Recipe 6.4. Organizing JOE's Preferences in a Separate File

6.4.1 Problem

JOE's rc files are large, so it's not easy to keep track of your changes. How do you keep your changes separate from the things that have stayed the same?

6.4.2 Solution

Put your changes in a separate file, which in this example is called .joercprefs. Call this file by adding the following line near the top of .joerc; anywhere before the "First Section" is good. Be sure to include the leading colon, and make it flush left:

:include .joercprefs

6.4.3 Discussion

Here's an example of .joercprefs:

    my JOE preferences---active options only---

    created 2/15/2004

   

-marking       Text between ^K B and cursor is highlighted (use with -lightoff)

-force         Force final newline when files are saved

-lightoff      Turn off highlighting after block copy or move

-exask         ^K X always confirms filename

-beep          Beep on errors and when cursor goes past extremes

-keepup        %k and %c status-line escape sequences updated frequently

-help          Start with help on

-linums        Enable line numbers on each line

Keeping all of your changes in a separate file will save your sanity, guaranteed. Note that .joercprefs does not overwrite .joerc—any options that are explicitly enabled or disabled in .joerc will remain that way, regardless of what .joerc says. However, options in .joerc that begin with leading whitespace are ignored, so these can be enabled or disabled in .joercprefs.

6.4.4 See Also

• joe(1)