joe - Man Page

• Open a new file in JOE: joe
• Open a specific file: joe path/to/file
• Open a specific file, positioning the cursor at the specified line: joe +line path/to/file
• Open a specific file in read-only mode: joe -rdonly path/to/file

tldr.sh

joe [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
jstar [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
jmacs [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
rjoe [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...
jpico [global-options] [ [local-options] filename ]...

JOE is a powerful console screen editor. It has a "mode-less" user interface which is similar to many user-friendly PC editors. Users of Micro-Pro´s WordStar or Borland´s "Turbo" languages will feel at home. JOE is a full featured UNIX screen-editor though, and has many features for editing programs and text.

JOE also emulates several other editors. JSTAR is a close imitation of WordStar with many "JOE" extensions. JPICO is a close imitation of the Pine mailing system´s PICO editor, but with many extensions and improvements. JMACS is a GNU-EMACS imitation. RJOE is a restricted version of JOE, which allows you to edit only the files specified on the command line.

Although JOE is actually five different editors, it still requires only one executable, but one with five different names. The name of the editor with an "rc" appended gives the name of JOE´s initialization file, which determines the personality of the editor.

JOE is free software; you can distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. JOE is available over the Internet from http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor.

To start the editor, type joe followed by zero or more names of files you want to edit. Each file name may be preceded by a local option setting (see the local options table which follows). Other global options, which apply to the editor as a whole, may also be placed on the command line (see the global options table which follows). If you are editing a new file, you can either give the name of the new file when you invoke the editor, or in the editor when you save the new file. A modified syntax for file names is provided to allow you to edit program output, standard input/output, or sections of files or devices. See the section Filenames below for details.

Once you are in the editor, you can type in text and use special control-character sequences to perform other editing tasks. To find out what the control-character sequences are, read the rest of this man page or type ^K H for help in the editor.

Now for some obscure computer-lore:

The ^ means that you hold down the Control key while pressing the following key (the same way the Shift key works for uppercase letters). A number of control-key sequences are duplicated on other keys, so that you don´t need to press the control key: Esc will work in place of ^[, Del will work in place of ^?, Backspace will work in place of ^H, Tab will work in place of ^I, Return or Enter will work in place of ^M and Linefeed will work in place of ^J. Some keyboards may give you trouble with some control keys. ^_, ^^ and ^@ can usually be entered without pressing shift (i.e., try ^-, ^6 and ^2). Other keyboards may reassign these to other keys. Try: ^., ^, and ^/. ^Space can usually be used in place of ^@. ^\ and ^] are interpreted by many communication programs, including telnet and kermit. Usually you just hit the key twice to get it to pass through the communication program.

On some keyboards, holding the Alt key down while pressing another key is the same as typing Esc before typing the other key.

Once you have typed ^K H, the first help window appears at the top of the screen. You can continue to enter and edit text while the help window is on. To page through other topics, hit Esc , and Esc . (that is, Esc , and Esc .). Use ^K H to dismiss the help window.

You can customize the keyboard layout, the help screens and a number of behavior defaults by copying JOE´s initialization file (usually /etc/joe/joerc) to .joerc in your home directory and then by modifying it. See the section joerc below.

To have JOE used as your default editor for e-mail and News, you need to set the EDITOR and VISUAL environment variables in your shell initialization file (.cshrc or .profile) to refer to JOE (JOE usually resides as /usr/bin/joe).

There are a number of other obscure invocation parameters which may have to be set, particularly if your terminal screen is not updating as you think it should. See the section Environment variables below.

These options can also be specified in the joerc file. Local options can be set depending on the file-name extension. Programs (.c, .h or .p extension) usually have autoindent enabled. Wordwrap is enabled on other files, but rc files have it disabled.

An option is enabled when it´s given like this:

-wordwrap

An option is disabled when it´s given like this:

--wordwrap

Some options take arguments. Arguments are given like this:

-lmargin 5

The following global options may be specified on the command line:

• asis
  Characters with codes above 127 will be sent to the terminal as-is, instead of as inverse of the corresponding character below 128. If this does not work, check your terminal server. This option has no effect if UTF-8 encoding is used.
• assume_256color
  Assume ANSI-like terminal emulator supports 256 colors even if termcap entry says it doesn´t.
• assume_color
  Assume ANSI-like terminal emulator supports color even if termcap entry says it doesn´t.
• text_color color
  Set color for text.
• status_color color
  Set color for status bar.
• help_color color
  Set color for help.
• menu_color color
  Set color for menus.
• prompt_color color
  Set color for prompts.
• msg_color color
  Set color for messages.
• autoswap
  Automatically swap ^K B with ^K K if necessary to mark a legal block during block copy/move commands.
• backpath path
  Sets path to a directory where all backup files are to be stored. If this is unset (the default) backup files are stored in the directory containing the file.
• baud nnn
  Set the baud rate for the purposes of terminal screen optimization (overrides value reported by stty). JOE inserts delays for baud rates below 19200, which bypasses tty buffering so that typeahead will interrupt the screen output. Scrolling commands will not be used for 38400 baud and above. This is useful for X-terms and other console ttys which really aren´t going over a serial line.
• beep
  Enable beeps when edit commands return errors, for example when the cursor goes past extremes.
• break_links
  When enabled, JOE first deletes the file before writing it in order to break hard-links and symbolic-links.
• break_hardlinks
  When enabled, and the file is not a symbolic links, JOE first deletes the file before writing it in order to break hard-links.
• brpaste
  When JOE starts, send command to the terminal emulator that enables "bracketed paste mode" (but only if the terminal seems to have the ANSI command set). In this mode, text pasted into the window is bracketed with ESC [ 2 0 0 ~ and ESC [ 2 0 1 ~.
• columns nnn
  Set number of columns in terminal emulator (in case termcap entry is wrong). This is only useful on old system which don´t have the "get window size" ioctl.
• csmode
  Enable continued search mode: Successive ^K Fs repeat the current search instead of prompting for a new one.
• dopadding
  Enable JOE to send padding NULs to the terminal (for very old terminals).
• exask
  When set, ^K X prompts for a new name before saving the file.
• floatmouse
  When set, mouse clicks can position the cursor beyond the ends of lines.
• guess_crlf
  When set, JOE tries to guess the file format MS-DOS or UNIX.
• guess_indent
  When set, JOE tries to guess the indentation character and indentation step based on the contents of the file. The algorithm is to find the greatest common factor of the three most common indentations found in the file.
• guess_non_utf8
  When set, enable guessing of non-UTF-8 files in UTF-8 locales.
• guess_utf8
  When set, enable guessing of UTF-8 files in non-UTF-8 locales.
• guess_utf16
  When set, enable guessing of UTF-16 files. If a UTF-16BE or UTF-16LE file is detected, it is converted to UTF-8 during load, and converted back to UTF-16 during save.
• helpon
  When set, start off with the on-line help enabled.
• help_is_utf8
  When set, the help text in the joerc file is assumed to be UTF-8.
• icase
  Search is case insensitive by default when set.
• joe_state
  Enable reading and writing of ~/.joe_state file
• joexterm
  Set this if xterm was configured with --paste64 option for better mouse support.
• keepup
  The column number on the status line is updated constantly when this is set, otherwise it is updated only once a second.
• language language
  Sets language for aspell.
• lightoff
  Automatically turn off ^K B ^K K highlighting after a block operation.
• lines nnn
  Set number of lines in terminal emulator (in case termcap entry is wrong). This is only useful on old system which don´t have the "get window size" ioctl.
• marking
  Enable marking mode: highlights between ^K B and cursor.
• menu_above
  Put menus above prompt instead of below them.
• menu_explorer
  Stay in menu when a directory is selected (otherwise the directory is added to the path and the cursor jumps back to the prompt).
• menu_jump
  Jump into the file selection menu when Tab Tab is hit.
• mid
  If this option is set and the cursor moves off the window, the window will be scrolled so that the cursor is in the center. This option is forced on slow terminals which don´t have scrolling commands.
• left nn
  This sets the number of columns the screen scrolls to the left when cursor moves past the left edge or when the crawll command is issued. If nn is negative, then it´s the fraction of the screen to scroll. For example, -2 means scroll 1/2 the screen.
• right nn
  This sets the number of columns the screen scrolls to the right when cursor moves past the right edge or when the crawlr command is issued. If nn is negative, then it´s the fraction of the screen to scroll. For example, -3 means scroll 1/3 the screen.
• mouse
  Enable xterm mouse support.
• nobackups
  Disable backup files.
• nocurdir
  Disable current-directory prefix in prompts.
• noexmsg
  Disable exiting message ("File not changed so no update needed")
• nolinefeeds
  Disable sending linefeeds to preserve screen history in terminal emulator´s scroll-back buffer (only relevant when notite mode is enabled).
• nolocks
  Disable EMACS compatible file locks.
• nomodcheck
  Disable periodic file modification check.
• nonotice
  This option prevents the copyright notice from being displayed when the editor starts.
• nosta
  This option eliminates the top-most status line. It´s nice for when you only want to see your text on the screen or if you´re using a vt52.
• notagsmenu
  Disable selection menu for tags search with multiple results.
• notite
  Disable ti and te termcap sequences which are usually set up to save and restore the terminal screen contents when JOE starts and exits.
• pastehack
  If keyboard input comes in as one block assume it´s a mouse paste and disable autoindent and wordwrap.
• noxon
  Disable ^S and ^Q flow control, possibly allowing ^S and ^Q to be used as editor keys.
• orphan
  Orphan extra files given on the command line instead of creating windows for them (the files are loaded, but you need to use switch-buffer commands to access them).
• pg nnn
  Set number of lines to keep during Page Up and Page Down (use -1 for 1/2 window size).
• regex
  Use standard regular expression syntax by default, instead of the JOE syntax (where special characters have their meaning only when preceded with backslash).
• restore
  Set to have cursor positions restored to last positions of previously edited files.
• rtbutton
  Swap left and right mouse buttons.
• search_prompting
  Show previous search string in search command (like in PICO).
• skiptop nnn
  When set to N, the first N lines of the terminal screen are not used by JOE and are instead left with their original contents. This is useful for programs which call JOE to leave a message for the user.
• square
  Enable rectangular block mode.
• transpose
  Transpose rows with columns in all menus.
• title
  Display context (titles) in status line.  When enabled this shows the first line of the function that the cursor is in on the status line.  The syntax file context.jsf identifies which lines are title lines.
• type
  Select file type, overriding the automatically determined type. The file types are defined in the ftyperc file.
• undo_keep nnn
  Sets number of undo records to keep (0 means infinite).
• usetabs
  Set to allow rectangular block operations to use tabs.
• wrap
  Enable search to wrap to beginning of file.

The following local options may be specified on the command line:

• +nnn
  The cursor starts on the specified line.
• autoindent
  Enable auto-indent mode. When you hit Enter on an indented line, the indentation is duplicated onto the new line.
• c_comment
  Enable ^G skipping of C-style comments /.../
• cpara characters
  Sets list of characters which can indent paragraphs.
• cnotpara characters
  Sets list of characters which begin lines which are definitely not part of paragraphs.
• cpp_comment
  Enable ^G skipping of C++-style comments // ...
• crlf
  JOE uses CR-LF as the end of line sequence instead of just LF. This is for editing MS-DOS or VMS files.
• encoding encoding
  Set file encoding (like utf-8 or 8859-1).
• flowed
  Set to force an extra space after each line of a paragraph but the last.
• force
  When set, a final newline is appended to the file if there isn´t one when the file is saved.
• french
  When set, only one space is inserted after periods in paragraph reformats instead of two.
• hex
  Enable hex-dump mode.
• highlight
  Enable syntax highlighting.
• highlighter_context
  Enable use of syntax file to identify comments and strings which should be skipped over during ^G matching.
• indentc nnn
  Sets the indentation character for shift left and shift right (^K , and ^K .). Use 32 for Space, 9 for Tab.
• indentfirst
  When set, the smart home key jumps to the indentation point first, otherwise it jumps to column 1 first.
• istep nnn
  Sets indentation step.
• linums
  Enable line number display.
• lmargin
  Set left margin.
• lmsg
  Define left-side status bar message.
• overwrite
  Enable overtype mode. Typing overwrites existing characters instead of inserting before them.
• picture
  Enable "picture" mode- allows cursor to go past ends of lines.
• pound_comment
  ^G ignores # ... comments.
• purify
  Fix indentation if necessary before shifting or smart backspace. For example, if indentation uses a mix of tabs and spaces, and indentc is space, then indentation will be converted to all spaces before the shifting operation.
• rdonly
  Set read-only mode.
• rmargin nnn
  Set right margin.
• rmsg string
  Define right-side status bar message.
• semi_comment
  ^G ignores ; ... comments.
• single_quoted
  ^G ignores ´...´
• smartbacks
  Enable smart backspace and tab. When this mode is set backspace and tab indent or unindent based on the values of the istep and indentc options.
• smarthome
  Home key first moves cursor to beginning of line, then if hit again, to the first non-blank character.
• smsg string
  Define status command format when cursor is on a character.
• spaces
  Insert spaces when Tab key is hit.
• syntax syntax
  Set syntax for syntax highlighting.
• tab nnn
  Set tab stop width.
• text_delimiters word delimiter list
  Give list of word delimiters which ^G will step through.

For example, "begin=end:if=elif=else=endif" means that ^G will jump between the matching if, elif, else and endif.

• vhdl_comment
  ^G ignores -- ... comments
• wordwrap
  JOE wraps the previous word when you type past the right margin.
• zmsg string
  Define status command format when cursor is at end of file.
• xmsg string
  Define startup message (usually the copyright notice).
• aborthint string
  Give the key sequence to show in prompts for abort (usually ^C).
• helphint string
  Give the key sequence to show in prompts for help (usually ^K H).

%t  12 hour time
%u  24 hour time
%T  O for overtype mode, I for insert mode
%W  W if wordwrap is enabled
%I  A if autoindent is enabled
%X  Rectangle mode indicator
%n  File name
%m  ´(Modified)´ if file has been changed
%*  ´*´ if file has been changed
%R  Read-only indicator
%r  Row (line) number
%c  Column number
%o  Byte offset into file
%O  Byte offset into file in hex
%a  Ascii value of character under cursor
%A  Ascii value of character under cursor in hex
%w  Width of character under cursor
%p  Percent of file cursor is at
%l  No. lines in file
%k  Entered prefix keys
%S  ´*SHELL*´ if there is a shell running in window
%M  Macro recording message
%y  Syntax
%e  Encoding
%x  Context (first non-indented line going backwards)
%dd day
%dm month
%dY year
%Ename%  value of environment variable
%Tname%  value of option (ON or OFF for Boolean options)

\i  Inverse
\u  Underline
\b  Bold
\d  Dim
\f  Blink
\l  Italic

When you type characters into the editor, they are normally inserted into the file being edited (or appended to the file if the cursor is at the end of the file). This is the normal operating mode of the editor. If you want to replace some existing text, you have to delete the old text before or after you type in the replacement text. The Backspace key can be used for deleting text: move the cursor to right after the text you want to delete and hit Backspace a number of times.

Hit the Enter or Return key to insert a line-break. For example, if the cursor was in the middle of a line and you hit Enter, the line would be split into two lines with the cursor appearing at the beginning of the second line. Hit Backspace at the beginning of a line to eliminate a line-break.

Use the arrow keys to move around the file. If your keyboard doesn´t have arrow keys (or if they don´t work for some reason), use ^F to move forwards (right), ^B to move backwards (left), ^P to move to the previous line (up), and ^N to move to the next line (down). The right and left arrow keys simply move forwards or backwards one character at a time through the text: if you´re at the beginning of a line and you press left-arrow, you will end up at the end of the previous line. The up and down arrow keys move forwards and backwards by enough characters so that the cursor appears in the same column that it was in on the original line.

If you want to indent the text you enter, you can use the Tab key. This inserts a special control character which makes the characters which follow it begin at the next tab stop. Tab stops normally occur every 8 columns, but this can be changed with the ^T D command. PASCAL and C programmers often set tab stops on every 4 columns.

If for some reason your terminal screen gets messed up (for example, if you receive a mail notice from biff), you can have the editor refresh the screen by hitting ^R.

There are many other keys for deleting text and moving around the file. For example, hit ^D to delete the character the cursor is on instead of deleting backwards like Backspace. ^D will also delete a line-break if the cursor is at the end of a line. Type ^Y to delete the entire line the cursor is on or ^J to delete just from the cursor to the end of the line.

Hit ^A to move the cursor to the beginning of the line it´s on. Hit ^E to move the cursor to the end of the line. Hit ^U or ^V for scrolling the cursor up or down 1/2 a screen´s worth.
"Scrolling" means that the text on the screen moves, but the cursor stays at the same place relative to the screen. Hit ^K U or ^K V to move the cursor to the beginning or the end of the file. Look at the help screens in the editor to find even more delete and movement commands.

If you make a mistake, you can hit ^_ to "undo" it. On most keyboards you hit just ^- to get ^_, but on some you might have to hold both the Shift and Control keys down at the same time to get it. If you "undo" too much, you can "redo" the changes back into existence by hitting ^^ (type this with just ^6 on most keyboards).

echo "hi" | joe

joe filename  </dev/tty >/dev/tty

JOE natively handles two classes of character sets: UTF-8 and byte coded (like ISO-8859-1). For these character sets, the file is loaded as-is into memory, and is exactly preserved during save, even if it contains UTF-8 coding errors.

It can not yet natively handle other major classes such as UTF-16 or GB2312. There are other restrictions: character sets must use LF (0x0A) or CR-LF (0x0D - 0x0A) as line terminators, space must be 0x20 and tab must be 0x09. Basically, the files must be UNIX or MS-DOS compatible text files.

This means EBCDIC will not work properly (but you would need to handle fixed record length lines anyway) and character sets which use CR terminated lines (MACs) will not yet work.

JOE now supports UTF-16 (both big endian and little endian). It supports UTF-16 by converting to UTF-8 during load, and converting back to UTF-16 during save.

The terminal and the file can have different encodings. JOE will translate between the two. Currently, one of the two must be UTF-8 for translation to work.

The character set for the terminal and the default character set assumed for files is determined by the ´LC_ALL´ environment variable (and if that´s not set, LC_CTYPE and LANG are also checked).

For example, if LC_ALL is set to:

de_DE

Then the character set will be ISO-8859-1.

If LC_ALL is set to:

de_DE.UTF-8

The character set will be UTF-8.

Hit ^T E to change the coding for the file. Hit Tab Tab at this prompt to get a list of available codings. There are a number of built-in character sets, plus you can install character sets in the ~/.joe/charmaps and /usr/share/joe/charmaps directories.

Check: /usr/share/i18n/charmaps for example character set files. Only byte oriented character sets will work. Also, the file should not be gzipped (all of the charmap files in /usr/share/i18n/charmaps on my computer were compressed). The parser is very bad, so basically the file has to look exactly like the example one in /usr/share/joe/charmaps.

You can hit ^K Space to see the current character set.

You can hit ^Q x to enter a Unicode character if the file coding is UTF-8.

Most prompts record a history of the responses you give them. You can hit up and down arrow to step through these histories.

Prompts are actually single line windows with no status line, so you can use any editing command that you normally use on text within the prompts. The prompt history is actually just other lines of the same "prompt file". Thus you can can search backwards though the prompt history with the normal ^K F command if you want.

Since prompts are windows, you can also switch out of them with ^K P and ^K N.

Hit ^K Space to have JOE report the line number, column number, and byte number on the last line of the screen. The number associated with the character the cursor is on (its ASCII code) is also shown. You can have the line number and/or column number always displayed on the status line by placing the appropriate escape sequences in the status line setup strings. Edit the joerc file for details.

Hit the space bar. This runs an innocuous command (it shows the line number on the status bar).

If you need to temporarily stop the editor and go back to the shell, hit ^K Z. You might want to do this to stop whatever you´re editing and answer an e-mail message or read this man page, for example. You have to type fg or exit (you´ll be told which when you hit ^K Z) to return to the editor.

Hit ^K F to have the editor search forwards or backwards for a text fragment (string) for you. You will be prompted for the text to search for. After you hit Enter, you are prompted to enter options.
You can just hit Enter again to have the editor immediately search forwards for the text, or you can enter one or more of these options:

• b

Search backwards instead of forwards.

• i

Treat uppercase and lower case letters as the same when searching. Normally uppercase and lowercase letters are considered to be different.

• nnn

(where nnn is a number) If you enter a number, JOE searches for the Nth occurrence of the text. This is useful for going to specific places in files structured in some regular manner.

• r

Replace text. If you enter the r option, then you will be further prompted for replacement text. Each time the editor finds the search text, you will be prompted as to whether you want to replace the found search text with the replacement text. You hit: y to replace the text and then find the next occurrence, n to not replace this text, but to then find the next occurrence, r to replace all of the remaining occurrences of the search text in the remainder of the file without asking for confirmation (subject to the nnn option above), or ^C to stop searching and replacing.

You can also hit B or Backspace to back up to the previously found text (if it had been replaced, the replacement is undone).

• a

The search covers all loaded buffers. So to replace all instances of "foo" with "bar" in all .c files in the current directory:

joe *.c
   ^K F
       foo <Enter>
       ra <Enter>
       bar <Enter>

• e

The search covers all files in the grep or make error list. You can use a UNIX command to generate a list of files and search and replace through the list. So to replace all instances of "foo" with "bar" in all .c files which begin with f. You can also use "ls" and "find" instead of grep to create the file list.

Esc G
  grep -n foo f*.c <Enter>
^K F
       foo <Enter>
   re <Enter>
   bar <Enter>

• x

JOE will use the standard syntax for regular expressions if this option is given. In the standard syntax, these characters have their special meanings directly, and do not have to be escaped with backslash: ., *, +, ?, {, }, (, ), |, ^, $ and [.

• y

JOE will use the JOE syntax for regular expressions instead of the standard syntax. This overrides the "-regex" option.

• v

JOE will send debug information about the regular expression to the startup log. The log can be viewed with the showlog command.

You can hit ^L to repeat the previous search.

You can hit ^K H at the search and replace options prompt to bring up a list of all search and replace options.

Use Esc S to start an increment search forwards, or Esc R to start an incremental search backwards. As you type the search string, the cursor will jump to the first text that matches the regular expression you have entered so far.

Hit Esc S or Esc R again to find the next occurrence of the text or to switch the direction of the search.

^S, ^\ and ^L have the same effect as Esc S. ^R has the same effect as Esc R. These keys are to support JMACS.

Hit Backspace to undo the last incremental search action. The last action could be a repeat of a previous search or the entering of a new character.

Use ^Q to insert control characters into the search text. Previously, ` could also be used for this.

Hit any other key to exit the increment search.

Hit ^G to jump between matching delimiters. This works on both character delimiters (like ´(´ and ´)´) and word delimiters for languages like Pascal and Verilog which use "begin" and "end" to delimit blocks. It also works for matching start and end tags in XML. If a word is not known, ^G starts a search with the word moved into the search prompt.

For ^G to work on word delimiters, the cursor must be positioned on the first letter of the word. So in XML, if the cursor is on the < in <foo>, it will jump to the >. But if it is one the ´f´, it will jump to the matching </foo>. Likewise, in C, ^G will jump between #if, #else and #endif, but you need to position the cursor on the letter, not the ´#´.

^G is smart enough to skip delimiters found in quoted or commented-out matter. You need to tell JOE how your language indicates this: see the ftyperc file for examples of how this is done.

The are a number of options which control the behavior of ^G. These options control which kinds of comments ^G can skip over:

• c_comment
• cpp_comment
• pount_comment
• semi_comment
• vhdl_comment

These options determine which kinds of strings ^G can skip over:

• single_quoted
• double_quoted

This option allows an annotated syntax file to determine which text can be counted as comments or strings which can be skipped over by ^G:

• highlighter_context

This option enables the use of syntax files to identify comments and strings which should be skipped over during ^G matching. The syntax file states should be annotated with the string and comment keywords for this to work.

• text_delimiters

This option provides a list of word delimiters to match. For example, "begin=end:if=elif=else=endif" means that ^G will jump between the matching if, elif, else and endif. It will also jump between begin and end.

^G has a built-in table for matching character delimiters- it knows that ( goes with ).

^G has a built-in parser to handle start/end tag matching for XML.

If you want to move, copy, save or delete a specific section of text, you can do it with highlighted blocks. First, move the cursor to the start of the section of text you want to work on, and press ^K B. Then move the cursor to the character just after the end of the text you want to affect and press ^K K. The text between the ^K B and ^K K should become highlighted. Now you can move your cursor to someplace else in your document and press ^K M to move the highlighted text there.
You can press ^K C to make a copy of the highlighted text and insert it to where the cursor is positioned. ^K Y to deletes the highlighted text. ^K W, writes the highlighted text to a file.

A very useful command is ^K /, which filters a block of text through a UNIX command. For example, if you select a list of words with ^K B and ^K K, and then type ^K / sort, the list of words will be sorted. Another useful UNIX command for ^K /, is tr. If you type ^K / tr a-z A-Z, then all of the letters in the highlighted block will be converted to uppercase.

Auto-indent mode is toggled with the ^T I command. The joerc file is normally set up so that files with names ending with .p, .c or .h have auto-indent mode enabled. When auto-indent mode is enabled and you hit Enter, the cursor will be placed in the same column that the first non-whitespace character was on in the original line.

You can use the ^K , and ^K . commands to shift a block of text to the left or right. If no highlighting is set when you give these commands, the program block (as indicated by indentation) that the cursor is located in will be selected, and will be moved by subsequent ^K , and ^K . commands.

The number of columns these commands shift by and the character used for shifting can be set through the istep and indentc options. These options are available in the ^T menu. Also, ^T = can be used to quickly select from a number of common values for indentation step and character.

JOE has a number of additional options related to indenting programs:

• smartbacks
  Enable smart backspace and tab. When this mode is set Backspace and Tab indent or unindent based on the values of the istep and indentc options.
• smarthome
  The Home and ^A keys first move the cursor to the beginning of the line, then if hit again, to the first non-blank character.
• indentfirst
  Smart home goes to first non-blank character first, instead of going to the beginning of the line first.
• purify
  Fix indentation if necessary before shifting or smart backspace. For example, if indentation uses a mix of tabs and spaces, and indentc is space, then indentation will be converted to all spaces before the shifting operation.
• guess_indent
  When set, JOE tries to guess the indentation character and indentation step based on the contents of the file. The algorithm is to find the greatest common factor of the three most common indentations found in the file.

Type ^T X to have ^K B and ^K K select rectangular blocks instead of stream-of-text blocks. This is also known as columnar mode. This mode is useful for moving, copying, deleting or saving columns of text. You can also filter columns of text with the ^K / command- if you want to sort a column, for example. The insert file command, ^K R is also affected.

When rectangle mode is selected, overtype mode is also useful (^T T). When overtype mode is selected, rectangles will replace existing text instead of getting inserted before it. Also the delete block command (^K Y) will clear the selected rectangle with Spaces and Tabs instead of deleting it. Overtype mode is especially useful for the filter block command (^K /), since it will maintain the original width of the selected column.

Use ^T P to enter or exit picture mode. Picture mode helps with ASCII drawings.

Picture mode controls how JOE handles the case where the cursor is past the ends of lines. This happens when you use the up or down arrow keys to move the cursor from the end of a long line to a short line.

If you attempt to type a character in this case:

If picture mode is off, the cursor will jump to the end of the line and insert it there.

If picture mode is on, the line is filled with spaces so that the character can be inserted at the cursor position.

You can edit more than one file at the same time or edit two or more different places of the same file. To do this, hit ^K O, to split the screen into two windows. Use ^K P or ^K N to move the cursor into the top window or the lower window. Use ^K E to edit a new file in one of the windows. A window will go away when you save the file with ^K X or abort the file with ^C. If you abort a file which exists in two windows, one of the window goes away, not the file.

You can hit ^K O within a window to create even more windows. If you have too many windows on the screen, but you don´t want to eliminate them, you can hit ^K I. This will show only the window the cursor is in, or if there was only one window on the screen to begin with, try to fit all hidden windows on the screen. If there are more windows than can fit on the screen, you can hit ^K N on the bottom-most window or ^K P on the top-most window to get to them.

If you gave more than one file name to JOE on the command line, each file will be placed in a different window.

You can change the height of the windows with the ^K G and ^K T commands.

Scratch buffers are buffers which JOE does not worry about trying to preserve. JOE will not ask to save modified scratch buffers. Pop-up shell windows, the startup log and compile and grep message windows are scratch buffers. You can create your own scratch buffer with the scratch command.

The following commands load scratch buffers:

• showlog Show startup log
• mwind Show message window (compile / grep messages from Esc C and Esc G commands).

Macros allow you to record a series of keystrokes and replay them with the press of two keys. This is useful to automate repetitive tasks. To start a macro recording, hit ^K [ followed by a number from 0 to 9. The status line will display (Macro n recording...). Now, type in the series of keystrokes that you want to be able to repeat. The commands you type will have their usual effects. Hit ^K ] to stop recording the macro. Hit ^K followed by the number you recorded the macro in to execute one iteration of the key-strokes.

For example, if you want to put "**" in front of a number of lines, you can type:

^K [ 0 ^A **down arrow\ ^K ]

Which starts the macro recording, moves the cursor to the beginning of the line, inserts "**", moves the cursor down one line, and then ends the recording. Since we included the key-strokes needed to position the cursor on the next line, we can repeatedly use this macro without having to move the cursor ourselves, something you should always keep in mind when recording a macro.

A macro is a comma separated list of commands. When the macro is executed, each command is executed until either the end of the list is reached, or one of the commands fails (non-zero return value from the command). Failed commands beep if you have beeps enabled (^T B).

Hit Esc D to insert the current set of keyboard macros as text into the current buffer. For example, the "**" insert macro above looks like this:

home,"**",dnarw ^K 0    Macro 0

You could insert this into your .joerc file and change the key sequence (the K 0) to something more permanent.

:def foo eof,bol

prevw,pgdn!,nextw

prevw,pgdn-!,nextw

prevw,pgdn#!,nextw

if~,"arg<0",then,
    ltarw,
else,
    rtarw,
endif

If you are editing a large C program with many source files, you can use the ctags program to generate a tags file. This file contains a list of program symbols and the files and positions where the symbols are defined.

First, create the tags file with the "ctags" program. For example:

ctags *.c *.h

This will create a file called "tags" in the current directory.

JOE looks for the "tags" file in the current directory. If there is none, it will try to open the file specified by the TAGS environment variable.

Paths in the tags file are always relative to location of the tags file itself.

The tags file contains a list of identifier definition locations in one of these formats:

identifier filename /search-expression/[;comments]

identifier filename ?search-expression?[;comments]

identifier filename line-number[;comments]

Some versions of ctags include class-names in the identifiers:

class::member

In this case, JOE will match on any of these strings:

member
::member
class::member

Some versions of ctags include a filename in the identifier:

filename:identifier

In this case JOE will only find the identifier if the buffer name matches the filename.

The search-expression is a vi regular expression, but JOE only supports the following special characters:

^ at the beginning means expression starts at beginning of line

$ at the end means expression ends at end of line

\x quote x (suppress meaning of /, ?, ^ or $)

Type ^K ; to bring up a tags search prompt. If the cursor had been on an identifier, the prompt is pre-loaded with it. Tab completion works in this prompt (it uses the tags file to find completions).

When you hit Enter, the tags search commences:

If there is one and only one match, JOE will jump directly to the definition.

If there are multiple matches, then the behavior is controlled by the notagsmenu option. If notagsmenu is enabled JOE jumps to the first definition. If you hit ^K ; again before hitting any other keys, JOE jumps to the next definition, and so on. The "tagjump" command also performs this function.

If notagsmenu is disabled, JOE brings up a menu of all the matches. You select the one you want and JOE jumps to it. If you hit ^K ; again before hitting any other keys, the same menu re-appears with the cursor left in the original location.

You can hit ^K - to move the cursor back to the original location before the tags search (often ^C will work as well).

Since ^K ; loads the definition file into the current window, you probably want to split the window first with ^K O, to have both the original file and the definition file loaded.

JOE has a built-in calculator which can be invoked with Esc M.

joe(sys,"[ 1 == 1 ]",rtn)

if,"joe(sys,\"[ 1 == 1 ]\",rtn)",then,"TRUE",endif

Hit ^K ´ to run a command shell in one of JOE´s windows. When the cursor is at the end of a shell window (use ^K V if it´s not), whatever you type is passed to the shell instead of the buffer. Any output from the shell or from commands executed in the shell is appended to the shell window (the cursor will follow this output if it´s at the end of the shell window). This command is useful for recording the results of shell commands- for example the output of make, the result of grepping a set of files for a string, or directory listings from FTP sessions. Besides typeable characters, the keys ^C, Backspace, Del, Return and ^D are passed to the shell. Type the shell exit command to stop recording shell output. If you press ^C in a shell window, when the cursor is not at the end of the window, the shell is killed.

If you use Bash, you can hit: ^Q Up Arrow and ^Q Down Arrow to scroll through Bash´s history buffer. Other keys work as well: try ^Q ^A to go to beginning of line or ^Q ^E to go to end of line. Unfortunately JOE only emulates a dumb terminal, so you have to use a lot of imagination to do any editing beyond hitting backspace.

In general, any character quoted with ^Q is sent to the shell.

Also sent to the shell: Tab, Backspace, Enter, ^C and ^D.

Hit F1 - F4 to open and switch between shell windows.

Pop-up shell windows use a full terminal emulator so that when you type "man ls" it´s formatted correctly (it works well enough so that some interactive programs can be used). Even so, the shell window is still an edit buffer.

The old shell window (with no terminal emulation) still exists: use ^K ´ to invoke it as usual. This is useful to see control sequences emitted by a program.

More of the keys get passed to the running program in pop-up shell windows compared with the older one. There is a :vtshell section of the joerc file to control which ones. In particular arrow keys and Ctrl-C are passed to the program. It means you can easily step through bash history with the arrow keys, or abort programs the normal way with Ctrl-C.

On the other hand, loss of Ctrl-C means it´s less obvious how to close the window. One way is to move the cursor off of the shell data entry point (with Ctrl-P), and then hit Ctrl-C. Another is to hit ^K Q. Finally, you can type ´pop´ at the command prompt.

If you need to pass a key to the shell that JOE normally uses, quote it. For example, if you invoke "emacs -nw" in the shell window, you can exit it with:

^Q ^X ^C

To quickly position the cursor back to the point where data is entered into the shell, hit ^K V.

When you open a shell window, a JOE-specific startup-script is sourced. It´s located in /etc/joe/shell.sh (also /etc/joe/shell.csh). It contains some aliases which allow you to control JOE with fake shell commands. I have these commands so far:

• clear
  erase shell window (delete buffer contents)
• joe file
  edit a file in JOE
• math 1+2
  evaluate equation using JOE´s calculator
• cd xyz
  change directory, keep JOE up to date
• markb
  same as ^KB
• markk
  same as ^KK
• mark command
  execute shell command, mark it´s output
• parse command
  execute shell command, parse it´s output for file names and line numbers (for find or grep)
• parser comman
  execute shell command, parse it´s output for errors (for gcc)
• release
  release parsed errors
• pop
  dismiss shell window (same as ^K Q)

These work by emitting an escape sequence recognized by the terminal emulator: Esc { joe_macro }. When this is received, the macro is executed. For security, only macros defined in the joerc file which begin with "shell_" can be executed this way.

        markb; find . | xargs grep -n FIXME; markk; parse

        parse find . | xargs grep -n FIXME

        parserr make

JOE has two parsers which can be used to generate the error list (list of file names / line numbers).

The "parserr" command parses the entire buffer, or if the block is set, just the highighted block for compiler error messages. The messages should be in this format:

<junk> file.name <junk> line-number <junk> : <junk>

The file name needs to be made of numbers, letters, ´/´, ´.´ and ´-´. It must have at leat one ´.´ in it. There needs to be a colon somewhere after the line number. Lines not in this format are ignored.

The "gparse´ command parses the entire buffer, or if the block is set, just the highlighted block for a list of filenames or filenames with line numbers from "grep -n", "find" and similar programs.

filename

filename:<junk>

filename:line-number:<junk>

Once JOE has the error list, there are a number of things you can do with it:

• Visit the files/locations in the list with Esc - and Esc =
• Search and replace across all files in the list by using the ´e´ search and replace option.
• Clear the list by using the "release" command.

Also, you can use Esc Space (´jump´ command) to parse the line the cursor is on and jump to the parsed filename and line number. ´jump´ uses the grep/find parser unless ´parserr´ had been previously issued in the buffer.

make[1]: Entering directory `/home/jhallen/joe-editor-mercurial/joe´

To enable highlight use ^T H.

To select the syntax, use ^T Y. You can hit Tab Tab at the prompt for a completion list.

JOE tries to determine the syntax to use based on the name and contents of the file. The configuration file /etc/joe/ftyperc contains the definitions.

Each syntax is defined by a file located /usr/share/joe/syntax/.

from c.jsf http://joe-editor.hg.sourceforge.net/hgweb/joe-editor/joe-editor/file/tip/syntax/c.jsf.in, slightly modified

A deterministic state machine that performs lexical analysis of the target language is provided in a syntax file. (This is the "assembly language" of syntax highlighting. A separate program could in principal be used to convert a regular expression NFA syntax into this format).

Each state begins with:

:<name> <color-name> <context>

name\ is the state´s name.

color-name\ is the color used for characters eaten by the state (really a symbol for a user definable color).

context\ tells JOE if the current character is part of a comment or a string. This allows JOE to skip over comments and strings when matching characters such as parentheses. To use this feature, the highlighter_context option must be applied to the files highlighted by the corresponding syntax. To apply the option, add it to ftyperc for those file entries.

The valid contexts are:

• comment This character is part of a comment. Example: /* comment */
• string This character is part of a string. Examples: "string" ´c´ ´string´

The comment and string delimiters themselves should be marked with the appropriate context. The context is considered to be part of the color, so the recolor=-N and recolormark options apply the context to previous characters.

The first state defined is the initial state.

Within a state, define transitions (jumps) to other states. Each jump has the form:

    <character-list> <target-state-name> [<option>s]

There are three ways to specify character-list\s, either * for any character not otherwise specified, % or & to match the character in the delimiter match buffer (% matches the saved character exactly, while & matches the opposite character, for example ( will match ) when & is used) or a literal list of characters within quotes (ranges and escape sequences allowed: see Escape Sequences). When the next character matches any in the list, a jump to the target-state is taken and the character is eaten (we advance to the next character of the file to be colored).

The * transition should be the first transition specified in the state.

There are several options:

• noeat - Do not eat the character, instead feed it to the next state (this tends to make the states smaller, but be careful: you can make infinite loops). ´noeat´ implies ´recolor=-1´.
• recolor=-N - Recolor the past N characters with the color of the target-state. For example once /* is recognized as the start of C comment, you want to color the /* with the C comment color with recolor=-2.
• mark - Mark beginning of a region with current position.
• markend - Mark end of region.
• recolormark - Recolor all of the characters in the marked region with the color of the target-state. If markend is not given, all of the characters up to the current position are recolored. Note that the marked region can not cross line boundaries and must be on the same line as recolormark.
• buffer - Start copying characters to a string buffer, beginning with this one (it´s OK to not terminate buffering with a matching ´strings´, ´istrings´ or ´hold´ option- the buffer is limited to leading 23 characters).
• save_c - Save character in delimiter match buffer.
• save_s - Copy string buffer to delimiter match buffer.
• strings - A list of strings follows. If the buffer matches any of the given strings, a jump to the target-state in the string list is taken instead of the normal jump.
• istrings - Same as strings, but case is ignored. Note: strings and istrings should be the last option on the line. They cause any options which follow them to be ignored.
• hold - Stop buffering string- a future ´strings´ or ´istrings´ will look at contents of buffer at this point. Useful for distinguishing commands and function calls in some languages ´write 7´ is a command ´write (´ is a function call- hold lets us stop at the space and delay the string lookup until the ( or 7.

The format of the string list is:

    "string"   <target-state> [<options>s]
    "string"   <target-state> [<options>s]
    "&"        <target-state> [<options>s]   # matches contents of delimiter match buffer
    done

(all of the options above are allowed except "strings", "istrings" and "noeat". noeat is always implied after a matched string).

Weirdness: only states have colors, not transitions. This means that you sometimes have to make dummy states with

    *    <next-state>    noeat

just to get a color specification.

Delimiter match buffer is for perl and shell: a regex in perl can be s<..>(...) and in shell you can say: <<EOS ....... EOS. The idea is that you capture the first delimiter into the match buffer (the < or first "EOS") and then match it to the second one with "&" in a string or character list.

    "\""    fred    call=string(dquote)

    "\""    whatever    return

.subr string

.ifdef dquote
    "\""    idle    return
    "´"     idle    return

^T options, the help screens and the key-sequence to editor command bindings are all defined in JOE´s initialization file. If you make a copy of this file (which normally resides in /etc/joe/joerc) to $HOME/.joerc, you can customize these setting to your liking. The syntax of the initialization file should be fairly obvious and there are further instructions in it.

The joerc file has a directive to include another file (:include). This facility is used to include a file called ftyperc (usually located in /etc/joe/ftyperc). ftyperc has the file type table which determines which local options (including syntax for the highlighter) are applied to each file type.

Esc X mode <enter>

Esc X menu <enter>

There are two levels of mouse support. The -mouse option enables the first level, which will work with any stock Xterm. If -joexterm is also set, mouse support is enhanced, but you need a recent version of XTerm, and it needs to be ./configured with the --enable-paste64 option.

When -mouse is set, you can:

• Left-click in a text window to set the cursor position. Left-click in a different window to move the cursor to a different window.
• Select text with the mouse. Left-click and drag to select some text- it will be as if you had used ^K B and ^K K to mark it. Left-click (but don´t drag) to position the cursor somewhere else. Middle click to copy the selected text to the cursor- it will be as if you had hit ^K C. If you drag past the edge of the text window, the window will auto-scroll to select more text. Unfortunately, Xterm does not send any codes when the cursor is outside of the Xterm frame itself, so this only works if the mouse is still contained within the Xterm frame. I´ve sent a patch to the Xterm maintainer to improve this, but he has not taken it yet.
• Resize windows with the mouse: click and hold on a status line dividing two windows to move it.
• Select menu entries (such as any completion menu or the ^T options menu): click on the menu item to position the cursor on it. Double-click on a menu item to select it (same as hitting return with cursor on it).
• If your mouse has a wheel, turning the wheel will scroll the window with the cursor.

Unfortunately, when -mouse is selected, cut and paste between X windows does not work as it normally does in a shell window (left-click and drag to select, middle click to paste). Instead, you have to hold the shift key down to do this: shift-left-click and drag to select, and shift-middle click to paste. Note that pasting text into JOE this way has problems: any ` characters will get messed up because ` means quote the following control character. Also if auto-indent is enabled, pasted text will not be indented properly.

Note: these problems with pasting have been resolved in recent versions of JOE.

• JOE enables "bracketed paste" mode in Xterm so that pasted text is bracketed with an escape sequence. This sequence causes JOE to disable the autoindent, wordwrap and spaces modes for the paste, and restores them when the paste is complete.
• Even if the terminal emulator does not have this bracketed paste mode, JOE detects pasted text by timing: If text arrives all at once (all in the same buffer), the text is assumed to be pasted text and autoindent and wordwrap are temporarily disabled.

When -joexterm is set (and you have ./configured Xterm with --enable-paste64):

• Cut & paste are properly integrated with X. Text selected with left-click-drag is available for pasting into other X windows (even if the selected text is larger than the text window). Text selected in other X windows can be pasted into JOE with middle-click. There are no problems pasting text containing ` or with auto-indent.

--enable-paste64 allows an application program to communicate Base-64 encoded selection data to and from the Xterm. The program has full control over what is in the selection data and when it is received or sent.

JOE can make use of monochrome Xterm, 8-color Xterm, 16-color Xterm, 88-color Xterm and 256-color Xterm. The number of colors which Xterm supports is determined by which "configure" script options are set before the Xterm source code is compiled. The termcap or terminfo entry must support how your Xterm is configured. On my Slackware Linux distribution, you have to set the TERM environment variable to one of these:

• xterm
• xterm-color
• xterm-16color
• xterm-88color
• xterm-256color

If the termcap/terminfo entry is missing, you can add the "-assume_256color" option to the joerc file. Note that this was broken for terminfo in versions of JOE below 3.4.

When it is working, the command: "joe -assume_256color -text_color bg_222" should have a gray background.

When this mode is selected (either put -hex on the command line, or look for "Hex edit mode" after hitting ^T), the buffer is displayed as a hex dump, but all of the editing commands operate the same way. It is most useful to select overtype mode in conjunction with hex dump (hit ^T T). Then typing will not insert.

• To enter the hex byte 0xF8 type ^Q x F 8
• You can use ^K C to copy a block as usual. If overtype mode is selected, the block will overwrite the destination data without changing the size of the file. Otherwise it inserts.
• Hit Esc X byte <Enter>, to jump to a particular byte offset. Hex values can be entered into this prompt like this: 0x2000.
• Search, incremental search, and search & replace all operate as usual.

For JOE to operate correctly, a number of other environment settings must be correct. The throughput (baud rate) of the connection between the computer and your terminal must be set correctly for JOE to update the screen smoothly and allow typeahead to defer the screen update. Use the stty nnn command to set this. You want to set it as close as possible to actual throughput of the connection. For example, if you are connected via a 1200 baud modem, you want to use this value for stty. If you are connected via 14.4k modem, but the terminal server you are connected to connects to the computer a 9600 baud, you want to set your speed as 9600 baud. The special baud rate of 38400 or extb is used to indicate that you have a very-high speed connection, such as a memory mapped console or an X-window terminal emulator. If you can´t use stty to set the actual throughput (perhaps because of a modem communicating with the computer at a different rate than it´s communicating over the phone line), you can put a numeric value in the BAUD environment variable instead (use setenv BAUD 9600 for csh or BAUD=9600; export BAUD for sh).

The TERM environment variable must be set to the type of terminal you´re using. If the size (number of lines/columns) of your terminal is different from what is reported in the TERMCAP or TERMINFO entry, you can set this with the stty rows nn cols nn command, or by setting the LINES and COLUMNS environment variables. The terminal size is variable on modern systems and is determined by an ioctl, so these parameters often have no effect.

JOE normally expects that flow control between the computer and your terminal to use ^S/^Q handshaking (i.e., if the computer is sending characters too fast for your terminal, your terminal sends ^S to stop the output and ^Q to restart it). If the flow control uses out-of-band or hardware handshaking or if your terminal is fast enough to always keep up with the computer output and you wish to map ^S/^Q to edit commands, you can set the environment variable NOXON to have JOE attempt to turn off ^S/^Q handshaking. If the connection between the computer and your terminal uses no handshaking and your terminal is not fast enough to keep up with the output of the computer, you can set the environment variable DOPADDING to have JOE slow down the output by interspersing PAD characters between the terminal screen update sequences.

Here is a complete list of the environment variables:

• BAUD
  Tell JOE the baud rate of the terminal (overrides value reported by stty).
• COLUMNS
  Set number of columns in terminal emulator (in case termcap entry is wrong). This is only useful on old system which don´t have the "get window size" ioctl.
• DOPADDING
  Enable JOE to send padding NULs to the terminal when set (for very old terminals).
• HOME
  Used to get path to home directory for ~ expansion and also to find ~/.joerc file ~/.joe directory.
• HOSTNAME
  Used to get hostname to put in EMACS compatible locks.
• JOETERM
  Gives terminal type: JOE will use this instead of TERM if it´s set.
• LANG
  Sets locale (like en_US.utf-8). JOE uses the first of these which is set: LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG.
• LC_ALL
  Sets locale (like en_US.utf-8). JOE uses the first of these which is set: LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG.
• LC_CTYPE
  Sets locale (like en_US.utf-8). JOE uses the first of these which is set: LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG.
• LINES
  Set number of lines in terminal emulator (in case termcap entry is wrong). This is only useful on old system which don´t have the "get window size" ioctl.
• NOXON
  Disable ^S and ^Q flow control, possibly allowing ^S and ^Q to be used as editor keys.
• SHELL
  Path to shell (like /bin/sh). This is used in several places: If you are on a system with no job control, this shell is invoked when you hit ^K Z. Also this is the shell which is run in shell windows. If SHELL is not set (Cygwin) or if it´s set to /bin/sh, JOE invokes the first of these which exists: /bin/bash, /usr/bin/bash, /bin/sh.
• SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX
  If this is set, it is appended to the file name instead of ~ to create the backup file name.
• TAGS
  If set to a path to a file, JOE tries to use this as the "tags" file if there is no "tags" file in the current directory.
• TEMP
  If set, gives path to directory to open swapfile instead of /tmp
• TERMCAP
  Used by JOE´s built-in termcap file parser (not used for terminfo). A termcap entry can be placed directly in this variable (which will be used if it matches TERM), or if it begins with /, it gives a list of paths to termcap files to search.
• TERMPATH
  Gives list of paths to termcap files to search when TERMCAP has a termcap entry (otherwise it´s ignored). The default list of paths to termcap files (when TERMCAP and TERMPATH do not have it) is: "~/.termcap /etc/joe/termcap /etc/termcap"
• TERM
  Gives terminal type, like "vt100" or "xterm".
• USER
  Used to get user name for EMACS compatible file locks.

These commands can be entered at the Esc X prompt.

The man pages jmacs(1), jpico(1), jstar(1) and rjoe(1) are aliases of joe(1).