Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ns-mx!iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!haven!wam!dmb
From: dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Elvis Problems
Keywords: elvis vi
Message-ID: <1990Oct11.134906.7572@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 11 Oct 90 13:49:06 GMT
References: <2339@cod.NOSC.MIL>
Sender: usenet@wam.umd.edu (USENET Posting)
Reply-To: dmb%wam.umd.edu@uunet.uu.net (David M. Baggett)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Maryland at College Park
Lines: 47

In article <2339@cod.NOSC.MIL> jensen@cod.NOSC.MIL (Layne K. Jensen) writes:
>Now for the problem.  Elvis seems to leave residue in the system that causes
>problems with other programs.  I first noticed that after using Elvis some
>of my compiles (using the Sozobon compiler) would fail in strange ways, even
>when the code hadn't been changed.  For example, after a reboot, a file
>would compile and link with no problems, but as soon as I used Elvis (with
>no changes to the source file), the compile would bomb, usually in the link
>phase.  Also, my other version of "vi", Stevie, would no longer work.  It
>would not "open the window", but would just wait until I stopped it with
>a ":q<cr>" command, as if it was in open mode.

I've noticed a few quirky things about Elvis too.  (For one thing,

:g/foo/s//bar/g

causes it to crash hideously.)

The one thing I found a bit tricky with Elvis was getting the TERM 
stuff set up right.  I found that I had to

	setenv TERM vt52

and

	setenv EXINIT "source e:\vi.rc"

to get Elvis to work correctly and read the .rc file from ramdisk.

One interesting thing to note:  If you have TERM set to vt52 Nethack
(Pl9) will _not_ work correctly.  Perhaps other ported programs use
the TERM type as well.  My solution was to make an alias "vi" that
sets the TERM, the EXINIT, runs elvis from ramdisk, then unsets
EXINIT and TERM when elvis terminates.  This solved all my problems.

I use Sozobon C (and make, etc.) and have not noticed any problems.
Maybe you're running out of memory or TMP space?  The fact that it's
dying in the linker may indicate you're running out of space in TMP.
I know that Elvis keeps a recoverable copy of the file being ediited
in TMP, but it's supposed to go away when you leave the editor.  You
might want to look in TMP after you run Elvis to see if there any
any strange files left over.

All in all, however, Elvis is very good.  Searches, etc. are quite fast
compared to other vi clones I've seen.

Dave Baggett
dmb%wam.umd.edu@uunet.uu.net