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Forms Mode User's Manual

Forms-Mode version 2.3

September 1993

Johan Vromans jv@nl.net

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Forms mode is an Emacs major mode for working with simple textual data bases in a forms-oriented manner. In Forms mode, the information in these files is presented in an Emacs window in a user-defined format, one record at a time. The user can view records or modify their contents.

Forms mode is not a simple major mode, but requires two files to do its job: a control file and a data file. The data file holds the actual data to be presented. The control file describes how to present it.

Forms Example

Let's illustrate Forms mode with an example. Suppose you are looking at the `/etc/passwd' file, and the screen looks like this:

====== /etc/passwd ======

User : root   Uid: 0   Gid: 1

Name : Super User

Home : /

Shell: /bin/sh

As you can see, the familiar fields from the entry for the super user are all there, but instead of being colon-separated on one single line, they make up a forms.

The contents of the forms consists of the contents of the fields of the record (e.g. `root', `0', `1', `Super User') interspersed with normal text (e.g `User : ', `Uid: ').

If you modify the contents of the fields, Forms mode will analyze your changes and update the file appropriately. You cannot modify the interspersed explanatory text (unless you go to some trouble about it), because that is marked read-only (see section 'Text Properties' in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).

The Forms mode control file specifies the relationship between the format of `/etc/passwd' and what appears on the screen in Forms mode. See section Control File Format.

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