# @(#)README 8.147 (Berkeley) 10/19/96 This is the README for nex/nvi, a freely redistributable implementation of the ex/vi text editors originally distributed as part of the Fourth Berkeley Software Distribution (4BSD), by the University of California, Berkeley. The source code for nex/nvi can be retrieved by using anonymous ftp to ftp.cs.berkeley.edu. The file ucb/4bsd/nvi.tar.gz is the gzip'd archive, of version 1.71 of nex/nvi. This version is believed to be stable and problem free. The file ucb/4bsd/nvi-###.ALPHA.tar.gz is a gzip'd archive of the current alpha-test release of nex/nvi. This version reflects the current development tree, and will be more likely to have problems. See the file: build/README for information on building nvi. LAYOUT for a description of where everything is. LICENSE for the copyright and redistribution terms. If you have any questions about nex/nvi, problems with it, or concerns about the conditions for redistribution, please contact me: Keith Bostic +1-508-287-4781 394 E. Riding Dr. bostic@bostic.com Carlisle, MA 01741 USA Keith Bostic =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= o This software is several years old and is the product of many folks' work. This software was originally derived from software contributed to the University of California, Berkeley by Steve Kirkendall, the author of the vi clone elvis. Without his work, this work would have been far more difficult. IEEE POSIX 1003.2 style regular expression support is courtesy of Henry Spencer, for which I am *very* grateful. Elan Amir did the original 4BSD curses work that made it possible to support a full-screen editor using curses. George Neville-Neil added the Tcl interpreter, and the initial interpreter design was his. Sven Verdoolaege added the Perl interpreter. Rob Mayoff provided the original Cscope support. o Many, many people suggested enhancements, and provided bug reports and testing, far too many to individually thank. o From the original vi acknowledgements, by William Joy and Mark Horton: Bruce Englar encouraged the early development of this display editor. Peter Kessler helped bring sanity to version 2's command layout. Bill Joy wrote versions 1 and 2.0 through 2.7, and created the framework that users see in the present editor. Mark Horton added macros and other features and made the editor work on a large number of terminals and Unix systems. o And... The financial support of UUNET Communications Services is gratefully acknowledged. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= o Status: This software is in beta test, and it's pretty stable. Almost all of the historic functionality in ex/vi is there, the only major missing pieces are open mode and the lisp edit option. Nvi is largely 8-bit clean. This isn't difficult to fix, and was left in during initial development to keep things simple. Wide character support will be integrated at the same time that it is made fully 8-bit clean. There aren't a lot of new features in nex/nvi, but there are a few things you might like. The "Additional Features" section of the reference work (docs/USD.doc/vi.ref/vi.ref.txt, docs/USD.doc/vi.ref/vi.ref.ps) has more information. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= o Debugging: Code fixes are greatly appreciated, of course, but if you can't provide them, please email me as much information as you can as to how I might reproduce the bug, and I'll try to fix it locally. Stack traces of core dumps are only rarely helpful -- an example file with a set of keystrokes that causes the problem is almost invariably necessary. I know it's annoying, but simply playing with the bug until you can reproduce it at will, with minimal keystrokes, is immensely helpful to me. Please include the following in the bug report; o The version of nvi you're running (use :version to get it). o The row/column dimensions of the screen (80 x 32). o Unless you're confident that they're not part of the problem, your startup files (.exrc, .nexrc) and the environment variable (EXINIT, NEXINIT) values. (Cutting and pasting the output of ":set all" is usually sufficient.) If you want to do your own debugging, recompile the program with DEBUG defined. (Configuring with --enable-debug will do this for you.) This turns on the additional command-line option -D, that takes either s or w as an argument. The option -Ds causes nvi to ignore the EXINIT and .exrc files on startup, and -Dw causes nvi to print out the process id and wait for you to enter a to continue. If you're running a memory checker (e.g. Purify) on nvi, you will first want to recompile everything with "-DPURIFY" set in the CFLAGS. This initializes allocated pages in the DB code, and free's allocated memory at the end of the nvi execution.