Re: [exmh] "2nd Editor command"

On 24 October 2005 at 15:00, Kevin Cosgrove <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have my 2nd editor command exmh preference set to:
> 
> "exmh-async /usr/bin/xterm +sb -e /bin/vi" (without the quotes).
> 
> When I highlight a message and edit the message exmh fires up sedit.
> Then I choose "alternate editor" from the "more..." menu.  At that 
> exmh pops up window very quickly, too quickly to read what's in it, 
> and then drops me into a nearly empty sedit window, which says 
> "Cannot open /login/kevinc/Mail/drafts/26" in it.  That's pretty odd, 
> because the path is wrong.  I wasn't editing a message in the 
> "drafts" folder.  I was editing a message in the "inbox" folder.

I found the source of the problem and a solution.  The genesis
of the problem was a move from a Solaris machine to a Linux
machine.  On the Linux machine /bin/vi is actually vim. vim
reads my ~/.vimrc file.  My ~/.vimrc file has spelling macros
in it that use ispell.  The ispell binary in my path on both
machines is a Solaris (SPARC) binary, and is obviously the wrong
architecture on Linux.  Having the wrong architecture ispell
binary appears to have caused vim to abort, and the xterm to
die.  Part of my debugging exercise involved moving my ~/.vimrc
out of the standard location so that vim wouldn't use it.  When
I did that, then my "2nd Editor..." worked fine.  So much for
describing the problem.

My solution was to rebuild ispell, one version for Solaris and
another for Linux.  The appropriate version is in the PATH for
each machine.  Now everything works.

Whew....
--
Kevin