What is Pico?

Effective Fall Quarter, 1996, Pico is the default text editor on Atlas. However, if you are familiar with the vi editor and prefer to use it as your editor for elm (electronic mail) rather than the default Pico editor, you may change the editor for elm as follows:

Steps for changing the editor in elm from pico to vi are:

• From the elm mailbox menu, type o
• From the ELM Options Editor menu, type e [This invokes the editor option.]
• Change the line to read:
  /usr/bin/vi
  [Note: The pico option reads: /local/bin/pico -t]
• type a > to save the change, or I to return to index

To run the pico editor without specifying a filename, type pico. This will open an empty document.

To edit or create a file with a specific name, type pico myfile.

Saving Your File and Exiting Pico:

When you finish your Pico session, you may either save your file or not. Saving your file will allow you to reopen it under a specific name the next time you use Pico. Not saving it will revert to the last saved version or destroy all the contents of that file if you never saved it.

To exit Pico while saving your file:

• Type ^X. Pico will ask if you want to save changes.
• Press y. Pico will show the current file name.
• Press Enter to keep current name, or, type in new name to protect original version and save a copy of the modified version.
• To exit Pico without saving your file:
  Type ^X. Pico will ask if you want to save changes.
• Press n.
  

Editing Commands:

The following are some commonly used editing commands.

• ^E Move to end of line.
• ^A Move to beginning of line.
• ^K Cut/delete current line. Also puts the line in a buffer so it can be undeleted/pasted.
• ^U Paste/undelete. Undeletes/pastes the most recently cut line.
• ^^ Mark a block of text of any size. (This command requires a bit of manual dexterity: Hold down CTRL, SHIFT and the 6 key (to get the ^). Then use the arrows to create the highlighted block. Use ^K to cut the block and ^U to paste it.
• ^D Delete current character.
• ^J Justify/rejustify margin.
• ^T Check spelling.
• ^R Insert existing file into file you're editing.