Elvis 1.4, part 0 if 8

[Steve Kirkendall]

Here comes version 1.4 of Elvis, my vi clone.  Major differences between
1.3 and 1.4 are...

- Elvis now runs under OS-9/68k and Coherent.

  I'm backing off of the Turbo-C compatibility claim, slightly, because
  nobody here has had a chance to test it lately.

- The various "Makefile.XXX" files have all been merged into a single file
  called "Makefile.mix".  This was done to simplify maintenance on it.  You
  should copy "Makefile.mix" to "Makefile" and then edit "Makefile" to
  select the correct group of settings for your system.

- A new program is included in the source file "alias.c".  This is a tiny
  program which simply runs Elvis.  It is meant to be used on systems such
  as MS-DOS which don't support UNIX-style file links.  The idea here is
  that instead of having four copies of Elvis on your hard disk (elvis, vi,
  view,  and ex) you can instead have one copy (elvis) plus three of this
  little guy (vi, view, and ex).  This should save a few hundred Kbytes of
  disk space.

- Another new program, called "refont", has also been added.  It translates
  or removes the control sequences for switching to boldface or underlined
  character sets.  This is important, because some of the documentation now
  has Epson-compatible escape sequences embedded in it.  Refont will allow
  you to print the documentation on non-Epson printers.

- The documentation has been updated.  All documentation has been moved into
  a subdirectory called "doc".  The manual was one big file for 1.3, but for
  1.4 I broke it into many smaller files; each section of the manual is in a
  separate file.  These filenames all end with ".doc".  They contain some
  Epson-compatible escape sequences, as I warned earlier.

  Also, I'm including unformatted "man" pages for all commands.  These must
  be run though "nroff -man" before they will look right.  Their filenames
  end with ".man".

- Elvis is generally more complete.  Some things I remember off-hand...

  + You can now give a line number to the ":e" command:  :e +65 foo
  + You can now append to a named cut buffer, via  "Ayy
  + A limited @ macro facility has been added.
  + The :abbr command has been added.
  + When searching in visual mode, you can put a slash at the end of the
    regexp, and add a delta: /something/+3
  + Several new ":set" options have been added, including showmatch, autoprint,
    and edcompatible.  I did *NOT* add ":set number" yet, but I plan to.
    The options are now sorted down the columns, instead of by the rows.

- Many of the tables are now dynamically allocated, so you don't need to
  worry about getting a "table full" error message.  The ":map" table is
  the only one I haven't changed yet.

- At compile time, you can now configure elvis to start up with some useful
  digraphs already defined.  Also, the digraph table is now ignored unless
  you ":set digraph".

- You still can't invoke two Elvis processes on the same file, but now you
  can (usually) be creating two different new files in the same directory,
  al least.  The true fix for this limitation will have to wait for version
  1.5, I'm afraid...

- A new set of commands has been added to allow Elvis to scan the error
  messages emitted by a compiler.  When you say ":make" or ":cc", elvis runs
  the compiler and saves the error messages in a file named "errlist".
  After the compiler quits, Elvis starts reading "errlist" and stops when it
  locates an error message.  Elvis then switches to the file that caused the
  error, moves the cursor to the proper line, and displays the error message
  on the status line.  Hitting the `*' key will move you to the next error.
  Much better than the BSD "errors" program!

- More care has been taken regarding function type declarations and such.
  The "lint" program almost likes Elvis now.

- The names of some TERMCAP capabilities have been changed, in order to
  improve the behaviour of Elvis when used with TERMINFO.  In particular,
  TERMINFO victims will now be able to see boldface characters. 

- Elvis now has a new and improved set of bugs.  Most of the old bugs have
  been fixed.  Most of the new bugs are so subtle that I haven't found them
  yet.
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Steve Kirkendall     kirkenda at cs.pdx.edu      Grad student at Portland State U.