10.11. elvis Futures

At the time of this writing, elvis 2.1 is in late beta-test, and it will probably be released by the time this book hits the bookstore. Steve Kirkendall has graciously supplied the following list of changes and new features that will be in elvis 2.1:

  • Under Windows 95 and Windows/NT, there is now a graphical version of elvis. This is in addition to the text-mode port that was included in 2.0.

  • A text-mode OS/2 port has been added.

  • In X Windows, there is now a status bar and a configurable toolbar. The toolbar can invoke configurable dialogue windows. Also, many of the X features take their defaults from the standard X resource database. New command-line flags include -mono, -fork, and -client.

  • The DOS version offers mouse support, similar to that of X Windows.

  • elvis 2.1 supports the enhanced tags format described at length in Section 8.5.1.

    elvis 2.1 does some innovative things with tags. When reading overloaded tags, it tries to guess which one you're looking for, and presents the most likely one first. If you reject it (by hitting ^] again, or typing :tag again), then it presents you with the next most likely match, and so on. It also notes the attributes of the tags that you reject or accept, and uses those to improve its guessing heuristic for later searches.

    The :tag command's syntax has been extended to allow you to search for tags by features other than just the tag name. This is powerful, but too complex to describe here [in Steve Kirkendall's email message]. ...

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