Re: Plain text editor.

On Jan 10, 2005, at 9:40, David Walker wrote:

> Thanks heaps.
>
> I had already tried emacs but found it unwieldy for a first time and 
> had
> tried to find a man page relating to 'edit' and 'text', etc. by doing 
> man -k
> which is a search I believe but had a '512' error. As per Justin's
> suggestion I tried apropos but I have "no whatis database in 
> /usr/src/man".

Sorry about that.  For more complete information, 'man apropos' will 
lead you to 'makewhatis', whose man page should be informative...

> Anyway, I had a look at the man for ed and it looked as annoying as 
> emacs

See, now there you've gone and started a religious war...

> I would like to find out how to reply to messages so they appear as a 
> thread
> on the archive. I notice that my previous reply appears as a new 
> thread and
> well it's not really a new thread.

Generally, mail programs use some combo of subject line and the 
"In-reply-to:" header item (look at expanded message headers).  This 
causes problems in two ways, depending on your mail handler and a few 
other random variables I've never been able to properly appreciate:
  - "hijacking" a thread by replying and then changing the subject line
  - creating a new message and setting the subject line to "Re: ..."
Both cause threading to get screwed up.

[snip]
> Another quickie. Just as a rough idea, what is needed and how 
> difficult is
> it for a newb to compile a kernel?

Quick answer: you'll need
  - experience
  - a bunch of extra stuff
  - someone to hold your hand

It's not very straight-forward, but: there is a HOWTO on the Opendarwin 
site that deals with this (by Shantonu Sen).  It's pretty up-to date, 
and gives fairly good instructions.  Go to <http://opendarwin.org> and 
follow the links to HOWTOs.

Regards,

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large  *
Institute for General Semantics        |    Men are from Earth.
                                        |    Women are from Earth.
                                        |       Deal with it.
*--------------------------------------*-------------------------------*