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1999.5.18
The purpose of this document is to explain the proper usage of Pico, a simple UNIX
text editor designed to work with the Pine mail program, or as a standalone editor.
Table of Contents
If you use the Pine mailer, Pico will be automatically invoked as your
default editor for composing and changing mail messages. You may also
run Pico independently by typing pico at your shell prompt. Once running,
Pico displays a screen like this:
The top line of the Pico screen is a status line. On the left, it shows
which version of Pico is currently running. The center of the status
line displays the name of the file you are editing; if no files are open,
the words "New Buffer" are displayed. A message
("Modified") will appear to the right of the file name to
indicate outstanding modifications, or modifications that have not
yet been saved.
The message bar, three lines from the bottom, is used to report
informational messages and to prompt the user for additional input
to commands such as Search, Read, and Write. The two lines below that
display all the editing commands available from your current context.
Get Help [^G or (F1)] is always a choice. Pico's Help is context-sensitive;
that is, Help will give you the information most relevant to your
current situation.
To open a file for editing, choose the Read File [^R or (F5)] command
from the top-level menu. Type in a file name at the prompt, or use To
Files (^T) to access the file browser. A more complete explanation of
the capabilities of the file browser is available in the section File
Browsing with Pico below.
The file browser displays a directory listing for your current directory.
Use the normal commands for changing cursor position (see section
Traveling Through Pico) to highlight the file or directory you wish to
open. You may also use Goto Dir (G) to change directories. Press Select
(S) or ENTER when you have highlighted the correct file. The text of that
file will appear in Pico's editing buffer on the main screen. Any character
you type that is not part of a command sequence will be printed into this
buffer automatically.
When you have finished editing a file, choose Write Out [^O or (F3)] to
write the contents of the editing buffer to a file. Again, you will be
prompted for a file name. Choosing To Files (^T) will reopen the file
browser you saw earlier. If you exit Pico with ^X [or (F2)], the message
bar will automatically give you the option to write out before exiting.
If Pico is interrupted while running, the information in the editing buffer
will be saved under the current file name, with .save appended.
If the current work is unnamed, it will be saved as pico.save.
Pico is largely based on MicroEmacs 3.6. It uses the same commands for
changing cursor position as other Gnuemacs derivatives. Pico also offers
the ^C [or (F11)] Report Cursor Position feature at the editing buffer.
Invoking this command will display the cursor's location (line and character)
in the message bar. A table of basic navigational commands is listed below:
Table 1.
KEY SEQUENCE RESULTANT ACTION
---------------------------------------
^F forward one space
^B back one space
^P previous line
^N next line
^A beginning of line
^E end of line
^V (F8) forward one page
^Y (F7) back one page
The default mode for Pico is an insert mode. Unless otherwise
specified, any text you type will be inserted into the editing buffer.
To insert a tab, use ^I or the TAB key. To delete one character at the
cursor, the command is ^D. (You may also use the Delete key on your
keyboard to delete the character immediately to the right of the cursor.)
^K [or (F9)] kills the current line. To restore text, ^U [or (F10)]
undeletes the last killed line.
Pico has only one kind of search: a non-incremental, case-insensitive,
forward search. The command is ^W [or (F6)], for Where Is?. When you
enter ^W, the message bar will prompt you for a search string. The
cursor is placed on the first character of the search string when it is
found. The most recently entered search string will serve as a default
string the next time you invoke Where Is?. This search is one-directional,
but it wraps around so that the entire document is searched. When the
search wraps, a message "Search wrapped" will be displayed
on the message bar.
The command To Spell [^T or (F12) at the editing buffer] will examine
each word in the document. A misspelled word will be highlighted in the
editing buffer while the message bar offers alternatives and prompts for
replacement. Cancel the spelling check at any time by using ^C. You may
change the spellcheck routine used by Pico by setting the SPELL
environment variable. Alternative routines should read stdin (standard
input, default is the keyboard) and write to stdout (standard output,
default is the screen). The capacity of the default routine is limited,
so it may be worth the trouble to do this.
Choose ^J to justify (or format) the paragraph in which your cursor
is currently located. If the cursor is on a blank line, the paragraph
beginning immediately below will be affected. Paragraphs are delimited
by preceding blank lines, or by initial tabs or spaces. Once a paragraph
is justified, the ^U command becomes Unjustify, in case you change your
mind.
You may access the Pico file browser through Read File or Write Out, as
discussed above. In addition to opening files for input and output, the
file browser also allows you to make some simple alterations to the
contents of your directories. Use D to delete a file, R to rename, and
M to copy. The - command moves to the previous page of the directory
listing, and the Space bar moves one page forward. You may also perform
a Where Is? (^W) search in the directory listing. To cancel file browser
mode, press C.
Pico has several features that can be modified or activated at startup.
The most useful are listed below:
- -f
- enables you to use the function keys to invoke commands;
in the preceding sections, these keys are written in parentheses [ex:
(F8)] next to their corresponding commands.
- +n
- where n is a numeric argument; start Pico
n lines into the document.
- -nn
- checks for new mail every n seconds; minimum is
30 seconds, default is 180.
- -t
- tool mode; used when Pico is running inside another program
such as Pine or Pnews; no save prompt upon exit, no buffer renaming
for Write Out.
- -v
- opens a document for viewing only.
- -w
- disables word wrap for editing long lines.
- -z
- enables ^Z suspension of Pico.
Type in any or many of these flags after typing Pico at the shell prompt.
To open a specific file in Pico from startup, type the filename after
any flags you may have used.
Try Get Help (^G) in Pico first. If you don't find what you are looking
for, ask at the
Consulting Center, located in 103 Mudd Lab. If it is not convenient for
you to visit the
Consulting Center, call 713-527-4983, connect to
http://problem.rice.edu, or send a question via electronic mail
to problem@rice.edu for assistance.
<-- Back to INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
--User Services Publications Team
(pubteam@rice.edu) 1999.5.18