ne's manual

3.2: The Status Bar

The last line of the screen, the status bar, is reserved by ne in order to display some information about its internal state. Note that on most terminals is physically impossible to write a character on the last column of this line, so that we are not really stealing precious space to editing.

The status bar looks more or less like that:

L:   31  C:   25  iabcwfpvurBMR* /foo/bar

Some of the letters may be missing---their presence is related to the value of a series of flags, as we will see later.

The numbers after `L:' and `C:' represent the line and column of the cursor position. The first line and the first column are numbered by 1. They change while the cursor is moving, and this fact can really slow down the cursor movement if you are using ne through a slow connection. In this case, it is a good idea to turn off the status bar using the `Status Bar' menu item of hte `Prefs' menu, or the StatusBar command. See StatusBar. Note that if you really need it, it is anyway a good idea to turn on the fast GUI mode using the `Fast GUI' menu item of the `Prefs' menu, or the FastGUI command (see FastGUI), because in this case the status bar is not draw in reverse, and some additional optimization can be done when refreshing it.

The letters after the line and column number represent the status of the flags associated to a series of command. In detail:

`i'

appears if the insert flag is true. See Insert.

`a'

appears if the auto indent flag is true. See AutoIndent.

`b'

appears if the back search flag is true. See SearchBack.

`c'

appears if the case sensitive search flag is true. See CaseSearch.

`w'

appears if the word wrap flag is true. See WordWrap.

`f'

appears if the free form flag is true. See FreeForm.

`p'

appears if the automatic preferences flag is true. See AutoPrefs.

`v'

appears if the verbose macros flag is true. See VerboseMacros.

`u'

appears if the undo flag is true. See DoUndo.

`r'

appears if the read only flag is true. See ReadOnly.

`t'

appears if the turbo parameter is nonzero. See Turbo.

`B'

appears if the binary flag is true. See Binary.

`M'

appears if you are currently marking a block. See Mark.

`V'

can appear in place of `M' if you are currently marking a vertical block. See MarkVert.

`R'

appears if you are currently recording a macro. See Record.

`*'

appears if the document has been modified since the last save.

The file name appearing after this group of letters is the file name of the current document. Very long file names may end off screen. Of course, ne is keeping track internally of the complete file name, which is used by the Save command, and as default input by the SaveAs command. See Save, and SaveAs.

Note that sometimes ne needs to communicate you some message. The message is then usually written over the status bar, where it stays until you do something (any such message ends with a full stop). Any action (moving the cursor, inserting a character et cetera) will restore the normal look of the status bar.