[fa.info-vax] Using Eunice VI from a MAIL$EDIT procedure

lars@ACC.ARPA (10/17/85)

After moving up to VMS 4.1, I tried (again) something that
failed before: Specifying (Eunice) VI as the editor in my
MAIL$EDIT procedure.

VI gets invoked, but seems to be unable to get single-character
input from the terminal. The effect is rather as if VI were driven
through a pair of mailboxes. But when I inserted a bunch of SHOW LOGICAL
commands before invoking VI, the SYS$COMMAND and SYS$OUTPUT were both
pointed to the terminal, and SYS$INPUT was pointed to the command file,
but could be succesfully redirected to the terminal.
EDT runs fine, why does VI not work ?
			/ Lars Poulsen <Lars@ACC.ARPA>
------

leres@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU (Craig Leres) (10/17/85)

[eat me]
Following is the mailedit.com I've been using for several years. It
works fine under V4 (provided you have a "vi" symbol defined). The
idea is to make the input and output streams be the terminal so i/o
isn't buffered.

		Craig
------
$ ! mailedit <input file name> <output file name>
$ !   execute editor from mail
$ !
$ if p1 .eqs. "" then goto tag_noinput
$ !
$ copy /replace 'p1' 'p2'
$ tag_noinput:
$ !
$ assign/user 'f$logical("SYS$OUTPUT")' sys$input
$ assign/user 'f$logical("SYS$OUTPUT")' sys$output
$ vi 'p2'
------