The last line of the screen, the status bar, is reserved by
ne
for displaying some information about its internal state.
Note that on most terminals it is physically impossible to write a
character on the last column of the last line, so we are not
stealing precious editing space.
The status bar looks more or less like this:
L: 31 C: 25 12% iabcwfpvurtBMRPC*@8 20 /foo/bar
The numbers after ‘L:’ and ‘C:’ are the line and column of the
cursor position. The first line and the first column are both number
1. Then, ne
shows the percentage of lines before the current line
(it will be 0% on the first line, and 100% on the last line).
Following that are a sequence of letters or dashes. These indicate the status of a series of flags which we shall look at later.
The hexadecimal digits following the flags give the code for the character at the cursor, and are displayed optionally (see HexCode). If your cursor is at or beyond the right end of the current line, the code disappears.
The file name appearing after the character code is the file name of
the current document. The left end of very long file names may be
truncated to keep the right end visible. Of course,
ne
is keeping track internally of the complete file name. It
is used by the Save
command and as the default input for the
SaveAs
command. See Save, and SaveAs.
The displayed line and column numbers, the percentage indicator and the
character code change when the cursor moves. This fact can really slow
down cursor movement if you are using ne
through a slow
connection. If you find this to be a problem, it is a good idea to turn
off the status bar using either the ‘Status Bar’ menu item of the
‘Prefs’ menu or the StatusBar
command. See StatusBar. Alternatively you can turn on the fast GUI
mode using either the ‘Fast GUI’ menu item of the ‘Prefs’ menu
or the FastGUI
command (see FastGUI). In fast GUI mode the
status bar is not draw in reverse, so some additional optimization can
be done when refreshing it.
The letters after the line and column number represent the status of the flags
associated with the current document. Flags that are off display a
‘-’ instead of a letter. Each flag also has an
associated command. The Flags
command describes them all when
you don't have this manual handy. Here's the list in detail:
Modified
command was issued to set this flag. See Modified.
Note that sometimes ne
needs to communicate some message to you. The
message is usually written over the status bar, where it stays
until you do something. Any action such as moving the cursor or inserting a
character will restore the normal status bar.