home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Collection of Tools & Utilities
/
Collection of Tools and Utilities.iso
/
tex
/
moref241.zip
/
README
< prev
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-03-27
|
8KB
|
150 lines
Changes in MORE 2.4.1
- Fixed a minor bug which caused the percentage figure shown in the
MORE prompt to be blatantly wrong with certain input files. This
problem appeared in 2.4.
Changes in MORE 2.4.
- Fixed a nasty bug having to do with redirected input (when reading a
pipe, for example) which caused programs run under a shell escape to
also have redirected input even though reading standard input.
- Added a configuration file, more.cnf, which contains all the setup
information which was previously contained in several environment
variables. You can now use it to specify the default behavior of
more. See more.doc for details.
- Added the ability to specify the windowsize in the configuration file.
(Previous versions only allowed this to be set on the command-line.)
- Added ability to specify the maximum width of the current display.
The default is 80 characters. You can now run a VGA (or other
special adapter) in a mode with a maximum line length other than 80.
- The routine which interfaces to the BIOS video routines was re-coded
in assembly language, for a gain of about 10% in scrolling speed.
(Yes, I know, 10% isn't much, but every ten percent helps, right?)
- Added the ability to bypass the assembly language BIOS interface and
use the old code. This is a contingency measure in case someone has an
old BIOS which does not clean up behind itself, as I did NOT save and
restore all registers around the BIOS calls since I was trying to
maximize speed. (The new code works on several different machines
availble for my testing, so I expect that this will not be needed.)
- Previous versions would simply exit when they hit the end of the last
file in their argument list. This is rather a pain under certain
circumstances, so this version now tells you that there are no more
files to view and returns to the more prompt. (This is the default
behavior. This feature can be disabled. See the section of more.doc
which describes the configuration file for details). Any command which
is valid at the --MORE-- prompt may be used at this point. (When you
have used the :e command to jump off to a "secondary" list of files
and accidently run off the end of the last file the previous versions
would exit, so that you could not return to the original list. Now,
with this version, you can choose to not exit, so you can return to
the original list of files if you wish.)
- Fixed an error in the documentation which incorrectly described the
'e' command, and failed to describe the ':e' command.
- Enhanced the 't' command so that it now displays the current tabsize
when it prompts for a new value. The prompt now looks like:
Tabsize(8):
which would indicate that the current tabsize setting is eight. Values
are checked to ensure they are greater than zero. No upper limit is
enforced, but good sense dictates restraint (I don't know what will
happen if you enter something outrageous, such as 500, but I'm sure
it won't be anything useful!).
- Fixed a minor bug which caused characters of value 255 (0xff) to cause
more to think it had hit the end of the file. Although more is not
intended for browsing binary files, at least it shouldn't report an
early EOF! and it now does not.
Changes in MORE V2.3G.
- A bug was fixed which caused the -s switch to fail and more to subsequently
print strange characters on the screen.
- The implementation of the '!' shell escape was completely rewritten so that
it now uses the contents of the COMSPEC variable to locate the shell program
to invoke and inquires the DOS switch character to use in the '/c' option
for the command processor. This fixes several bugs:
- If the file command.com was not somewhere on the PATH the invocation
would fail.
- If the DOS's current switch character was not set to '/' the invocation
would fail.
- If the shell that you wanted to invoke was something other than the
standard DOS command interpreter (command.com) the invocation would either
fail or at least invoke the wrong shell.
- When using a shell escape the prompt environment is modified to include a
message telling the user how to exit the shell and return to more.
- On certain very fast computers (e.g., fast 386 machines) more would frequently
die with a zero-divide error immediately upon startup. This has been found
and fixed.
- More did not properly handle 80 character lines. This has been fixed.
See more.doc (the section on caveats) for further information.
- When more now encounters the characters "_^H" in a file it will discard
them, so that things like Unix man pages can be viewed.
- The code which determines the type of video display hardware present on
the system has been improved.
- A new environment variable has been added so that the user can force more
to use (for the prompt) the display attributes which it would normally use
on a monochrome display. This is useful primarily for CGA boards with
monochrome monitors on which the distinction between the colors used in
the prompt is minimal. To turn on this feature do: SET MOREMONO=MONO.
- The file MOREHELP.TXT is no longer a part of the distribution. It's contents
are now compiled into the program. The corresponding environment variable
MOREHELP is no longer supported or required.
- More used to put out a space character with normal attributes when it
was exiting. It still does so, but now moves the cursor back to the
left margin when done. This is normally not a problem since on most
systems a newline is output (by command.com) before the prompt is
displayed.
- The documentation of the -w command-line option has been corrected. The
old documentation described it as being '+<number>' rather than
'-w<number>'.
- A new command-line option has been added: -v, which causes more to perform
a self-consistency check to verify that the executable file has not been
modified, possibly by a virus. If any modification is found, more will exit
with an appropriate error message. The test is done via a 32-bit crc
computation, so it would be expected to be fairly robust. Note, however,
that this is not proof against trojan horses, but rather is intended to
test for corruption by a virus AFTER installation on your system.
- The search function used to display the target line in bright white
on a black background. Now the display attributes of the target line
are determined at startup based on the existing attributes on the screen.
If the screen is normal white on black or reverse video, bright white on black
is used; if the screen is bright white on black, reverse video is used;
if the background is non-black and non-reverse-video, bright white on some
contrasting background color is used.
- When more was reading input from a pipe or a redirected file an attempt
to perform a search would cause the program to hang. This is now fixed.
Bugs reported or enhancements requested which were NOT implemented:
- A user requested that ^L redraw the screen after the help message is
displayed. This was NOT done because the commands 'b' and 'space'
together do virtually the same thing (except when the current location
is within one screenfull of the top of the file, in which case just 'b'
will do it).