How do I update the information printed out by the finger program?  I.e. if
my phone number has changed, I'd like to update it.

47 responses total.

 Type  vi .plan and type what you want.

full name: Jim Reuter
registered: Thu Apr  2 22:57:39 1992 on tty /dev/tty03 at speed 1200
address:
        P.O.Box 4009
        Ann Arbor MI 48105
telephone: 313-663-7876
occupation:
        Transportation Consultant
        Piano Technician
        Income Tax preparer
        Professional Driver
        Mr-fix-it
computers:
        Heath H-89
birthdate: 11/27/60
sex: m
interests:
        Amatuer radio
        Classical Music
        Films
        cooking
        reading
        tinkering(exploring things that are unknown)
        listening to the radio
Found out about us from:
          Steve

here is mine.

If you have never used vi, do *not* do this until you have checked out the
man or (better yet) have someone at hand who knows it.  (I use it all the
time now, but you *need* help the first few times.)

 
   I agree. vi is fun only when you know it. Play few games of nethack or
hack and you'll have the hjkl moves down in no time. I think the key to
knowing vi is remembering if you're in command mode or insert mode. Fortunatly
for me, my terminal beeps at me if I try to write while still in command
mode. (I use an ADDS Viewpoint, which I am told loves unix).

  Jove is a little easier to pick up, I think, than vi... Jove even has
it's own tutorial!  That's right, do !teachjove, and it'll tell you
everything you ever wanted to know about jove, and let you try some of
it out, while you're at it!  Jove is also nice in that it can be set up
to act almost as if it were actually running on your own system -
recognizing arrow keys, etc.

(Not to start an editor war or anything, but vi can also be configured
to make arrow and keypad keys (like PgUp, End, etc.) do what you'd like.)

Please steer me to this information - or do I have to change TERMs to make
it work?

 
 Re 4. I am 3/4 of the way through the teachjove tutorial and I think it's
pretty cool. I have learned enough to even begin using it. (Although it's
hard to give up vi. I think that everyone should become familiar with 
the editors here... If you've come this far, (logging on to grex) go ahead
and have fun... you really can't hurt anything by doing it.

    Yeah, but jove doesn't have all the silly modes and stuff, and is a LOT
easier to learn... for me, anyway...

(I *had* to learn vi - it's what was available somewhere else, & it's (I hope)
going to be there on anything unix.  I've also got a couple of PD PC ports,
so I can even use it there if I didn't have something better.  Now that
I've learned it, though, I like it pretty well; but some things I take for
granted in PC editors are much harder to do without messing up in vi.)

Haven't had need to learn jove, so this should *not* be construed as
editor wars continued.

   I did it. I changed my default editor to jove as well as my mail
editor. (nothing like jumping from the frying pan right into the fire).
I'll report my likes/dislikes back to you in two weeks.

Re #6:  For certain TERMs (e.g. vt100 on this system) the cursor keys
are specified, and the up, down, right, & left arrow keys should work
in vi (in command mode only).  For other special function keys (like
F1 or PgDn on the IBM-style keyboard), you have to tell vi what 
character sequence is sent by the key and what you want vi to do when
it receives that sequence.  This is done using the "map" command,
which is one of several vi commands that define macro substitutions.

For example, if you're using a VTnnn type terminal or emulator (with
nnn >= 100), then the "Del" key on the numeric keypad should send the
3-character sequence "<ESC>On".  If you want the Del key to delete
the character at the cursor (as it does in most PC editors), you'd give
vi the command

                map ^[On  x

to tell vi that you want that sequence to be equivalent to vi's "x"
command.  (The ^[ denotes a *real* escape character, not a ^ followed
by a [).

Put map commands in a file named .exrc in your home directory.  Then
vi will execute them every time you start it up.

A map command is effective only in command mode.  To define text-entry-
mode macros, use the map! command instead.  With a little ingenuity it's
possible to get vi to do things (like moving the cursor with the arrow
keys) that it normally does only in command mode.  For example

                map! ^[On  ^V ^[xxi

programs the Del key to delete the character at the cursor when pressed
in text-entry mode.  (^V denotes a (real) control-V)

I've put some documentation on vi macros in the directory
/usr/local/doc/vi.  The file "macro-guide" contains an excellent
discussion of macros and some other advanced vi features.

Exercise for the curious:  When vi receives "^[On" while in text-entry
mode, how does it know that you typed the Del key rather than the three
keys ESCAPE, "O", and "n" separately? You're sending the same sequence
of ascii characters in both cases.  It has to make the distinction
somehow, since ESCAPE, O, n typed separately leave text-entry mode,
and then open a new line containing "n" -- an entirely different
effect.)

Thanks a heap, remmers.  This is the kinda stuff I want to see in this
particular conference.

I could probably live with vi after reassigning most of the keys...
has anyone cooked up any interesting keyboard layouts for vi (other
than the "interesting" one that comes with it ;) ?

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where do you set the editor type for your mail?  I've managed to get Picospan
to use vi, but not my mail.

Hmmm... the line "setenv EDITOR vi" in your .login file should work for
both.  What editor comes up in mail?  You might want to put the line
"setenv VISUAL vi" in your .login as well.

Re #14:  Right -- it's timing.  You may go to the head of the class.
If there's more than one second between characters, vi assumes that you
typed separate keys; if less, that the characters were sent by a single
keystroke.  This tends not to work so well if you're connected over a
network where you can get unpredictable delays between characters.
Sometimes I connect to Grex by telnetting to Merit and using the dialout
modems.  This tends to result in a slow connection with long delays, and
I find that vi often misinterprets the function keys.  Jove (and Jove's
parent, GNU Emacs) work better in this regard, as they don't using
timing to recognize function keys.

 
 as a matter of fact, you would t"o" to get to the options screen
and just put "vi" in there where is says "editor".

re #16:  Nope the setenv things didn't work.  Any more suggestions?  Is #17
related to this question or #14's?

 It is a response to #15. I'm sorry for not marking it.
 
but that process works very well. My editor was vi, now it's jove.

This response has been erased.

I think that ~e looks at the EDITOR environment variable (and defaults
to "ed" if the variable is undefined) and ~v looks at the VISUAL
environment variable and defaults to "vi".

 Jeffk: the setenv thing will only work from csh.  Are you using bourne
shell?  I think what you need to do there is SET EDITOR=VI followed by
EXPORT EDITOR.  I may be wrong with that, if I am, type 'tset -s vt100',
and that'll tell you how to set a variable (your TERM variable)... you
can change around a bit to work the way you want.

Isn't there a .mailrc in which you can set your editor?  I have some very
dim recollection of this.  I've been using Elm for ages, so my memory of 
this could be wrong.

#22:  Nope, Jeff's login shell is csh, so I don't understand why setenv
      doesn't work.

#23:  Yes, if you have a file .mailrc in your home directory, mail will
      execute the commands in it when it starts up.  Not sure if you can
      set your editor that way, though.  The man entry on mail (which is
      quite extensive) should tell (Don't have time to look at it right
      now.).

Correction to #22: If you're using the bourne shell, the commands are
EDITOR=vi
export EDITOR
(No SET, case is significant).

This is from my .mailrc file

set EDITOR=/usr/local/bin/jove
set VISUAL=/usr/local/bin/jove

Hmmm.  Very strange.  Lemme fiddle with it some more.  I copped the file
from Val (popcorn), and I assume that hers works.  I didn't change anything...
honest!

Thanks for the help...

You switch to the editor by typing ~e or e (depending on mode) though,
don't forget.

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   << there are more than two ways to get to the same place?>>

Depending on the prompt you are at, and your preference of command, there
is more than two ways...

In stuff like this it's a basic feature that you can get to the same place
in different ways.

Well, problem solved, sort-of.  I'll just run Elm and save everyone some
headaches.  Full-screen seems to work OK, so there's no harm.

Thanks for your help,everybody!

When I go into vi, everything looks fine. I hit i to insert, then
start typing. When I hit ESC, the menu for my cheap comms program
(Mirror) pops up. The second time I hit ESC, the menu disapper
adisappears, but I am still in the edit mode. I cannot seem to
get back into the command mode again. Any ideas?

Unless your comm program is REALLY cheap, it should have a way to send
an escape character through to Grex.  I'd advise checking your
documentation.

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Thanks robh and popcorn. I found a way to change the AT key.

When I originally logged in I dutifully answered all the questions. Since
then, like apparently most users, I've removed telephone number, room
number (?), etc., from /passwd, with .chfn. However, that left a lot of
commas, which show up on a finger. How can I edit out those commas? 

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss