Re: [Pan-users] external editor settings

[Duncan]

Jethro Tull posted on Mon, 20 Jul 2015 16:38:32 +0000 as excerpted:

> I set 'xterm gvim -v' without the quotes in the corresponding field in
> Pan preference settings but it does not seem to be working. Whenever I
> want to write something it opens its own editor. ^E doesn't help.

[Please don't post in HTML.  If you /must/ use it for normal mail, at 
/least/ be considerate enough to turn it off when posting to the pan 
list, as many regulars here including me, actually use pan to follow the 
list (via gmane.org's list2news service), and I presume you already know 
how horrible raw html looks in pan.]

The external editor function is only accessible from the internal message 
composition window.  From there, you can access the external editor via 
menu entry, toolbar button, or hotkey (if configured, tho the ^E you 
mentioned appears to be the default hotkey for this function).

This is by design, as only the message body is passed between pan and the 
external editor, so the only way to choose posting profile, modify 
headers, attach files, etc, is via the internal editor.

So trigger the internal edit window as usual, and activate the external 
editor (should AFAIK be the ^E you mentioned, unless you've changed the 
default hotkey) from there.  When you're done editing in the external 
editor, close it and pan should load the file saved from it back into the 
internal editor, as the message body.

It's also worth noting that from the internal editor window, in the edit 
menu, there's an option to "Always Run Editor".  While I do occasionally 
use the external editor function (I actually have my "external editor" 
config pointing at a utility script that gives me a number of choices 
besides simply opening in a text editor, altho that is indeed one of the 
choices available =:^), for most replies I compose entirely in the 
internal editor, so I've never actually set this option to see what it 
would do.  However, an educated guess says it simply pops up both the 
internal and external editors, basically saving the step of you having to 
activate the external editor manually from the internal editor window.  
As with manual activation, any existing text (the quote and sig) will be 
passed to the external editor as the file it loads, and when the external 
editor is terminated, pan will load the now presumably edited and saved 
contents of that same file into the internal editor, where you can choose 
posting profile and make any other appropriate header changes, as well as 
adding attachments if desired, before hitting send, from that window.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman