ne's manual
ne's manual
The command line is a typical (topical) way of controlling an editor on character
driven systems. It has some advantages in term of access speed, but it is a
complete failure from a user interface point of view. ne has a command
line which should be used whenever strange features have to be accessed, or
whenever you are enough accustomed to know by heart the commands you want to
use, and which are not bound to any key.
In order to access the command line, you have two possibilities: either
activating menu mode and typing a colon (`:'), or typing
CONTROL-K (or any key which is bound to the Exec command;
see Exec). The first method will work regardless of any key binding
configuration if you activate the menus with the ESCAPE key, since it is
not possible to reconfigure it.
Once you activate the command line, the status bar will turn into an input
line (see The Input Line) with prompt `Command:', waiting for you
doing a long input. In other words, you can now type any command (possibly
with arguments), and when you press RETURN the command will be
executed.
If the command you specify does not appear in ne's internal tables,
it is considered to be a macro name. See Basic Macros, for details.