Subject: Re: Joe / Pine Interface Problem

From: [email-masked] (R. Stewart Ellis)
Date: 1 Apr 1997 15:11:15 GMT

Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]> writes:

 >    I posted the article below recently on comp.editors.  I want to
 >emphasize that this problems occurs *ONLY* when my alternate editor is
 >invoked specifically by Pine, and under no other circumstances.  One
 >respondent speculated that Pine's screen control may not be well
 >debugged for alternate editors and may be causing Joe's screen control
 >to get a little flaky.  Anybody got any war stories or wisdom to share? 
 >Thanks.  --  Paul

Added comp.editors back to distribution.

 >---------- Forwarded message ----------
 >Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 09:05:06 -0500
 >>From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
 >Newsgroups: comp.editors
 >Subject: Joe / Pine Interface Problem

 >    Environment: SunOS 4.1.4, dialin to shell account (Cshell) from DOS
 >with ProComm Plus v2/DOS, VT100 emulation.  Editor: Joe 2.8.  Mail/

I have seen situations long ago where ProComm simply blew chunks in its
vt100 emulation.  Try kermit.  It has much more reliable vtXXX emulation.

There have also been problems with some versions of joe overoptimizing
screen updates, leading to all sorts of anomalies.  In some versions of
joe, I have had to run his special termcap entries to get proper behavior.
I also remember from over two years ago when we moved all Suns to SunOS 5.4
or higher, that some versions of joe behaved differently depending on
whether they were compiled in the bsd universe (/bin/cc) or sysv universe
(/usr/5bin/cc).

 >newsreader: Pine 3.96.  The problem arises whether I use my ISP's
 >compiled version of Joe, or whether I compile Joe myself.  The problem
 >only seems to arise when I use Joe as my alternate editor under Pine.

I have found that pine 3.95 preserves some of its tty conditioning when it
hands the tty over to jove (my default implicit editor).  I do not remember
this in 3.91.

 >    When composing a message under Pine, Pine opens a file 
 >/tmp/pico.nnnnn, where nnnnn is some (temporarily) unique number. 
 >If there is quoted material, as in a reply or followup, Pine first
 >inserts the material, with the quoting string, into the /tmp/... file. 
 >It then passes control to the editor, which may be its own built-in
 >composer (ugh!) or a user-specified alternate editor (Joe 2.8 in my
 >case).

 >    However, when editing this file, visible characters have a way of
 >dropping off the display, to be replaced by blanks.  They have not
 >dropped out of the file: a screen refresh command will bring them right
 >back.  But it is annoying, to say the least.  The dropping of
 >characters seems to occur mostly when simply moving the cursor and when
 >deleting characters (one or more characters to the right of the cursor
 >position may get replaced by blanks).  Also, this phenomenon only seems
 >to occur when editing the temporary file set up by Pine, not when
 >editing a file when Joe is invoked from the command line.

That is exactly the kind of behavior I have seen over 12 years with ProComm
(mis)emulations of the vt100 terminal.  You also may have some problems if
termcap is set to vt102 or 220 and the terminal emulator is only capable of
vt100.  Make sure both are set at the same level of emulation.  Another
thing I just thought of:  I have found the dt80 termcap/terminfo to work
better with some emulators than vt102.

 >    I admit I am a user, not a Un*x guru, so I don't really know where
 >to start looking.  Anyone have similar experiences or wisdom to share? 
 >Please also Cc: on any responses, as my newsfeed is rather flaky just
 >now, and I might miss a posted response.  Thanks very much.

 >Paul                             <[email-masked]>
 >----------------------------------------------------------
 >Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
 >Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key
 >Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

--
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)810-762-9765   ___________________
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt.Inst. ()  /   _____  ______
  Flint, MI 48504    Free speech and free software!  /\ /        / /  /  / /
  Web admin:  http://www.gmi.edu/      [email-masked]   /________/ /  /  / /

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 16:24:07 -0500

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Newsgroups: comp.editors

---

From: "Jason Englander" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 12:34:30 -0600

<SNIP>
> back.  But it is annoying, to say the least.  The dropping of
</SNIP>

I wish I had more detail for you, unfortunately I'm running under Win 
95 right now, but I remember getting the same thing using joe 
to edit/create HTML files.  I don't know if it was ONLY HTML files, 
but that's mostly what I use it for.  At the time I was running Linux 
2.0.0 and older, now I run Linux 2.0.29 with whatever joe came with 
slackware-3.2.-beta and I haven't seen it since.

  Jason

--
Jason Englander <[email-masked]>
http://www.interl.net/~jasoneng/