readme.acme 4.6 KB

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  1. Welcome to acme, the editor/shell/window system hybrid. Acme is a
  2. complete environment you can use to edit, run programs, browse the
  3. file system, etc.
  4. You can scroll the text this window by moving the mouse into
  5. the window (no clicking necessary) and typing the up and down
  6. arrows.
  7. When you start Acme, you see several windows layered into two
  8. columns. Above each window, you can see a ``tag line'' (in blue). The
  9. first thing to notice is that all the text you see is just that:
  10. text. You can edit anything at will.
  11. For example, in the left column is a directory window.
  12. If you look at the window's tag line, you will see that it contains
  13. /usr/glenda/ Del Snarf Get | Look
  14. (This might be truncated if the column is narrow.)
  15. That is just text.
  16. Each mouse button (1, 2, 3, from left to right) does a different
  17. thing in Acme:
  18. * Button 1 can be used to select text (press it, sweep, release it),
  19. and also to select the point where text would be inserted in the
  20. window. Use it now in your /usr/glenda window.
  21. * Button 2 can be used to execute things. For example, use button 1
  22. to type "ls -l" before "lib/" in the window showing
  23. /usr/glenda. Now use button 2 to select "ls -l lib/" (press
  24. it, select, release it). As you can see, button 2 means
  25. "execute this".
  26. * Button 3 can be used to get things. For example, click button 3 on
  27. "lib/" within the "/usr/glenda" window. Can you see how a new window
  28. shows the contents of "/usr/glenda/lib"? Button 3 can also be used
  29. to search within the body of a window. Just click button 3 on the
  30. thing you want to search. Again, you can select something with
  31. button 1 and then use button 3 on the selection.
  32. You can double-click with button 1 to select words; a double click at
  33. the end or beginning of a line selects the whole line. Once you have
  34. text selected, you can click on it with button 2 to execute the
  35. selected text. A single click of button 2 would execute the word
  36. clicked as a command.
  37. Now let's pay attention to the tag line once more. As you can see,
  38. the left part has a path. That is the name for the window and shows
  39. also the directory for the thing shown (file/directory/program
  40. output). When you execute something using button 2, the current
  41. directory for the command is the directory shown in the left part of
  42. the tag (if the thing shown is a file, its directory is used).
  43. As you saw before in the example, there are windows labeled
  44. "/dir/+Errors", that is where Acme shows the output of a command
  45. executed in "/dir".
  46. Another thing you can see is that tag lines contain words like "New",
  47. "Del", "Snarf", etc. Those are commands understood (implemented) by
  48. Acme. When you request execution of one of them, Acme does the job.
  49. For example, click with button 2 on "Del" in the
  50. "/usr/glenda/+Errors" window: it's gone.
  51. The commands shown by Acme are just text and by no means special. Try
  52. to type "Del" within the body of the window "/usr/glenda", and then
  53. click (button-2) on it.
  54. These are some commands understood by Acme:
  55. * Newcol: create a new column of windows
  56. * Delcol: delete a column
  57. * New: create a new window (edit it's tag to be a file name and you
  58. would be creating a new file; you would need to click on "Put" to
  59. put the file in the file system).
  60. * Put: write the body to disk. The file is the one named in the tag.
  61. * Get: refresh the body (e.g. if it's a directory, reread it and
  62. show it).
  63. * Snarf: What other window systems call "Copy".
  64. * Paste: Can you guess it?
  65. * Exit: exit acme
  66. Acme likes to place new windows itself. If you prefer to change the
  67. layout of a window, you only need to drag the layout box at the left
  68. of the tag line and drop it somewhere else. The point where you drop
  69. it selects the column where the window is to be placed now, as well
  70. as the line where the window should start. You can also click the
  71. layout box to enlarge its window a small amount (button 1), as much
  72. as possible without obscuring other tag lines in the column (button
  73. 2), and to fill the whole column (button 3). You can get your other
  74. windows back by button-1- or button-2-clicking the layout box.
  75. This is mostly what you need to get started with Acme. You are
  76. missing a very useful feature: using combinations (chords) of mouse
  77. buttons to do things. You can cut, paste, snarf, and pass arguments
  78. to programs using these mouse chords. You can read this in the
  79. acme(1) manual page, but it's actually extremely simple: Select a
  80. region with button 1 but don't release the button. Now clicking
  81. button 2 deletes the selected text (putting it into the snarf
  82. buffer); clicking button 3 replaces the selected text with the snarf
  83. buffer. That's it!
  84. For more information, read /sys/doc/acme/acme.ps (you can just
  85. button-3 click on that string to view the file).