davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) (11/13/90)
I tried out the vi clone 'elvis' last night and want to warn people about some potential problems they might encounter. I should say that this is a POTENTIALLY hot program, being a far more complete version of 'vi' than is the 'vi' clone I'm currentlyly using, 'stevie'. But in it's current form, as picked up from comp.binaries.pc last week I would have to advise people to steer clear for awhile. The problems: 1) First and foremost, when executed with a filename on the command line my handy-dandy Norton Disk Monitor pops up and says: "WARNING: Disk write attempted to system area. Continue, Disallow, ...?" You can bet your arse I disallowed that sucker. Don't know what it's doing, but it can't be good. By the way, I'm running DOS 4.01 on a 386, your milage may vary. As far as I'm concerned this program is history. 2) There's no documentation, and getting this thing to come up the first time is no bed of roses. Mostly it didn't like my environment variables. Also it requires you to have a directory called \TMP. Apparently the author copied the worst features of MKS vi. That \TMP thing gets to be a real problem when you're editting a file on a floppy. 3) Heaven-knows-what-other-program-in-my-arsenal wanted the following in my AUTOEXEC.BAT file: set TERM=ansi-color Maybe even something I'm not using any more. 'less'? MKS vi? Regardless, 'elvis' hated it with a passion. It also hated the EXINIT that I had setup to run with 'stevie' but then 'stevie' is a little non-standard in that area. 4) Do you ever run Windows? Forget 'elvis'. Windows puts the following in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: set TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP 'elvis' absolutely will not run with that in your environment. As far as I can tell, the only thing it will allow TEMP to be set to is '.'. I really hope the author will someday get these problems straightened out (I don't know who he is since there was no documentation). There are some very nice things this program implements that are not in 'stevie'. Notably, 'shiftwidth' works nicely, an extremely important feature to me, also you can 'undo' a 'substitute' command, an even more important feature. MKS vi also has those features but god help you if you want to run it under DESQview. It can be done if set up a window with the right options, but if you forget and invoke under the regular BIG DOS window, it's off to "Bozo No No Land." I didn't try 'elvis' under DESQview. I had enough problems with it as it is. So that's my experience. When you're dealing with free software you've got to remember, you get what you pay for. That's why guys like me earn those big bucks. (Of course I could say a few things about some of the commercial software I've tried too.) Oh, one other thing. 'cw' (change word) "looks right" in 'elvis'. If you've used 'stevie' you know what I'm talking about. Also 'showmode' shows in the right place, the lower right hand corner of the screen, something I fixed in my copy of 'stevie'. -- ======================================================================== Dave Lord Dave.Lord@SanDiego.NCR.COM Disclaimer: If I said it, you can be pretty sure my employer does not agree with it. I'm that kind of person. Five lines, oh my gawd. ========================================================================
johnm@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (John B. Miezitis) (11/15/90)
davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) writes: >I tried out the vi clone 'elvis' last night and want to warn people >about some potential problems they might encounter. I should say that >[...] >The problems: > 1) First and foremost, when executed with a filename on the command > line my handy-dandy Norton Disk Monitor pops up and says: > "WARNING: Disk write attempted to system area. Continue, Disallow, ...?" My mace vaccine which is supposed to do the same job has not complained. I also am running under 4.01. You have me worried now is it my mace which isn't working or do you have a funny copy of elvis? I have obtained docs and source from uwasa.fi and a quick look at the source reveals nothing sinister. > 4) Do you ever run Windows? Forget 'elvis'. Windows puts the following > in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: > set TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP > 'elvis' absolutely will not run with that in your environment. As > far as I can tell, the only thing it will allow TEMP to be set to > is '.'. Elvis will look at environment variable TMP first and then TEMP if TMP is set then it will ignore TEMP. >I really hope the author will someday get these problems straightened >out (I don't know who he is since there was no documentation). There The author is:- Steve Kirkendall kirkenda@cs.pdx.edu as read from the readme accompanying the source. Can't help with your other problems but I find elvis to be good enough to persist with. Cheers.. _______________________________________________________________________________ John. B. Miezitis. University of Tasmania Computing Centre email: johnm@diemen.cc.utas.edu.au | Belgium man Belgium!!! _______________________________________________________________________________
ndh@stl.stc.co.uk (Neale D Hind ) (11/15/90)
In article <814@iss-rb.SanDiego.NCR.COM> davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) writes: > >I tried out the vi clone 'elvis' last night and want to warn people >about some potential problems they might encounter. > >The problems: > > 1) First and foremost, when executed with a filename on the command > line my handy-dandy Norton Disk Monitor pops up and says: > > "WARNING: Disk write attempted to system area. Continue, Disallow, ...?" > elvis, when called with a filename, creates a copy of the file in the in the defined 'temp' directory against which all editing is performed. To do this it has to write to the disk to create the working copy. It does seem odd that Norton is claiming that the write is to the *system* area though. > > > 2) There's no documentation > Documentation was posted to c.b.i.p.d. It is very complete. > > 3) Heaven-knows-what-other-program-in-my-arsenal wanted the > following in my AUTOEXEC.BAT file: > > set TERM=ansi-color > Maybe larn? > 'elvis' absolutely will not run with that in your environment. As > far as I can tell, the only thing it will allow TEMP to be set to > is '.'. > elvis defaults to c:\tmp. If you don't want this set EXINIT to: set EXINIT=so [d:\][dir\]elvis.rc and put a file in the [d:\][dir\] called elvis.rc containing something like: set directory=c:\mytmpdir set showmode [any other default sets you would like] Another oddity is that although the documentation says that the program wildcard.exe is no longer required, if you *don't* have it in your path then, when you run elvis with a supplied filename, you get a dos 'bad command or filename' warning. Elvis will however still load. Hope this helps. ---- Neale D. Hind - (N.D.Hind@stl.stc.co.uk)
arra@inmet.inmet.com (11/15/90)
Although elvis does look good after a very short try, it's missing a "vi" feature I have come to rely on alot, the :f newfile command, where the current buffer stays the same, but gets attached to a new file name. (This is considered a new file, so if a file of that name actually exists, you won't find out until you try to save, when "vi" warns you and will not allow the overwrite unless you :w!) Elvis complains when given :f newfile that "newfile" are extraneous characters following the "file" command. The :file command without a filename merely reports the name of the current file, as does ^G.
lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee) (11/16/90)
From article <3743@stl.stc.co.uk>, by ndh@stl.stc.co.uk (Neale D Hind ): >In article <814@iss-rb.SanDiego.NCR.COM> davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord) writes: >>... >> "WARNING: Disk write attempted to system area. Continue, Disallow, ...?" >> >elvis, when called with a filename, creates a copy of the file in the >in the defined 'temp' directory against which all editing is performed. But it does this regardless of whether a file name was given on the command line, I think. Whereas Norton diskmon issues the warning only when a file name was given on the command line, as Neale said. It would be nice to know what is going on here. I really like elvis -- it's better than vi. After verifying the problem, I tried replying 'Y' when the Norton security program asked whether to allow the supposed disk write to the system area. The screen was not normal when elvis displayed the first page of file text -- cursor update characters seem to be displayed instead of obeyed. Later, Norton's Disk Doctor reported no problems with the system area. >... >> 'elvis' absolutely will not run with that in your environment. As >> far as I can tell, the only thing it will allow TEMP to be set to >> is '.'. Here, elvis seems happy to use windows/temp for its temporary files when TEMP is set as described. In regard to the TERM variable, the elvis code checks to see if it is either "ansi" or "nansi", but I don't see why it should become confused if it is neither. I have it set to "nansi", and that works ok (and doesn't give that disgusting blue background). Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
ccastdf@prism.gatech.EDU (Dave) (11/16/90)
In article <10297@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Greg Lee) writes: >>... >>> 'elvis' absolutely will not run with that in your environment. As >>> far as I can tell, the only thing it will allow TEMP to be set to >>> is '.'. > >Here, elvis seems happy to use windows/temp for its temporary files when >TEMP is set as described. In regard to the TERM variable, the elvis code if TEMP is set, then the directory must exist. When windows sets up the TEMP variable, it does not create the directory. I had to do it by hand. Dave -- David Frascone Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!ccastdf Internet: ccastdf@prism.gatech.edu