1. About Ved

1.1 Who is Bob van der Poel and why this Editor?

Just a guy who likes to program. Ved was originally created because I didn't like any of the editors available to me. So, I wrote Ved. It has just keep on evolving to it's present state.

1.2 I see you have used the ncurses library. Why?

In an effort to make the editor run in as many different environments as possible, we've used ncurses. It is a fairly compact and efficient wrapper for the nitty-gritty of managing an display device. We've tryed to write optimizaton routines in the past for managing terminal updates, etc. and it is not an easy thing to do.

1.3 Do you plan to do an X version of Ved?

Not at the present time. We do have, in the back of our minds, the idea that it might be neat to have an XVed which would probably just run in an stripped down XTerm, but still use ncurses.

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2. Compilation and Appearance Problems

2.1 I'm having some problems getting things to compile.

Compiling should be quite simple...especially if your system is the same as mine.

The command ``make all'' should work. However, it assumes that you have some other programs already installed:

makedpend: This program parses all the .c files and creates a dependency table which is appended to the current makefile. You should probably do this step since the relationships between certain library/system files change between different systems.
cproto: This program parses the .c files and extracts the global prototype information and puts it in the file proto.h. If you don't have cproto and do a ``make all'' or a ``make proto'' you will end up with a empty proto.h file and an awful lot of compiler errors. cproto is a neat tool--get it at http://www.clark.net/pub/dickey.
tclsh: The program ``makecmds'` is used to update the jump tables used by the main program.f you get a failure with makecmds then make sure you have tclsh. You may need an more up-to-date version. Also, make sure that the file ``makecmds'' is executable.

The ``make all'' command also creates the objs directory. If you don't want to do a ``make all'', create the objs directory by hand and then do a ``make''. This should create a binary in your current directory.

``make clean'' will delete all old object, debug and core files.

``make tar'' gathers the source files, docs, and aux programs into a distribution.

We are using Linux 2.0.36. This is from a rather old Slackware installation which has been updated in an adhoc basis. However, it does appear to be quite solid. If you are using a different OS, then we really can't help all that much; however, we'd like to hear of your success and/or changes so that we can update this document.

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2.2 I get funny things displayed on the screen. I get incorrect responses to some keys. What did I do wrong?

As mentioned in the docs, Ved relies on ncurses. See the docs for the correct version information. Also, read the documentation files distributed with ncurses, especially the README and INSTALL files.

Please note that our experience has shown that 95 with Ved are not problems with the program, but problems with the ncurses installation of the terminfo library. If you are having problems with Ved you will probably have problems with other ncurses applications. Did you run the tests in the ncurses distribution? If they don't work, you can be assured that Ved won't either.

2.3 The documentation mentions different colors for different parts of Ved. I am running an Xterm and all the windows are the same color. What's going on?

As mentioned in the documenation, Ved relies on the ncurses library and database. For some, unknown to me, reason, the default settings for an Xterm do not set colors. What you will have to do is to properly set the TERM variable so that the proper terminfo entry is found. This can be done in several ways:

1.

Change your .bashrc or .bash_profile (or both) to set the proper value for TERM. A line like:

export TERM=xterm-xf86-v33

should work.

2.

Edit or application default file, most likely ``/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm'' and change the line reading:

XTerm.TermName: xterm

XTerm.TermName: xterm-xf86-v33

One problem with this is that some applications don't like the xterm-xf86-v33 definition. These applications are probably using the termcap database, which may not have an entry for this terminal. Other applications just check this to make sure that you're running an Xterm. In any event, it is easy enough to just ``export TERM xterm'' in these cases.

3.

In your ~/.Xdefaults file add the following line:

XTerm.TermName: xterm-xf86-v33

Unlike the above suggestion, this is specific to a user. You may have to change this for all users using the termcap database.

4.

In your termcap database, find the entry for xterm. Delete it and then create a link:

ln -s xterm-xf86-v33 xterm

The only problem with this is that if you update your terminfo database the link will quite possibly get clobbered.

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2.4 The Page-up and Page-down keys on my RedHat (other??) system don't work with Ved. What's up?

For some reason, the Redhat installation sets up xterm to override the normal definitions given to the Page-up and Page-down keys. It does this in the .Xdefaults file. If you examine your .Xdefaults file you'll find some lines which look like:

xterm*VT100.Translations: #override\n\
	<KeyPress>Prior : scroll-back(1,page)\n\
	<KeyPress>Next : scroll-forw(1,page)
nxterm*VT100.Translations: #override\n\
	<KeyPress>Prior : scroll-back(1,page)\n\
	<KeyPress>Next : scroll-forw(1,page)

This sets up you Page-Up/Down keys to act as terminal scroll keys. By default, an Xterm uses the Shifted Page-Up/Down keys and this command sets the unshifted keys to act the same. Unfortunately, the person who did this forgot that an application using the terminfo database thinks that the information in that database is correct... So, comment out these lines by placing a ``#'' in column 0 in each line. Restart your Xterm and all should be okay.

2.5 My mouse doen't work. Why do you only support the one mouse button?

Mouse support is a function of the ncurses library. You should read the docs with ncurses.

Ncurses only supports one mouse button (well, easily).

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About this document ...

This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 98.1p1 release (March 2nd, 1998)

The command line arguments were:
latex2html -dir faq -local_icons -no_navigation -show_section_numbers -no_footnode -split +0 faq.

The translation was initiated by Bob van der Poel on 1999-05-14

Bob van der Poel
1999-05-14