joe(1)
NAME
joe - Joe's Own Editor
SYNOPSIS
joe [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
jstar [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
jmacs [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
rjoe [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
jpico [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
DESCRIPTION
JOE is a powerful ASCII-text screen editor. It has a "mode-less" user
interface which is similer to many user-friendly PC editors. Users of
Micro-Pro's WordStar or Borland's "Turbo" languages will feel at home.
JOE is a full featured UNIX screen-editor though, and has many features
for editing programs and text.
JOE also emulates several other editors. JSTAR is a close immitation of
WordStar with many "JOE" extensions. JPICO is a close immitation of the
Pine mailing system's PICO editor, but with many extensions and
improvements. JMACS is a GNU-EMACS immitation. RJOE is a restricted
version of JOE, which allowes you to edit only the files specified on the
command line.
Although JOE is actually five different editors, it still requires only
one executable, but one with five different names. The name of the
editor with an "rc" appended gives the name of JOE's initialization file,
which determines the personality of the editor.
JOE is free software; you can distribute it and/or modify it under the
terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation. I have no plans for turning JOE into a commercial or share-
ware product. JOE is available over the Internet by anonymous FTP from
ftp.std.com, file: src/editors/joe*.tar.Z.
Usage
To start the editor, type joe followed by zero or more names of files you
want to edit. Each file name may be preceeded by a local option setting
(see the local options table which follows). Other global options, which
apply to the editor as a whole, may also be placed on the command line
(see the global options table which follows). If you are editing a new
file, you can either give the name of the new file when you invoke the
editor, or in the editor when you save the new file. A modified syntax
for file names is provided to allow you to edit program output, standard
input/output, or sections of files or devices. See the section Filenames
below for details.
Once you are in the editor, you can type in text and use special control-
character sequences to perform other editing tasks. To find out what the
control-character sequences are, read the rest of this man page or type
^K H for help in the editor.
Now for some obscure computer-lore:
The ^ means that you hold down the Control key while pressing the
following key (the same way the Shift key works for uppercase letters).
A number of control-key sequences are duplicated on other keys, so that
you don't need to press the control key: ESC will work in place of ^[,
Del will work in place of ^?, Backspace will work in place of ^H, Tab
will work in place of ^I, Return or Enter will work in place of ^M and
Linefeed will work in place of ^J. Some keyboards may give you trouble
with some control keys. ^_, ^^ and ^@ can usually be entered without
pressing shift (I.E., try ^-, ^6 and ^2). Other keyboards may reassign
these to other keys. Try: ^., ^, and ^/. ^SPACE can usually be used in
place of ^@. ^\ and ^] are interpreted by many communication programs,
including telnet and kermit. Usually you just hit the key twice to get
it to pass through the communication program.
Once you have typed ^K H, the first help window appears at the top of the
screen. You can continue to enter and edit text while the help window is
on. To page through other topics, hit ^[, and ^[. (that is, ESC , and
ESC .). Use ^K H to dismiss the help window.
You can customize the keyboard layout, the help screens and a number of
behavior defaults by copying JOE's initialization file (/usr/lib/joerc)
to .joerc in your home directory and then by modifying it. See the
section joerc below.
To have JOE used as your default editor for e-mail and News, you need to
set the EDITOR and VISUAL environment variables in your shell
initialization file (.cshrc or .profile) to refer to JOE (joe resides as
/usr/bin/joe).
There are a number of other obscure invocation parameters which may have
to be set, particularly if your terminal screen is not updating as you
think it should. See the section Environment variables below.
Command Line Options
The following global options may be specified on the command line:
-asis
Characters with codes above 127 will be sent to the terminal as-is,
instead of as inverse of the corresponding character below 128. If
this does not work, check your terminal server.
-backpath path
If this option is given, backup files will be stored in the
specified directory instead of in each file's original directory.
-baud nnn
Set the baud rate for the purposes of terminal screen optimization.
Joe inserts delays for baud rates below 19200, which bypasses tty
buffering so that typeahead will interrupt the screen output.
Scrolling commands will not be used for 38400 baud. This is useful
for X-terms and other console ttys which really aren't going over a
serial line.
-beep
Joe will beep on command errors and when the cursor goes past
extremes.
-columns nnn
Sets the number of screen columns.
-csmode
Continued search mode: a search immediatly following a search will
repeat the previous search instead of prompting for new string.
This is useful for the the ^[S and ^[R commands and for when joe is
trying to be emacs.
-dopadding
Joe usually assumes that there is some kind of flow control between
it and the tty. If there isn't, this option will make joe output
extra ^@s to the tty as specified by the termcap entry. The extra
^@s allow the terminal to catch up after long terminal commands.
-exask
This option makes ^KX verify the file name that it's about to write.
-force
This option makes sure that the last line of the file has a line-
feed which it's saved.
-help
The editor will start with the help screen on if this option is
given.
-keepup
Normally the column number and control-key prefix fields of the
status lines are on a one second delay to reduce CPU consumption,
but with this option they are updated after each key-stroke.
-lightoff
The block highlighting will go away after any block command if this
option is given.
-lines nnn
Sets the number of screen lines.
-marking
Text between ^KB and the cursor is highlighted (use with -lightoff
and a modified joerc file to have drop-anchor style block
selection).
-mid If this option is set and the cursor moves off the window, the
window will be scrolled so that the cursor is in the center. This
option is forced on slow terminals which don't have scrolling
commands.
-nobackups
This option prevents backup files.
-nonotice
This option prevent the copyright notice from being displayed when
the editor starts.
-nosta
This option eliminates the top-most status line. It's nice for when
you only want to see your text on the screen or if you're using a
vt52.
-noxon
Attempt to turn off ^S/^Q processing. This is useful for when joe
is trying to be WordStar or EMACS.
-orphan
When this option is active, extra files on the command line will be
placed in orphaned buffers instead of in extra windows. This is
useful for when joe is trying to be emacs.
-pg nnn
This specifies the number of lines to keep after PgUp/PgDn (^U/^V).
If -1 is given, half the window is kept.
-skiptop nnn
Don't use the top nnn lines of the screen. Useful for when joe is
used as a BBS editor.
Each of these options may be specified in the joerc file as well. In
addition, the NOXON, BAUD, LINES, COLUMNS and DOPADDING options may be
specified with environment variables.
The JOETERM environment variable may be set to override the regular TERM
environment variable for specifying your terminal type.
The following options may be specified before each filename on the
command line:
+nnn The cursor starts on the specified line.
-crlf
Joe uses CR-LF as the end of line sequence instead of just LF. This
is for editing MS-DOS or VMS files.
-wordwrap
Joe wraps the previous word when you type past the right margin.
-autoindent
When you hit Return on an indented line, the indentation is
duplicated onto the new line.
-overwrite
Typing overwrites existing characters instead of inserting before
them.
-lmargin nnn
Sets the left margin.
-rmargin nnn
Sets the right margin.
-tab nnn
Sets the tab width.
-indentc nnn
Sets the indentation character for ^K, and ^K. (32 for SPACE, 9 for
TAB).
-istep nnn
Sets the indentation step for ^K, and ^K..
-linums
Line numbers are displayed before each line.
-rdonly
The file is read only.
-keymap name
Use an alternate section of the joerc file for the key sequence
bindings.
These options can also be specified in the joerc file. They can be set
depending on the file-name extension. Programs (.c, .h or .p extension)
usually have autoindent enabled. Wordwrap is enabled on other files, but
rc files have it disabled.
Editing Tasks
Basic Editing
When you type characters into the editor, they are normally inserted into
the file being edited (or appended to the file if the cursor is at the
end of the file). This is the normal operating mode of the editor. If
you want to replace some existing text, you have to delete the old text
before or after you type in the replacement text. The Backspace key can
be used for deleting text: move the cursor to right after the text you
want to delete and hit Backspace a number of times.
Hit the Enter or Return key to insert a line-break. For example, if the
cursor was in the middle of a line and you hit Return, the line would be
split into two lines with the cursor appearing at the beginning of the
second line. Hit Backspace at the beginning of a line to eliminate a
line-break.
Use the arrow keys to move around the file. If your keyboard doesn't
have arrow keys (or if they don't work for some reason), use ^F to move
forwards (right), ^B to move backwards (left), ^P to move to the previous
line (up), and ^N to move to the next line (down). The right and left
arrow keys simply move forwards or backwards one character at a time
through the text: if you're at the beginning of a line and you press
left-arrow, you will end up at the end of the previous line. The up and
down arrow keys move forwards and backwards by enough characters so that
the cursor appears in the same column that it was in on the original
line.
If you want to indent the text you enter, you can use the TAB key. This
inserts a special control character which makes the characters which
follow it begin at the next TAB STOP. TAB STOPS normally occur every 8
columns, but this can be changed with the ^T D command. PASCAL and C
programmers often set TAB STOPS on every 4 columns.
If for some reason your terminal screen gets messed up (for example, if
you receive a mail notice from biff), you can have the editor refresh the
screen by hitting ^R.
There are many other keys for deleting text and moving around the file.
For example, hit ^D to delete the character the cursor is on instead of
deleting backwards like Backspace. ^D will also delete a line-break if
the cursor is at the end of a line. Type ^Y to delete the entire line
the cursor is on or ^J to delete just from the cursor to the end of the
line.
Hit ^A to move the cursor to the beginning of the line it's on. Hit ^E
to move the cursor to the end of the line. Hit ^U or ^V for scrolling
the cursor up or down 1/2 a screen's worth. "Scrolling" means that the
text on the screen moves, but the cursor stays at the same place relative
to the screen. Hit ^K U or ^K V to move the cursor to the beginning or
the end of the file. Look at the help screens in the editor to find even
more delete and movement commands.
If you make a mistake, you can hit ^_ to "undo" it. On most keyboards
you hit just ^- to get ^_, but on some you might have to hold both the
Shift and Control keys down at the same time to get it. If you "undo"
too much, you can "redo" the changes back into existence by hitting ^^
(type this with just ^6 on most keyboards).
If you were editing in one place within the file, and you then
temporarily had to look or edit some other place within the file, you can
get back to the original place by hitting ^K -. This command actually
returns you to the last place you made a change in the file. You can
step through a history of places with ^K - and ^K =, in the same way you
can step through the history of changes with the "undo" and "redo"
commands.
When you are done editing the file, hit ^K X to exit the editor. You
will be prompted for a file name if you hadn't already named the file you
were editing.
When you edit a file, you actually edit only a copy of the file. So if
you decide that you don't want the changes you made to a file during a
particular edit session, you can hit ^C to exit the editor without saving
them.
If you edit a file and save the changes, a "backup" copy of that file is
created in the current directory, with a ~ appended to the name, which
contains the original version of the file.
Word wrap and formatting
If you type past the right edge of the screen in a C language or PASCAL
file, the screen will scroll to the right to follow the cursor. If you
type past the right edge of the screen in a normal file (one whose name
doesn't end in .c, .h or .p), JOE will automatically wrap the last word
onto the next line so that you don't have to hit Return. This is called
word-wrap mode. Word-wrap can be turned on or off with the ^T W command.
JOE's initialization file is usually set up so that this mode is
automatically turned on for all non-program files. See the section below
on the joerc file to change this and other defaults.
Aside for Word-wrap mode, JOE does not automatically keep paragraphs
formatted like some word-processors. Instead, if you need a paragraph to
be reformatted, hit ^K J. This command "fills in" the paragraph that the
cursor is in, fitting as many words in a line as is possible. A
paragraph, in this case, is a block of text separated above and below by
a blank line.
The margins which JOE uses for paragraph formatting and word-wrap can be
set with the ^T L and ^T R commands. If the left margin is set to a
value other than 1, then when you start typing at the beginning of a
line, the cursor will immediately jump to the left margin.
If you want to center a line within the margins, use the ^K A command.
Over-type mode
Sometimes it's tiresome to have to delete old text before or after you
insert new text. This happens, for example, when you are changing a
table and you want to maintain the column position of the right side of
the table. When this occurs, you can put the editor in over-type mode
with ^T T. When the editor is in this mode, the characters you type in
replace existing characters, in the way an idealized typewriter would.
Also, Backspace simply moves left instead of deleting the character to
the left, when it's not at the end or beginning of a line. Over-type
mode is not the natural way of dealing with text electronically, so you
should go back to insert-mode as soon as possible by typing ^T T again.
If you need to insert while you're in over-type mode, hit ^@. This
inserts a single SPACE into the text.
Control and Meta characters
Each character is represented by a number. For example, the number for
'A' is 65 and the number for '1' is 49. All of the characters which you
normally see have numbers in the range of 32 - 126 (this particular
arbitrary assignment between characters and numbers is called the ASCII
character set). The numbers outside of this range, from 0 to 255, aren't
usually displayed, but sometimes have other special meanings. The number
10, for example, is used for the line-breaks. You can enter these
special, non-displayed control characters by first hitting ` and then
hitting a character in the range @ A B C ... X Y Z [ ^ ] \ _ to get the
number 0 - 31, and ? to get 127. For example, if you hit ` J, you'll
insert a line-break character, or if you hit ` I, you'll insert a TAB
character (which does the same thing the TAB key does). A useful control
character to enter is 12 (` L), which causes most printers to advance to
the top of the page. You'll notice that JOE displays this character as
an underlined L. You can enter the characters above 127, the meta
characters, by first hitting ^\. This adds 128 to the next (possibly
control) character entered. JOE displays characters above 128 in
inverse-video. Some foreign languages, which have more letters than
English, use the meta characters for the rest of their alphabet. You
have to put the editor in ASIS mode (described later) to have these
passed untranslated to the terminal.
Prompts
If you hit TAB at any file name prompt, joe will attempt to complete the
name you entered as much as possible. If it couldn't complete the entire
name, because there are more than one possible completions, joe beeps.
If you hit TAB again, joe list the completions. You can use the arrow
keys to move around this directory menu and press RETURN or SPACE to
select an item. If you press the first letter of one of the directory
entries, it will be selected, or if more than one entry has the same
first letter, the cursor will jump between those entries. If you select
a subdirectory or .., the directory name is appended to the prompt and
the new directory is loaded into the menu. You can hit Backspace to go
back to the previous directory.
Most prompts record a history of the responses you give them. You can
hit up and down arrow to step through these histories.
Prompts are actually single line windows with no status line, so you can
use any editing command that you normally use on text within the prompts.
The prompt history is actually just other lines of the same "prompt
file". Thus you can can search backwards though the prompt history with
the normal ^K F command if you want.
Since prompts are windows, you can also switch out of them with ^K P and
^K N.
Where am I?
Hit ^K SPACE to have JOE report the line number, column number, and byte
number on the last line of the screen. The number associated with the
character the cursor is on (its ASCII code) is also shown. You can have
the line number and/or column number always displayed on the status line
by setting placing the appropriate escape sequences in the status line
setup strings. Edit the joerc file for details.
File operations
You can hit ^K D to save the current file (possibly under a different
name from what the file was called originally). After the file is saved,
you can hit ^K E to edit a different file.
If you want to save only a selected section of the file, see the section
on Blocks below.
If you want to include another file in the file you're editing, use ^K R
to insert it.
Temporarily suspending the editor
If you need to temporarily stop the editor and go back to the shell, hit
^K Z. You might want to do this to stop whatever you're editing and
answer an e-mail message or read this man page, for example. You have to
type fg or exit (you'll be told which when you hit ^K Z) to return to the
editor.
Searching for text
Hit ^K F to have the editor search forwards or backwards for a text
fragment (string) for you. You will be prompted for the text to search
for. After you hit Return, you are prompted to enter options. You can
just hit Return again to have the editor immediately search forwards for
the text, or you can enter one or more of these options:
b Search backwards instead of forwards.
i Treat uppercase and lower case letters as the same when searching.
Normally uppercase and lowercase letters are considered to be
different.
nnn (where nnn is a number) If you enter a number, JOE searches for the
Nth occurrence of the text. This is useful for going to specific
places in files structured in some regular manner.
r Replace text. If you enter the r option, then you will be further
prompted for replacement text. Each time the editor finds the
search text, you will be prompted as to whether you want to replace
the found search text with the replacement text. You hit: y to
replace the text and then find the next occurrence, n to not replace
this text, but to then find the next occurrence, r to replace all of
the remaining occurrences of the search text in the remainder of the
file without asking for confirmation (subject to the nnn option
above), or ^C to stop searching and replacing.
You can hit ^L to repeat the previous search.
Regular Expressions
A number of special character sequences may be entered as search text:
\* This finds zero or more characters. For example, if you give A\*B
as the search text, JOE will try to find an A followed by any number
of characters and then a B.
\? This finds exactly one character. For example, if you give A\?B as
the search text, JOE will find AXB, but not AB or AXXB.
\^ \$
These match the beginning and end of a line. For example, if you
give \^test\$, then JOE with find test on a line by itself.
\< \>
These match the beginning and end of a word. For example, if you
give \<\*is\*\>, then joe will find whole words which have the sub-
string is within them.
\[...]
This matches any single character which appears within the brackets.
For example, if \[Tt]his is entered as the search string, then JOE
finds both This and this. Ranges of characters can be entered
within the brackets. For example, \[A-Z] finds any uppercase
letter. If the first character given in the brackets is ^, then JOE
tries to find any character not given in the the brackets.
\c This works like \*, but matches a balanced C-language expression.
For example, if you search for malloc(\c), then JOE will find all
function calls to malloc, even if there was a ) within the
parenthesis.
\+ This finds zero or more of the character which immediately follows
the \+. For example, if you give \[ ]\+\[ ], where the characters
within the brackets are both SPACE and TAB, then JOE will find
whitespace.
\\ Matches a single \.
\n This finds the special end-of-line or line-break character.
A number of special character sequences may also be given in the
replacement string:
\& This gets replaced by the text which matched the search string. For
example, if the search string was \<\*\>, which matches words, and
you give "\&", then joe will put quote marks around words.
\0 - \9
These get replaced with the text which matched the Nth \*, \?, \+,
\c, \+, or \[...] in the search string.
\\ Use this if you need to put a \ in the replacement string.
\n Use this if you need to put a line-break in the replacement string.
Some examples:
Suppose you have a list of addresses, each on a separate line, which
starts with "Address:" and has each element separated by commas. Like
so:
Address: S. Holmes, 221b Baker St., London, England
If you wanted to rearrange the list, to get the country first, then the
city, then the person's name, and then the address, you could do this:
Type ^K F to start the search, and type:
Address:\*,\*,\*,\*\$
to match "Address:", the four comma-separated elements, and then the end
of the line. When asked for options, you would type r to replace the
string, and then type:
Address:\3,\2,\0,\1
To shuffle the information the way you want it. After hitting return, the
search would begin, and the sample line would be changed to:
Address: England, London, S. Holmes, 221b Baker St.
Blocks
If you want to move, copy, save or delete a specific section of text, you
can do it with highlighted blocks. First, move the cursor to the start
of the section of text you want to work on, and press ^K B. Then move
the cursor to the character just after the end of the text you want to
affect and press ^K K. The text between the ^K B and ^K K should become
highlighted. Now you can move your cursor to someplace else in your
document and press ^K M to move the highlighted text there. You can press
^K C to make a copy of the highlighted text and insert it to where the
cursor is positioned. ^K Y to deletes the highlighted text. ^K W,
writes the highlighted text to a file.
A very useful command is ^K /, which filters a block of text through a
unix command. For example, if you select a list of words with ^K B and
^K K, and then type ^K / sort, the list of words will be sorted. Another
useful unix command for ^K /, is tr. If you type ^K / tr a-z A-Z, then
all of the letters in the highlighted block will be converted to
uppercase.
After you are finished with some block operations, you can just leave the
highlighting on if you don't mind it (of course, if you accidently hit ^K
Y without noticing...). If it really bothers you, however, just hit ^K B
^K K, to turn the highlighting off.
Indenting program blocks
Auto-indent mode toggled with the ^T I command. The joerc is normally
set up so that files with names ending with .p, .c or .h have auto-indent
mode enabled. When auto-indent mode is enabled and you hit Return, the
cursor will be placed in the same column that the first non-SPACE/TAB
character was in on the original line.
You can use the ^K , and ^K . commands to shift a block of text to the
left or right. If no highlighting is set when you give these commands,
the program block the cursor is located in will be selected, and will be
moved by subsequent ^K , and ^K . commands. The number of columns these
commands shift by can be set through a ^T option.
Windows
You can edit more than one file at the same time or edit two or more
different places of the same file. To do this, hit ^K O, to split the
screen into two windows. Use ^K P or ^K N to move the cursor into the
top window or the lower window. Use ^K E to edit a new file in one of
the windows. A window will go away when you save the file with ^K X or
abort the file with ^C. If you abort a file which exists in two windows,
one of the window goes away, not the file.
You can hit ^K O within a window to create even more windows. If you
have too many windows on the screen, but you don't want to eliminate
them, you can hit ^K I. This will show only the window the cursor is in,
or if there was only one window on the screen to begin with, try to fit
all hidden windows on the screen. If there are more windows than can fit
on the screen, you can hit ^K N on the bottom-most window or ^K P on the
top-most window to get to them.
If you gave more than one file name to JOE on the command line, each file
will be placed in a different window.
You can change the height of the windows with the ^K G and ^K T commands.
Keyboard macros
Macros allow you to record a series of keystrokes and replay them with
the press of two keys. This is useful to automate repetitive tasks. To
start a macro recording, hit ^K [ followed by a number from 0 to 9. The
status line will display (Macro n recording...). Now, type in the series
of keystrokes that you want to be able to repeat. The commands you type
will have their usual effect. Hit ^K ] to stop recording the macro. Hit
^K followed by the number you recorded the macro in to execute one
iteration of the key-strokes.
For example, if you want to put "**" in front of a number of lines, you
can type:
^K [ ^A ** <down arrow> ^K ]
Which starts the macro recording, moves the cursor to the beginning of
the line, inserts "**", moves the cursor down one line, and then ends the
recording. Since we included the key-strokes needed to position the
cursor on the next line, we can repeatedly use this macro without having
to move the cursor ourselves, something you should always keep in mind
when recording a macro.
If you find that the macro you are recording itself has a repeated set of
key-strokes in it, you can record a macro within the macro, as long as
you use a different macro number. Also you can execute previously
recorded macros from within new macros.
Repeat
You can use the repeat command, ^K \, to repeat a macro, or any other
edit command or even a normal character, a specified number of times.
Hit ^K \, type in the number of times you want the command repeated and
press Return. The next edit command you now give will be repeated that
many times.
For example, to delete the next 20 lines of text, type:
^K 20<return>^Y
Rectangle mode
Type ^T X to have ^K B and ^K K select rectangular blocks instead of
stream-of-text blocks. This mode is useful for moving, copying, deleting
or saving columns of text. You can also filter columns of text with the
^K / command- if you want to sort a column, for example. The insert file
command, ^K R is also effected.
When rectangle mode is selected, over-type mode is also useful (^T T).
When over-type mode is selected, rectangles will replace existing text
instead of getting inserted before it. Also the delete block command (^K
Y) will clear the selected rectangle with SPACEs and TABs instead of
deleting it. Over-type mode is especially useful for the filter block
command (^K /), since it will maintain the original width of the selected
column.
Tag search
If you are editing a large C program with many source files, you can use
the ctags program to generate a tags file. This file contains a list of
program symbols and the files and positions where the symbols are
defined. The ^K ; command can be used to lookup a symbol (functions,
defined constants, etc.), load the file where the symbol is defined into
the current window and position the cursor to where the symbol is
defined. ^K ; prompts you for the symbol you want, but uses the symbol
the cursor was on as a default. Since ^K ; loads the definition file
into the current window, you probably want to split the window first with
^K O, to have both the original file and the definition file loaded.
Shell windows
Hit ^K ' to run a command shell in one of JOE's windows. When the cursor
is at the end of a shell window (use ^K V if it's not), whatever you type
is passed to the shell instead of the window. Any output from the shell
or from commands executed in the shell is appended to the shell window
(the cursor will follow this output if it's at the end of the shell
window). This command is useful for recording the results of shell
commands- for example the output of make, the result of grepping a set of
files for a string, or directory listings from FTP sessions. Besides
typeable characters, the keys ^C, Backspace, DEL, Return and ^D are
passed to the shell. Type the shell exit command to stop recording shell
output. If you press ^C in a shell window, when the cursor is not at the
end of the window, the shell is killed.
Environment variables
For JOE to operate correctly, a number of other environment settings must
be correct. The throughput (baud rate) of the connection between the
computer and your terminal must be set correctly for JOE to update the
screen smoothly and allow typeahead to defer the screen update. Use the
stty nnn command to set this. You want to set it as close as possible to
actual throughput of the connection. For example, if you are connected
via a 1200 baud modem, you want to use this value for stty. If you are
connected via 14.4k modem, but the terminal server you are connected to
connects to the computer a 9600 baud, you want to set your speed as 9600
baud. The special baud rate of 38400 or extb is used to indicate that
you have a very-high speed connection, such as a memory mapped console or
an X-window terminal emulator. If you can't use stty to set the actual
throughput (perhaps because of a modem communicating with the computer at
a different rate than it's communicating over the phone line), you can
put a numeric value in the BAUD environment variable instead (use setenv
BAUD 9600 for csh or BAUD=9600; export BAUD for sh).
The TERM environment variable must be set to the type of terminal you're
using. If the size (number of lines/columns) of your terminal is
different from what is reported in the TERMCAP or TERMINFO entry, you can
set this with the stty rows nn cols nn command, or by setting the LINES
and COLUMNS environment variables.
JOE normally expects that flow control between the computer and your
terminal to use ^S/^Q handshaking (I.E., if the computer is sending
characters too fast for your terminal, your terminal sends ^S to stop the
output and ^Q to restart it). If the flow control uses out-of-band or
hardware handshaking or if your terminal is fast enough to always keep up
with the computer output and you wish to map ^S/^Q to edit commands, you
can set the environment variable NOXON to have JOE attempt to turn off
^S/^Q handshaking. If the connection between the computer and your
terminal uses no handshaking and your terminal is not fast enough to keep
up with the output of the computer, you can set the environment variable
DOPADDING to have JOE slow down the output by interspersing PAD
characters between the terminal screen update sequences.
Filenames
Wherever JOE expects you to enter a file name, whether on the command
line or in prompts within the editor, you may also type:
!command
Read or write data to or from a shell command. For example, use joe
'!ls' to get a copy of your directory listing to edit or from within
the editor use ^K D !mail jhallen@world.std.com to send the file
being edited to me.
>>filename
Use this to have JOE append the edited text to the end of the file
"filename."
filename,START,SIZE
Use this to access a fixed section of a file or device. START and
SIZE may be entered in decimal (ex.: 123) octal (ex.: 0777) or
hexadecimal (ex.: 0xFF). For example, use joe /dev/fd0,508,2 to
edit bytes 508 and 509 of the first floppy drive in Linux.
- Use this to get input from the standard input or to write output to
the standard output. For example, you can put joe in a pipe of
commands: quota -v | joe - | mail root, if you want to complain
about your low quota.
The joerc file
^T options, the help screens and the key-sequence to editor command
bindings are all defined in JOE's initialization file. If you make a
copy of this file (which resides in /usr/lib/joerc) to $HOME/.joerc, you
can customize these setting to your liking. The syntax of the
initialization file should be fairly obvious and there are further
instruction in it.
Acknowledgements
JOE was writen by Joseph H. Allen. If you have bug reports or questions,
e-mail them to jhallen@world.std.com. Larry Foard
(entropy@world.std.com) and Gary Gray (ggray@world.std.com) also helped
with the creation of JOE.