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PROMPTER(1) General Commands Manual PROMPTER(1) NAME prompter - nmh's prompting editor front-end SYNOPSIS prompter [-help] [-version] [-erase chr] [-kill chr] [-prepend | -no- prepend] [-rapid | -norapid] [-doteof | -nodoteof] file DESCRIPTION prompter is an editor front-end for nmh which allows rapid composition of messages. This program is not normally invoked directly by users but takes the place of an editor and acts as an editor front-end. It operates on an RFC 822-style message draft skeleton specified by file, normally provided by the nmh commands comp, dist, forw, or repl. prompter is particularly useful when composing messages over slow net- work or modem lines. It is an nmh program in that it can have its own profile entry with switches, but it is not invoked directly by the user. The commands comp, dist, forw, and repl invoke prompter as an editor, either when invoked with -editor prompter, or by the profile entry "Editor: prompter", or when given the command edit prompter at the "What now?" prompt. For each empty component prompter finds in the draft, the user is prompted for a response; A <RETURN> will cause the whole component to be left out. Otherwise, a `\' preceding a <RETURN> will continue the response on the next line, allowing for multiline components. Continu- ation lines must begin with a space or tab. Each non-empty component is copied to the draft and displayed on the terminal. The start of the message body is denoted by a blank line or a line of dashes. If the body is non-empty, the prompt, which isn't written to the file, is --------Enter additional text or (if -prepend was given) --------Enter initial text Message-body typing is terminated with an end-of-file (usually CTRL-D). With the -doteof switch, a period on a line all by itself also signi- fies end-of-file. At this point control is returned to the calling program, where the user is asked "What now?". See whatnow(1) for the valid options to this query. By using the -prepend switch, the user can add type-in to the beginning of the message body and have the rest of the body follow. This is use- ful for the forw command. By using the -rapid switch, if the draft already contains text in the message-body, it is not displayed on the user's terminal. This is use- ful for low-speed terminals. The line editing characters for kill and erase may be specified by the user via the arguments -kill chr and -erase chr, where chr may be a character; or `\nnn', where "nnn" is the octal value for the character. An interrupt (usually CTRL-C) during component typing will abort prompter and the nmh command that invoked it. An interrupt during mes- sage-body typing is equivalent to CTRL-D, for historical reasons. This means that prompter should finish up and exit. The first non-flag argument to prompter is taken as the name of the draft file, and subsequent non-flag arguments are ignored. FILES $HOME/.mh_profile The user profile /tmp/prompter* Temporary copy of message PROFILE COMPONENTS prompter-next: To name the editor to be used on exit from .B prompter Msg-Protect: To set mode when creating a new draft SEE ALSO comp(1), dist(1), forw(1), repl(1), whatnow(1) DEFAULTS `-prepend' `-norapid' `-nodoteof' CONTEXT None HELPFUL HINTS The -rapid option is particularly useful with forw, and -noprepend is useful with comp -use. The user may wish to link prompter under several names (e.g., "rapid") and give appropriate switches in the profile entries under these names (e.g., "rapid: -rapid"). This facilitates invoking prompter differ- ently for different nmh commands (e.g., "forw: -editor rapid"). BUGS prompter uses stdio(3), so it will lose if you edit files with nulls in them. nmh-1.8+dev 1999-04-30 PROMPTER(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FILES | PROFILE COMPONENTS | SEE ALSO | DEFAULTS | CONTEXT | HELPFUL HINTS | BUGS
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