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From: davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: elvis problems and a warning
Message-ID: <814@iss-rb.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: 12 Nov 90 16:31:11 GMT
Sender: news@iss-rb.SanDiego.NCR.COM
Reply-To: davel@booboo.SanDiego.NCR.COM (David Lord)
Organization: NCR Corporation, Rancho Bernardo
Lines: 78


I tried out the vi clone 'elvis' last night and want to warn people
about some potential problems they might encounter. I should say that
this is a POTENTIALLY hot program, being a far more complete version
of 'vi' than is the 'vi' clone I'm currentlyly using, 'stevie'. But
in it's current form, as picked up from comp.binaries.pc last week I
would have to advise people to steer clear for awhile.


The problems:

   1) 	First and foremost, when executed with a filename on the command
	line my handy-dandy Norton Disk Monitor pops up and says:

	"WARNING: Disk write attempted to system area. Continue, Disallow, ...?"

	You can bet your arse I disallowed that sucker. Don't know what it's
	doing, but it can't be good. By the way, I'm running DOS 4.01 on a
	386, your milage may vary. As far as I'm concerned this program is
	history.


   2)	There's no documentation, and getting this thing to come up the
   	first time is no bed of roses. Mostly it didn't like my 
   	environment variables. Also it requires you to have a directory
   	called \TMP. Apparently the author copied the worst features of
   	MKS vi. That \TMP thing gets to be a real problem when you're
   	editting a file on a floppy.


   3)	Heaven-knows-what-other-program-in-my-arsenal wanted the
   	following in my AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

   	   set TERM=ansi-color

   	Maybe even something I'm not using any more. 'less'? MKS vi?
   	Regardless, 'elvis' hated it with a passion. It also hated the 
	EXINIT that I had setup to run with 'stevie' but then 'stevie'
	is a little non-standard in that area.


   4)	Do you ever run Windows? Forget 'elvis'. Windows puts the following
   	in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

   	   set TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP

   	'elvis' absolutely will not run with that in your environment. As
   	far as I can tell, the only thing it will allow TEMP to be set to
   	is '.'.


I really hope the author will someday get these problems straightened
out (I don't know who he is since there was no documentation). There
are some very nice things this program implements that are not in
'stevie'. Notably, 'shiftwidth' works nicely, an extremely important
feature to me, also you can 'undo' a 'substitute' command, an even more
important feature. MKS vi also has those features but god help you if
you want to run it under DESQview. It can be done if set up a window
with the right options, but if you forget and invoke under the regular
BIG DOS window, it's off to "Bozo No No Land." I didn't try 'elvis'
under DESQview. I had enough problems with it as it is.

So that's my experience. When you're dealing with free software you've
got to remember, you get what you pay for. That's why guys like me
earn those big bucks. (Of course I could say a few things about some
of the commercial software I've tried too.)

Oh, one other thing. 'cw' (change word) "looks right" in 'elvis'. If
you've used 'stevie' you know what I'm talking about. Also 'showmode'
shows in the right place, the lower right hand corner of the screen,
something I fixed in my copy of 'stevie'.

--
========================================================================
Dave Lord				Dave.Lord@SanDiego.NCR.COM
Disclaimer: If I said it, you can be pretty sure my employer does not
agree with it. I'm that kind of person.          Five lines, oh my gawd.
========================================================================