gate - gather text input for PicoSpan or Yapp with word-wrapping

SYNOPSIS:

gate [-<option>...] <file>

Gate is a word-wrapping input gatherer designed to be used with the PicoSpan or Yapp conferencing programs (by Marcus Watts and Dave Thaler respectively). It behaves very much like the built-in text gatherers, with the exception that it automatically word-wraps as you type, provides integrated spell checking, and has a few other minor improvements. It has been used with Caucus as well, though I haven't found a way to cleanly quit a response without entering it under Caucus. It could theortically be used for many other text-gathering applications.

Though it is possible to run gate directly (and it might have some application in shell scripts that want to do nicer text gathering), normally you would allow the conferencing system to run it for you, by putting the following PicoSpan (or Yapp) commands in your .cfonce file:

    set edalways
    define editor "gate"

The latter command should give the full path of the gate command, if it is not in your path.

Gate runs in cbreak mode, but it carefully simulates all the usual unix line-editting keys, so whatever backspace, word-erase, line-kill, end-of-file, and reprint keys you have defined with stty(1) will work as usual (even with tabs in your text).

Gate allows you to backspace back onto previous lines (so long as those lines are not longer than your screen width). For more elaborate editing us the :edit or : commands.

In addition to the standard keys, typing control-L will redisplay the entire body of text entered so far.

Text entry is normally terminated by either a dot (.) typed in the first column, or the usual unix end-of-file character.

The following special commands can be entered at the beginning of any line. All of them can be abbreviated.

:clear

Empty out the text buffer, discarding everything entered so far, and restart text entry with a clean slate.

:edit

Start up the editor on the text. The environment variable EDITOR selects which editor to use. When you exit the editor, text entry will be continued. A colon alone on a line will also start the editor.

:empty

This is the same as the :clear command.

:exit

This is the same as the :quit command.

:help

Print a short help message.

:quit

Terminate text entry, and discard the response without entering it. Normally, it will ask for confirmation that you really want to do this. If you give a "!" as an argument, it will skip the confirmation request.

:ok

Terminate text entry, and ask if you want to enter the response or not.

:read [-s] <file>

Append the named file to the text you have entered so far. Normally unprintable characters will be stripped out of the file as it is read. If the -s flag is given, they will be left in.

:set [<option>...]

Without arguments, this command prints the current values of the various settable options for gate. If arguments are given, those options are set. See below for a list of options.

:spell [!]

Run a spell check on the current text. You will be shown each misspelled word in context, along with a numbered list of guesses of a correct spelling of the word, and you will be asked for a replacement. You can either type in a replacement of your own, or enter the number of a guess you want to use. Typing # (pound) reprints the list of possible replacements. If instead of entering a replacement you simply hit return, all instances of the word will be left unchanged. If you type a + (plus) then all instances of the word will be left unchanged, and it will be added into your private dictionary so it will be recognized as being correctly spelled in future spell checks. If you type a \(backslash), then the spell check will be cancelled. A ? (question mark) prints help. Normally, if you run :spell a second time, words you ignored in the first pass will still be ignored in the second pass. Putting a ! (exclamation point) on the end of the :spell command causes it to restart with a clean slate.

:visual"

This is the same as the :edit command.

:version

Print out the current gate version number.

:write <file>

Save a copy of the current text buffer in the named file.

:!<cmd>

Do a shell escape to execute a unix command. The colon may be omitted.

:|<cmd>

Filter the current text through the given unix command. The command will be fed the current text on standard input, and whatever appears on standard output will replace the contents of the text file. This is normally used to pipe through formatting programs.

:/<pattern>/<replacement>/

Each occurance of the given pattern in the text entered so far will be replaced by the given replacement. As each occurance is found, you asked to confirm the substitution. Typing "y" does the substitution, typing "n" skips the substitution, typing "a" does the substition and all others without further prompting, and typing "q" stops the scan immediately with no further substitutions. Both the pattern and the replacement may include the characters "\n" which represents a newline character. This makes it possible to join and break lines. A "\\" indicates a backslash character, and a "\/" indicates a slash. The terminating slash on the command may be omitted. Note that this is intended only for simple editting. For complex editting tasks, use the :edit command to start up an editor.

:substitute /<pattern>/<replacement>/

Equivalent to the ":/" command.

Options may be set either on the command line (with a ``--'' prefix), by the :set command described above, or by putting them in the GATEOPTS environment variable. For example, from the csh(1) shell you could do:

    setenv GATEOPTS "nonovice maxcol=70"

or from bbs(1) you could do:

    define GATEOPTS 256 "nonovice maxcol=70"

Options currently supported are listed below. Default settings are installation dependent.

[no]askok

If askok is set, gate always asks if it is OK to enter this response. Otherwise it only asks if you do a :ok command. Askok is (more or less) implied by the spell or askspell options.

[no]backwrap

If the backwrap is turned on, backspacing in the first column will move you to the end of the previous line. If the terminal supports it, and the previous line of the text file is the previous line of the screen, gate will move the cursor up into that line. Otherwise, however, it reprints the line. This behavior is a bit weird and confusing to people who expect a full visual editor, it, so it may be good to disable this option for beginners. Note that backwrap will not work if the previous line is more than maxcol columns long.

cmdchar=<char>

Cmdchar specifies the character that is used at the begining of an input line to indicate that the rest of the line is a command. The default is a colon (:).

hotcol=<int>

Hotcol specifies the last column in which spaces may be entered. If you type a space beyond this column, you will be instantly moved to the next line. The length of your prompt is included in your line length. Normally hotcol is set just slightly smaller than maxcol. If hotcol is larger than maxcol, it has no effect.

maxcol=<int>

Maxcol specifies the last column in which any character may be entered. If you attempt to type a word extending past this column, it will be moved onto the next line. The length of your prompt is included in your line length. Normally it should be no larger than 79, since typing in the 80th column confuses some terminals. It can be set to a value greater than screen width of your terminal with the :set command, but not with the GATEOPTS.

[no]novice

If novice is set, gate will print additional help messages if you commit any of several common novice errors, like typing an input line with just the word "quit" on it.

outdent=<int>

When a response is displayed by PicoSpan or Yapp, each line has a space prepended. This will indent most lines one column, but lines starting with a tab will be unchanged. The outdent option allows gate to adjust the positions of its tabstops to correct for this. Effectively, it does tabbing as if the screen started outdent columns to the left of the end of the prompt.

prompt=<string>

Normally gate prints a > prompt for each line. The prompt can be set to any string, including a null string. It is slightly preferable to use a prompt whose length is equal to outdent, since this gives a more WYSIWYG display, but this is by no means necessary.

[no]secure

If secure is set, the buffer file being editted will be kept depermitted as much as possible, to keep people from reading your text before you are finished with it. If nosecure is set, the buffer file will normally be readable to others.

[no|ask]spell

If spell is set, the spellchecker will automatically be started when you exit. If askspell is set, you will be asked if you want to check spelling when you exit.

Jan Wolter (unixpapa.com)

bbs(1), yapp(1), vi(1), pico(1), stty(1), ispell(1)