VUE
Updated April 2017; see History
VUE <file> {switches}
If you are new to VUE, see Learning VUE. That topic deals with concepts, basics and other introductory material.
VUE is A-Shell's built-in text and program editor. It is handy for cross-platform, general-purpose editing of program source files and other text files, but is purely text based and limited to editing a single file at a time. While many programmers—particularly of the "old school" variety—use it exclusively, for most others, and for all but the simplest programming tasks, we recommend the A-Shell Programmers Notepad (APN).
Some extended features have been added to accommodate the needs of our more demanding users; see Special Commands.
Switch |
Effect of Switch |
|---|---|
/? |
HELP display. |
/C |
Enable command file input, including in display mode. Characters are input from the current command file and interpreted as if they were typed. Note that it is critical to know which mode the session will start in (display vs. command) since the interpretation of the commands would differ between the modes. See the START command in the ini.vue file for info on starting in a specified mode. |
/R |
Read-only mode. All functions work normally except you cannot save the file. You might want to consider EZTYP as an alternative to this. |
/T |
Trace steps involved in locating and processing the ini.vue file. Useful for debugging. |
/W |
Start in 132 column (wide) mode. |
/Y |
Automatically answer yes to the question about whether to create a non-existent file. |
The Help command is fully implemented. Enter Help while in Command Mode to get several successive screens showing all available VUE commands, which are also listed in tables in this documentation. Also available from the VUE command line are help screens for INFLD (e.g. >HELP INFLD), INMEMO, TCRT, and SPOOL. To create your own help screen for the subject "ABC," create a file called ABC.HLV in [7,1] and invoke it by entering "HELP ABC" on the VUE command line.
History
2022 August, A-Shell 6.5.1719: Embedded TAB characters are now expanded based on the TAB width setting as specified in ini.vue or in the current instance of VUE. Previously all embedded TABs were expanded to the next multiple of 8 columns, regardless of the TAB width setting. Note that the TAB key on the keyboard, as opposed to TAB characters previously embedded into a file, continues to be treated as a chr(9) if the TAB width is set to 8, and as spaces for any other TAB width setting.
2017 May, A-Shell 6.4.1548: Improve logic to avoid confusion between switches and native fspecs; add HELP display (VUE/?); support localization (LITMSG.xxx 066,###).
2016 May, A-Shell 6.3.1511, VUE edit 370: VUE now disables AutoMouse on the ATE client during the VUE session, then restores the prior settings on exit. Previously, this only occurred for A-Shell/Windows local mode. Note that if the ATE version is prior to 6.3.1511.0, AutoMouse will get disabled on entry into VUE, but not restored on exit.
2011 April, A-Shell build 1214, VUE edit 307: VUE now uses the AG_STATUSLINES feature to save the present status line configuration and then enable the bottom status line (which is used by VUE to display important information during editing). On exit, the previous status configuration is restored.
2010 November, A-Shell build 1196, VUE edit 305: A new variation of the >FORMAT command allows reformatting (wrapping) one line at a time to a specified width:
>FORMAT #
where # is the desired wrap width.
Unlike the standard FORMAT command, which reformats a paragraph using word wrap so that each line is as long as possible without exceeding the current width specified by the WIDTH command, FORMAT # operates on only the current line, wrapping it at exactly the specified width. This is mostly just a convenience for getting an overview of an extremely long line (as an alternative to successively using the >MARGIN # command, or Right-Arrow, to view one screen width at a time).
2010 November, A-Shell build 1196, VUE edit 304: The old line length limit of 2022 bytes has been greatly expanded. For existing files, the new limit is 1000 bytes longer than the longest of the first 100 lines in the file. For new files, the limit is 4K.
Also, the line concatenation function (^o) now beeps and otherwise does nothing when the concatenated line would exceed the current limit. (Previously it just truncated without warning.)
Subtopics
