Subject: Personal spelling dictionary; full VGA screen; Telix crsr fwd wd

From: [email-masked]
Date: 30 Apr 1996 06:33:12 GMT

(My apologies if this topic has already neen posted; I checked back into 
the archivs to some degree.)

 A couple of things I really wanted with Pine were a personal spelling 
dictionary, and a full-screen display with a VGA monitor. Neither was 
offered initially by my service provider (and their tech. support people 
were not especially helpful).

 At home, I have a 386 running Telix 3.22 and a VGA display; although the
characters are rather small in 50-line mode, I like the context visible
with a full screen. Initially, Pine used a default 25-line display, and
the lower half of the screen was useless. 

 I have a UNIX dialup shell account running as Sun OS; my shell is bash.

 After quite a bit of study and trial and error, I finally found that I 
could add some lines to my .bashrc file:

# User-written, following suggestion in Pine Tech Notes. Form and Syntax
#  by [email-masked]

SPELL="spell +/<homedirectory>/.perspelwds"
export SPELL

stty rows 49

......

  The "spell +/<homedirectory>..." is the command that links my personal
spelling dictionary (called ".perspelwds") to the [spell] spelling
checker; it apparently defines a local(?) variable in my environment(?)
called SPELL; the export command makes the variable available to the
"outside world", apparently. 

  It's a very good idea to do a spelling check on your own personal
dictionary after revising it. The sort order has to be exact, and
sometimes it's a tad hairy to decide upon the correct sequence. Use a
sorting command. If the dictionary is in correct sequence, it will become
its own reference and you'll get no errors. (Neat!)

  The stty command is "seen" and recognized by Pine; it works with no
trouble whatsoever, provided I set my display to 50-line mode. (Telix
works strangely with my machine; I need to specify a 43-line screen, a
50-line screen, and then a 43 again, or some such, to get 50 lines if some
rude software changes the setting. 

  Finally, the Pine command for "cursor-forward-word" (I hope I'm using 
the correct form, there) is the same as a command in Telix (I think 
printer log toggle); Telix intercepts it. I discovered quite by fortunate 
accident that the Insert key sends a sequence of ASCII characters that Pine
interprets as a command to move the cursor forward by one word. This was
a happy discovery, also.

 I don't subscribe to this newsgroup (yet); please reply by e-mail.

Hope these are helpful!

NB   Nicholas Bodley   Autodidact & Polymath  |*| Keep smiling! It makes |
      Waltham, Mass.   Electronic Technician  |*|   people wonder what   |
     [email-masked]    Amateur musician     |*|  you have been up to.  |
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--
NB   Nicholas Bodley   Autodidact & Polymath  |*| Keep smiling! It makes |
      Waltham, Mass.   Electronic Technician  |*|   people wonder what   |
     [email-masked]    Amateur musician     |*|  you have been up to.  |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------*