Subject: Problem with pine and vi

From: [email-masked] (CAPT T.B. Taylor)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 10:47:16 GMT

I use pine A LOT.  It's a great program.  The built in editor, pico, is
great but limited.  So I often use the alternate editor function to use
vi. 

About a week or so ago, this stopped working.  When I press ^_ to start 
the alternate editor, the screen displays a message "invoking alternate 
editor" and then "read 999 lines" or however many lines are in the file, 
but then it comes immediately back into pico and redraws my screen.

It seems that vi is either starting and then immediately exiting, or not 
starting at all.  The latter seems more likely.  No hint of vi ever shows 
up on the screen.

Here's what I've tried so far:

-- using various terminal emulators, to make sure I'm really sending a 
^_.  Same thing happens on all systems.

-- rename .exrc in my home directory to run vi without customization.  
Same thing happens, with or without my .exrc.

-- rename .pinerc in my home directory force pine to reconfigure 
itself.   Then make only two config changes in the clean .pinerc:  enable 
alternate editor and editor=vi.  Same thing happens.

-- in a "clean" .pinerc, enable alternate editor implicitly, to force vi 
always.  When you press return after typing in your subject line, the 
screen redraws itself and you are returned to where you started, at the 
end of the subject line.  Can't get to the text at all.

All other functions of pine work normally, and vi works normally when 
invoked from my system prompt.

My host uses pine 3.91 on a sun.

Thank you for your help.

CAPT Tim Taylor, USN       Email:  [email-masked]
Public Affairs Officer             Phone:  +44-171-514-4251
United States Naval Forces Europe    Fax:  +44-171-514-4304
London W1Y 2AL, UK            http://www.navy.mil/~ttaylor/