LE(1)

💖 LE(1) — like, the full screen text editor bestie 💖

okay so this is the manual for le, and yes it lives in the General Commands Manual section of your man pages. Buckle up, we're doing this together. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

le — a full screen text editor, and honestly? she's iconic. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

le [options] filename

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

le is a text editor that offers a wide range of capabilities with a simple interface. No cap. She's got a pull down menu and a simple help system so you can actually get started without crying, and if you wanna learn the key combinations, just scroll down to the KEYS section. 🎀

Among her features there are:

• various operations with stream and rectangular blocks
• search and replace with full regular expressions
• text formatting
• undelete/uninsert
• hex editing
• tunable key sequences
• tunable colors
• tunable syntax highlighting

⚠️ The editor currently supports only one loaded file at a time. One file. That's the whole vibe. She's monogamous. 😭

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🔥 KEYS 🔥

Here are some starting hints, bestie — write these on your hand if you have to:

• F10 or C-n — menu 🍓
• F1 — help 🧚
• C-x — exit (cancel) 💀
• Arrows — navigate 🌈

In the editor, the following key description is used:

• Key1-Key2 — simultaneous key1 and key2 press
• Key1+Key2 — sequential keys press
• Key1 | Key2 — press Key1 OR Key2
• ^Key — Ctrl-Key
• ~Key — Shift-Key
• ^~Key — Ctrl-Shift-Key | Alt-Key

Some of ^Fx, ~Fx, ^~Fx can be typed as ESC+Fx. Periodt. ✨

The rest of the key combinations can be seen in help, in the menu, and in the keyboard map — and you can peek at the default one with le --dump-keymap. 👑

There is support for block filtering through an external program, a command output read-in, and writing a block through a command. To read or write a block from/to a command, use F4+R or F4+W and a file name of the following format:

|command args

Filtering is achieved by F4+| followed by the command name. Slay. 💖

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🌟 STATUS LINE 🌟

On the status line you can see:

• current line
• column
• the size of loaded file
• the code of character under cursor
• several one letter flags
• file name
• offset in bytes from the file beginning
• percent position in the file

The one letter flags are:

• * — modified
• R — Russian keyboard (works only on certain terminals)
• I — insert
• O — overstrike
• A — autoindent
• D — dos style line terminators (CR NL)
• U — undelete possible
• u — uninsert possible
• B — column block mode

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💜 TEXT PROTECTION 💜

To prevent changes loss on crash, le regularly dumps the editing text, if changed, to ~/.le/tmp/FILENAME.PID, where FILENAME is the file name with slashes converted to underlines, and PID is the process id of the editor process. She's got your back fr fr. 🫶

When the editor gets a fatal signal, it also dumps the text, to ~/.le/tmp/DUMP-SIG-FILENAME.PID, where SIG is the signal number. 😭

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -r, --read-only — Work as viewer, don't allow changes. If your system supports mmap(2), it will be used to get file contents to memory.
• -h, --hex-mode — Start in hex mode.
• --mmap — Use mmap(2) to load file read-only. Can be used to view very large files or even devices. This implies -h.
• --mmap-rw — Use mmap(2) to load file read-write in MAP_SHARED mode. Use with caution — the changes go directly to file or disk, no undo. In this mode only replace can be used, but it allows editing of very large files or even devices. This implies -h.

🚨 bestie be careful with --mmap-rw. No undo. The changes go straight to disk. That's not a drill, that's a lifestyle.

• --multibyte — Force multibyte mode on. Multibyte mode is usually enabled automatically as needed.
• --no-multibyte — Force multibyte mode off, even if it was automatically determined that it should be on.
• -b, --black-white — Start in black & white mode.
• -c, --color — Start in color mode. 🌈
• --dump-keymap — Dump default keymap to stdout and exit.
• --dump-colors — Dump default color map to stdout and exit.
• --version — Print the version of LE and exit.
• --help — Print short description of options and exit.

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🌸 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌸

The following environment variables are processed by le:

• HOME — Used for tilde (~) expansion.
• LE_DEFAULT_EOL — The default EOL marker. It can be set to NL (\n), CRNL (\r\n) or CR (\r). Also it can be set to any other 1-2 character string interpreted literally.
• TERM, LINES, COLUMNS — These variables are used by the curses library for full-screen output.

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• DATADIR/colors
• ~/.le/colors
• DATADIR/colors-$TERM
• ~/.le/colors-$TERM

Color palette description. Those files are sequentially read and color definitions in later files have higher precision.

• ~/.le/keymap-$TERM
• DATADIR/keymap-$TERM
• ~/.le/keymap
• DATADIR/keymap

Key map descriptions. Only the first existing file is read.

• ~/.le/term-$TERM
• DATADIR/term-$TERM

Terminal specific options. Only the first existing file is read. Use Options->Terminal menu to tune the options.

• ./.le.ini
• ~/.le/le.ini
• DATADIR/le.ini

Options. Only the first existing file is read. Use menu Options to tune these.

• .le.syntax
• ~/.le/syntax
• DATADIR/syntax

Syntax highlighting rules. Only the first existing file is read. There is no default built-in in the editor, so if those files are not present you won't see any syntax highlighting. 😭 (yes that means your code will look plain, tragic I know)

• ~/.le/mainmenu
• DATADIR/mainmenu

Main editor menu. It has simple text format. Only the first existing file is read.

• ~/.le/history

Various histories are saved here. Do not edit by hand. 🙈

📌 DATADIR is determined at compile time by the configure script (pkgdatadir variable). By default it has value /usr/local/share/le.

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

The LE editor was written by Alexander V. Lukyanov <lav@yars.free.net>. Iconic behavior, honestly. 💖

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and that's the whole page, bestie — written by Alexander V. Lukyanov, dated 28 Sep 2000, living in the LE(1) manual section forever and ever. mwah 💋✨