Conference turris::gnu

    The solution to your problem is to either run your shells from some
    other process, (the "sell-out" easy solution), or run one of the better
    emulators that have come out recently.  These at least improve upon, if
    not supercede, the functionality of M-x shell or M-x shell-command.  If
    I remember correctly, the Elisp files are either term.el or
    terminal.el.
    
    To find one of them, look in one of the FTP sites that has either GNU
    Emacs or the Lucid Emacs version that's referred to these days as
    Xemacs (19.15 was just recently released).  Look in the lisp subdir for
    one of these routines and use either term or terminal instead of shell. 
    I think you'll be pleased with the results.
    
    As far as running man within Emacs goes, there are any number of ways
    to do that besides running $ man emacs from a subshell.  Xemacs has a
    real tight integration of the documentation and other subsystems (Email
    and Web use, for example), and is scheduled to *replace* GNU Emacs in
    the Steel release of UNIX.  You might want to look into it's
    capabilities as well.
    
    Finally, if you are not bent on running everything within Emacs, you
    might consider running xman if your system has the X Window System on
    it (any DECwindows, X11, Motif, or CDE-based system WILL have xman
    capability, at least if the subset is installed).  The Desktop Apps in
    CDE also have a Man Page Viewer action, for what it's worth, so you
    have many alternative ways of viewing man pages, if you're not stuck on
    Emacs.  If you ARE stuck on it, (presumably why you asked, then
    investigate term and/or terminal instead of shell).
    
    Regards,
    Brian   

>  Xemacs ...
>    is scheduled to *replace* GNU Emacs in the Steel release of UNIX.

Does this mean that Steel is dropping support for terminals,
and that X windows is mandatory? Or has Xemacs dropped the design
axiom reflected in its first letter?

This is a big step away from the "all the world's a DEC VTxxx"
mentality, so soon after emacs came out with a menu bar even in
terminal mode.

Is it through arrogance or shame that the Digital Unix termcap file
supports "dumb" and "unknown" terminals with only 80 columns but does
not want to know about "emacs" terminals or horizontally scrolling
windows with an effectively infinite number of columns?

Why do so many programs expire when they see an unrecognised terminal
type, or stty rows 0 cols 0?

Phil


The original poster might want to try the Emacs "M-x man" command.

Thanks for the tip about using term and terminal rather than shell
by the way, looks like it's time to upgrade my fingerware.

>>  Xemacs ...
>>    is scheduled to *replace* GNU Emacs in the Steel release of UNIX.
> 
> Does this mean that Steel is dropping support for terminals,
> and that X windows is mandatory? Or has Xemacs dropped the design
> axiom reflected in its first letter?

Xemacs has had terminal support for the last few releases.

-marc

    > Does this mean that Steel is dropping support for terminals,
    > and that X windows is mandatory?  Not at all.  The reason Steel is
    going to offer Xemacs instead of GNU Emacs is that it is easier for the
    maintainer to support, (although other reasons have been sited as
    well).  This has nothing whatsoever to do with what kind of terminals
    Steel or Digital support.  In fact, one of the reasons for going to
    Xemacs is that features like this DIDN'T work the way people like you
    expected them to.  X in Xemacs is just a name.  Xemacs has better
    support for the X Window System than GNU Emacs, but it works just fine
    in terminal emulation mode, just like GNU Emacs.
    
    There are lots of editor wars out there... which is better, vi, or
    Emacs, and within the Emacs camp, which is better, GNU Emacs, or
    Xemacs?  I say, who cares?  Use what you like.  But for Steel, Digital
    plans to *provide* Xemacs on an as-is basis, because it is easier to
    support.
    
    > Or has Xemacs dropped the design
    > axiom reflected in its first letter?
    
    Xemacs was originally developed out of the University of Illinois by
    the same team that brought us Mosaic then Netscape - most of the
    original engineers now work for Netscape.  The project was called Epoch
    at one time, but then, as now, it worked both with terminals and
    workstations.  Sun and a few other companies got together and made a
    commercial product out of it called Lucid Emacs.  The commercial
    product was short-lived, but the code lives on with the name of Xemacs.
    True, the features added were for use with X, but as always, Emacs
    works fine with even ancient terminals.
    
    I hope this eases your mind.
    
    Brian