gc3.man

.TH gc3 l "27 April 1994/New SA Day 1"
.SH NAME
gc3 \- Gram's Commander v3.3
.SH SYNTAX
.B "gc3 "
[ flags ]
[
.I "<path1>"
[
.I "<path2>"
]
]

.SH DESCRIPTION
.I gc3
is a general-purpose, programmable file manager for UNIX and
MS-DOS, similar in nature to the well-known DOS file manager
`Norton Commander'.

When started up,
.I gc3
presents the user with two windows containing lists of the files in
the directories specified by the path arguments, and two windows
showing information about each of these paths. Each file list
window has an arrow shaped cursor which points at one of the file
names. Further information about the pointed-at file is also shown
in the information window. The bottom line of the screen is a one-
line borderless command window for entering commands. This is also
where error messages are displayed, and where gc3 commands can
prompt for input.

If a path argument(s) is missing, the current directory is used for
the left-hand window, while the path for the right hand window
will be the directory that was current when you last executed 
.I gc3.
This is determined from the
.B initialisation file
.I .gc3ini
which also saves the last known value of options and
variable settings upon exit. 
.I gc3
searches for the initialisation path in the directory
specified by the 
.B "$GCPATH"
environment variable. If this is not set the 
.B "$HOME"
environment variable is used instead.

The user can move through the file list with the cursor keys, and
select/deselect files. Various actions are possible upon either the
current file (namely the one at which the cursor is positioned) or
upon the set of selected files in that directory.

.PP
.I gc3
supports a number of commands. The actual commands may vary
from site to site (or from user to user). To find out the
list of commands that 
.I gc3
supports at your site, press the help key (usually 
.B "H"
).

The behaviour of 
.I gc3
is determined by a script file written in a language called
.I GCScript.
Full details of the script files and how to configure 
.B "gc3"
can be found in the documentation files that accompany the
registered gc3 package. The file
.B "USER.DOC"
also contains considerably more detailed information about
using
.B "gc3"
than this manual entry does.


.SH COMMAND LINE FLAGS

.TP 1.2i
.B "-c"
supresses the use of colour.

.TP 1.2i
.B "-C"
[<script>]
forces a script recompile; the default script
name if one is not specified is `gc3.key'.

.TP 1.2i
.B "-d"
[
.B "n"
][
.B "l"
]
writes a disassembled listing of the compiled script
to stdout. The 
.B "n"
option produces a numeric dump, while the
.B "l" option causes the link phase to be skipped.

.TP 1.2i
.B "-D"
.I "<id>"
allows you to define identifiers for conditional
compilation of the script (used with 
.B "-C"
).

.TP 1.2i
.B "-i"
shows the current instruction pointer value at bottom.

.TP 1.2i
.B "-I"
forces the 
.B "gcinit"
function in the script to be called.

.TP 1.2i
.B "-t"
or 
.B "-T"
write an instruction trace to the file
.B "gc3.ip"
, useful for post-mortem debugging.
.B " -T"
starts the trace from the execution of 
.B "gcinit"
while
.B "-t"
starts from the key processing loop.

.TP 1.2i
.B "-v"
causes the compiler to output more verbose messages.

.SH THE DEFAULT SCRIPT FILE

Under UNIX, no lower-case letters other than
.B "j"
and
.B "k"
are bound. Thus, pressing
any of these unbound keys causes the
.B "gcdefault"
function to be called.
This function invokes the command line editor after inserting the
key that was pressed into the command line esitor buffer. You will
see a prompt
.B "Command?"
at the bottom of the screen. You can then 
complete the command and execute it by pressing ENTER. If you end the
command with a pipe character
.B "|"
, the file pager command defined by the
.B "$pager"
variable will automatically be appended to the command 
line before it is executed.

gc3 includes a hypertext help system with considerably
more information. You can enter this help system by
pressing Ctrl-B. The manual which accompanies registered
versions of gc3 also has considerably more information.

.SH THE COMMAND LINE EDITOR

The default command line editor setup for UNIX is:

.TP 1.2i
.B "^F"
insert current file name at cursor position

.TP 1.2i
.B "^L"
Move cursor to left hand end (start) of line

.TP 1.2i
.B "^R"
 Move cursor to right-hand end of line

.TP 1.2i
.B "Del"
Delete the character under the cursor

.TP 1.2i
.B "Backspace"
Delete the character left of the cursor

.TP 1.2i
.B "Ins"
Toggle Ins/overstrike modes. You can see the current mode as a `+' (insert)
or `-' (overstrike) at the right hand end of the command line

.TP 1.2i
.B "ESC"
Clear whole line

.TP 1.2i
.B "^E"
Erase from start of line

.TP 1.2i
.B "^K"
Kill to end of line

.TP 1.2i
.B "^P"
Delete from start of previous word to cursor

.TP 1.2i
.B "^N"
Delete to from cursor to start of next word

.TP 1.2i
.B "^B"
Move cursor to previous word

.TP 1.2i
.B "^W"
Move cursor to next word

.TP 1.2i
.B "PgUp"
Recall previous command in command history list

.TP 1.2i
.B "PgDn"
Recall next command in command history list

.SH FILES

.TP 1.2i
.B "$GCPATH/gc3.key"
The script file that determines how gc3 behaves

.TP 1.2i
.B "$GCPATH/.gc3ini"
The startup file containing the last active path, option values
and variable values

.TP 1.2i
.B "$GCPATH/.gc3cod"
The compiled script code file

.TP 1.2i
.B "$GCPATH/.gc3rul"
The rules that gc3 uses to decide what editor and paginator to use, and how to 
handle container files (such as tar, cpio and zip files).

.TP 1.2i
The gc3 User's Manual (registered users only)

.TP 1.2i
.B "INSTALL.DOC"
The installation documentation

.SH SEE ALSO
The
.I ed
(1) editor.

.I regexp
(5)

.I sel
(l) a general argument selector

.SH AUTHOR
Graham Wheeler, gram@aztec.co.za.