[comp.windows.x] Xterm/Vi problem

rohde@daimi.aau.dk (Thomas Rohde) (02/06/91)

	When editing files with "vi" in a "xterm" window, which contain
	lines longer than the width of the xterm window, it becomes
	very difficult to see what you are actually editing.

	Is this a "feature" or a "bug". In case of the latter; can it
	be fixed?

		Thanks,

		Thomas Rohde
		rohde@daimi.aau.dk

gildea@expo.lcs.mit.EDU (Stephen Gildea) (02/07/91)

    	When editing files with "vi" in a "xterm" window, which contain
    	lines longer than the width of the xterm window, it becomes
    	very difficult to see what you are actually editing.
    
    	Is this a "feature" or a "bug". In case of the latter; can it
    	be fixed?

You don't say what the difficulty is, so it's hard to classify.  Can
you be a little more specific about what you are seeing?

 < Stephen
   MIT X Consortium

phils@athena.mit.EDU (Philip Thompson) (02/07/91)

>	When editing files with "vi" in a "xterm" window, which contain
>	lines longer than the width of the xterm window, it becomes
>	very difficult to see what you are actually editing.

It's a "misfeature" of the xterm termap entry.  You need to define
the auto-margin (am) capability.  Ater setting your termcap you can
just append this definition.  In my login I have the following:

    set noglob;
    eval `tset -s -I -Q -m 'switch:?vt100' -m 'network:?xterm'`
    setenv TERMCAP "$TERMCAP"am:    # this makes Vi in xterms happy.
    unset noglob;

Hope it works for you.

Philip Thompson
Dept. Architecture and Urban Planning, MIT

jeenglis@alcor.usc.edu (English Guy) (02/07/91)

rohde@daimi.aau.dk (Thomas Rohde) writes:

> When editing files with "vi" in a "xterm" window, which contain
> lines longer than the width of the xterm window, it becomes
> very difficult to see what you are actually editing.

This happens with vi on a dumb terminal, too.  It's worst
when the terminal and the termcap entries disagree on 
whether or not text automatically wraps around.

> Is this a "feature" or a "bug". In case of the latter; can it
> be fixed?

Um, resize the window?

(I'm not sure if all vi implementations pay attention to
 SIGWINCH signals though; you may have to exit vi, resize
 the window, then start it up again.)



--Joe English

  jeenglis@alcor.usc.edu