

---

But most of all that you should be able do everything on a ((very)

limited) keyboard only.

===

Basically only the alphanumeric keys and the <CTRL> key can be used.

---

No mouse (maybe handy when working with a laptop (everywhere), keeping

your fingers all the time on the keyboard only.

---

No extended keys like cursor up, cursor down, cursor left, cursor right, Home,

PageUp,

PageDown, ..., F1, F2, ...F12.

---

Because built and having its origin in the days of terminal keyboards

where no mouse and extended keyboards were available.

---

Regarding moving your fingers and hands as little as possible (e.g.

from keyboard to mouse or extended keys) this should be one of the most

minimal designs.

---

What you do in VI is constantly switching between 2 modes, command mode and

insert mode.

===

The <Escape> key always switches to command mode.

---

In VI you will constantly be changing between command mode and insert mode by

pressing the

<Escape> key.

---

In VI 'Command mode' you type commands

E.g. in that command mode typing keyboard character

'd' will 'd'elete,

'c' will change,

'f' will find or thus search

'w' represents a word

'^' represents begin of line

'$' represents end of line

typing 2 characters 'yy' will copy.

You can also create combined commands.

E.g. typing the 2 character 'dw' will 'd'elete the current 'w'ord.

You can also inform how many times you want to do that operation.

E.g. '3dw' will delete 3 words.

---

How to do such a things in TSE?

The equivalent actions in TSE are as usual typing combinations

of <CTRL>, <ALT>, <SHIFT> and the other keyboard characters

and or mouse buttons.

You could if you want change the default behavior by changing the keyboard

bindings

(which you can change in your .ui file (e.g. tse.ui or win.ui located in the \ui

directory)

then recompile that file in order to make the changes permanent).

E.g.

'd' in Vim would be typing the <Del> character in TSE or thus running the

command DelAnyChar() (= delete (a character))

'd$' in Vim would be pressing the <F6> character in TSE or thus DelToEol()

(=delete to end of line)

To emulate the behavior, you could create a tiny interpreter, as usual

using GetKey(), PressKey() to intercept the pressed keys, then

using CASE ... WHEN ... ENDCASE to check that keys and do something.

I plan to create a similar Vi mode macro some time.

===

Are there already VI mode macros created for TSE?

But checking if already something like that existed, it showed

there exist already two earlier created TSE macros

1. the macro 'vimode' created by Arnold Hennig from 1995.

After a few changes I could run this macro also in TSE v4.4

2. and another vi mode macro created by Charlie Harris.

But this macro was not found anymore anywhere.

===

Question: Anybody knows where to find this VI mode TSE macro from Charlie

Harris???

---

The other VI mode is 'Insert mode'

(where you are able to type your text and insert it in the current buffer as

usual).

It is a bit confusing when you start working with VI, because you will be by

design in 'Command mode' first.

And then when you type characters they might not be inserted as usually in your

text, and nothing seemingly happens because you are in command mode and

the characters are interpreted in another way.

---

So depending on the VI mode the *same* keyboard characters have

different meaning. E.g. typing 'd' in command mode means you want to

delete the current character, and typing 'd' in insert mode will just

insert the character at the current cursor position).

---

But there must be something in this VI mode of working, as many have

praised the capabilities of VI (and VIM which I have installed) to very

fast and efficiently and possibly optimal do your text editor actions.

So probably worth looking at the philosophy and implementation of this,

to use for your own possibilities to do the same things even better

then before.

At the end of the day VI is in this regard a special case of a command

driven text editor, using a minimum set of keys, and this commands you

can also combine in sophisticated ways (probably a bit like you combine

single commands into multiple commands in Forth)

---

But thus TSE is still my number one rated and most used program overall.

Rock solid, very reliable, very fast, handles very large files,

regular expressions, completely configurable, create your own

macros via the TSE virtual machine to do almost any text editor action and

beyond (e.g. via Microsoft Windows DLLs), ...

File corruption almost never happens, and when it happens it is not in TSE

control (e.g. because of operating system

actions, like pulling a USB while the file is saving), and crashing of TSE

happens only very rarely.

There are not much other text editors which can claim a similar record.

----

Emacs and SlickEdit are also very interesting editors. Only SlickEdit

would be usable for me though, as I work with very large files (growing

towards half a gigabyte), and default (GNU) Emacs complains about such

a large files. I plan to have a look at MicroEmacs also.

I saw some interesting demonstration of Scite about column editing on

YouTube, but that behavior could very probably also be macro programmed

into TSE if wanted.

What happened with e-Text editor? Have you used it? I bought it at the

time, and have the latest version running.

[note: e-text editor stopped being sold years ago [kn, ri, tu, 03-06-2025 16:00:54]]

There might be some things missing or not present in TSE

1. -Version control, but that you can thus e.g. create a workaround by

    e.g. using Tortoise SVN and TSE macros.

   Works really fun for me.

2. -Folding (I used it in e.g. IBM Lotus Notes, but it never convinced

    me personally. Opening when you wanted it closed, and closing when

    it was open). So not a must for me at all. Never used it really

    until now.

3. -Unicode (workaround would be to load/copy/paste/save in other text

    editors when that should occur). Interesting, but certainly not a

    must for me personally, as I only rarely have to use it.

4. -Regarding multi-platform (e.g. Linux), there should exist TSE beta

    versions, which should work pretty OK. I work sometimes on Linux,

    Unix, Solaris, and should work sometimes on AIX. But then I

    probably would use VI because that is default installed on most of

    them.

5. -Workspace and project

6. -Intellisense

Wine is another way, tried it a few times, but I think it has its restrictions

(e.g. not all Microsoft Windows programs run in it).

So better running the full operating system.

Otherwise as a workaround of still running TSE on Microsoft Windows, while

having to work in another operating system (like Linux)

I would install Oracle Sun Virtual Box on the Linux host machine and run

Microsoft

Windows with TSE in it.

You could then e.g. exchange information as usual using copy/paste or file

sharing.

Or the other way around, install Oracle Sun Virtual Box on the Microsoft Windows

host machine, and run one or

more Linux versions (like Ubuntu, Red Hat, Suse, ...) in it.

You can connect e.g. from you own computer to the remote computer e.g. using

Microsoft Remote Desktop if applicable.

Or otherwise in general using different VNC clients. Supplying the IP address of

the remote (virtual machine) computer only.

You might have to install a VNC server on the remote operating system if not

default present.

with friendly greetings,

Knud van Eeden

"

[knud van eeden]

Done: Looking in vimode.s it might be having some interesting keyboard vi

commands which might come handy when creating similar behavior in

native TSE. Should be checked by me some time I plan.

=> Conclusion: I checked the commands in the help in vimode.s and conclusion: nothing found that can really

benefit a TSE user as it can be done equivalently and in a probably much easier

way using other means like mouse, keyboard, ...

And thus as I observed earlier that installing TSE was possible on e.g.

at least 40 Linux distributions at the moment and having to use there

otherwise e.g. vi, vim or nano it is much more interesting and

versatile to install TSE on that Linux distribution instead and using

that TSE instead of using e.g. 'vim' and using its vi commands.

--

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