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Top Document: Getting Started with News and the NN News Reader
Previous Document: ... 4.1 Strategy: Plug and Play
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... 4.2 Setting Your Editor


When you compose a message within nn or nnpost, nn decides which
editor to use as follows:

1. If nn's `editor' variable is set in one of your init files, then
   that is what is used.

2. If nn's `editor' variable is not set, then the EDITOR environment
   variable is used.  If you don't explicitly set your EDITOR
   environment variable, then it is set to the system default, which
   is often vi (which does not stand for "very intuitive"!).

Since the EDITOR environment variable is used by many other programs,
it's useful to set nn's editor with it rather than the nn-specific
editor variable.  This way the setting will propagate to other
programs such as your mailer.  Since some programs use the VISUAL
environment variable to determine the editor, it's useful to set this
too.

If you don't know what editor to use, the PIne COmposer, pico, is a
good choice.  It's easy to learn and always has a help menu at the
bottom of the screen.  To see if pico is on your system type any of
the following:

  which pico
  type pico
  where pico
  whereis pico

If it's on your system one of these should tell you what directory
it's in.  If it's not on your system then you will need to use a
different editor (or you could ask your system administrator to
install pico).

If you use pico, then you might want to use it with either or both of
these flags.

 Flag Meaning
 ==== =======
 -t   tool mode, which prevents some unnecessary save prompts
 -z   allows you to suspend with ^Z and go out to Unix; you return with fg



Top Document: Getting Started with News and the NN News Reader
Previous Document: ... 4.1 Strategy: Plug and Play
Next Document: ... ... 4.2.1 C-Compatible Shells

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Last Update October 22 2009 @ 05:35 AM

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