le - full screen text editor
le is a text editor which offers wide range of capabilities
with a simple interface. It has a pull down menu and a simple help system to
get started. See KEYS section below to learn about key
combinations.
Among its features there are: various operations with stream and
rectangular blocks, search and replace with full regular expressions, text
formatting, undelete/uninsert, hex editing, tunable key sequences, tunable
colors, tunable syntax highlighting.
The editor currently supports only one loaded file at a time.
Here are some starting hints:
- F10 or C-n
- menu
- F1
- help
- C-x
- exit (cancel)
- Arrows
- navigate
In the editor the following key description is used:
- Key1-Key2
- simultaneous key1 and key2 press
- Key1+Key2
- sequential keys press
- Key1 |
Key2
- press Key1 OR Key2
- ^Key
- Ctrl-Key
- ~Key
- Shift-Key
- ^~Key
- Ctrl-Shift-Key | Alt-Key
Some of ^Fx, ~Fx, ^~Fx can be typed as ESC+Fx.
The rest of key combinations can be seen in help, in menu and in
the keyboard map (default one can be seen with
le --dump-keymap).
There is support for block filtering through an external program,
a command output read-in, writing a block through a command. To read or
write block from/to a command, use F4+R or F4+W and file name of the
following format: ``|command args''. Filtering is achieved by F4+| followed
by command name.
On the status line you can see current line, column, the size of
loaded file, the code of character under cursor, several one letter flags,
file name, offset in bytes from the file beginning and percent position in
the file.
One letters flags are: * - modified; R - Russian keyboard (works
only on certain terminals); I - insert, O - overstrike; A - autoindent; D -
dos style line terminators (CR NL); U - undelete possible, u - uninsert
possible; B - column block mode.
To prevent changes loss on crash, le regularly dumps the
editing text, if changed, to ~/.le/tmp/FILENAME.PID , where FILENAME
is the file name with slashes converted to underlines; PID is the process id
of the editor process.
When the editor gets a fatal signal, it also dumps the text, to
~/.le/tmp/DUMP-SIG-FILENAME.PID , where SIG is the signal number.
- -r, --read-only
- Work as viewer, don't allow changes. If your system supports mmap(2), it
will be used to get file contents to memory.
- -h, --hex-mode
- Start in hex mode
- --mmap
- Use mmap(2) to load file read-only. Can be used to view very large files
or even devices. This implies -h.
- --mmap-rw
- Use mmap(2) to load file read-write in MAP_SHARED mode. Use with caution
-- the changes go directly to file or disk, no undo. In this mode only
replace can be used, but it allows editing of very large files or even
devices. This implies -h.
- --multibyte
- Force multibyte mode on. Multibyte mode is usually enabled automatically
as needed.
- --no-multibyte
- Force multibyte mode off, even if it was automatically determined that it
should be on.
- -b, --black-white
- Start in black & white mode
- -c, --color
- Start in color mode
- --dump-keymap
- Dump default keymap to stdout and exit
- --dump-colors
- Dump default color map to stdout and exit
- --version
- Print the version of LE and exit
- --help
- Print short description of options and exit
The following environment variables are processed by
le:
- HOME
- Used for tilde (`~') expansion.
- LE_DEFAULT_EOL
- The default EOL marker. It can be set to NL (\n), CRNL (\r\n) or CR (\r).
Also it can be set to any other 1-2 character string interpreted
literally.
- TERM, LINES,
COLUMNS
- These variables are used by curses library for full-screen output.
- DATADIR/colors
- ~/.le/colors
- DATADIR/colors-$TERM
- ~/.le/colors-$TERM
- Color palette description. Those files are sequentially read and color
definitions in later files have higher precision.
- ~/.le/keymap-$TERM
- DATADIR/keymap-$TERM
- ~/.le/keymap
- DATADIR/keymap
- Key map descriptions. Only the first existing file is read.
- ~/.le/term-$TERM
- DATADIR/term-$TERM
- Terminal specific options. Only the first existing file is read. Use
Options->Terminal menu to tune the options.
- ./.le.ini
- ~/.le/le.ini
- DATADIR/le.ini
- Options. Only the first existing file is read. Use menu Options to tune
these.
- .le.syntax
- ~/.le/syntax
- DATADIR/syntax
- Syntax highlighting rules. Only the first existing file is read. There is
no default built-in in the editor, so if those files are not present you
won't see any syntax highlighting.
- ~/.le/mainmenu
- DATADIR/mainmenu
- Main editor menu. It has simple text format. Only the first existing file
is read.
- ~/.le/history
- Various histories are saved here. Do not edit by hand.
DATADIR is determined at compile time by configure script
(pkgdatadir variable). By default it has value
/usr/local/share/le.
The LE editor was written by Alexander V. Lukyanov
<lav@yars.free.net>.