Ce/Ceterm is...
ARPUS/Ce is an integrated ascii text editor and X based terminal emulator modeled after the editor and terminal
emulator on Apollo Domain systems. The ce tool is a robust and extensible programmer's editor. The ceterm tool is
meant to be a replacement for vendor-supplied X-based terminal window programs such as IBM's "aixterm", HP's
"hpterm", DEC's "decterm", and Sun's "Shell Tool". It is also suitable for use as a PAGER, replacing the
UNIX "more" command and supplying an interface which models the Apollo Domain systems.
The general reaction of former Apollo users to ARPUS/Ce is "Yes, this is what I was looking for."
The Ce editor is written as a standard X appliction. This makes the program portable. This portability is evidenced by the number of platforms Ce is available on. It's performance makes it one of the fastest products available. It is also easy to customize, making it useful for both the novice and expert user.
NOTE: At release 2.6, the major releases of ce/ceterm do not need to be setuid'ed. Improvements in pseudo-terminal system code have removed this requirement. Not being setuid'ed as root prohibits ceterm from updating UTMP on startup which means the session will not show up in the who command. The who command is a poor excuse for running setuid'ed so it is recommended that the program not be setuid'ed.
The Ce editor has the ability to let multiple designers on multiple platforms edit the same file at the same time and see each other's changes as they are being typed.
Documentation is provided in a users guide, help files modeled after those used on the Apollo Domain systems, and HTML documentation. The HTML documentation is a self contained package. Once installed, it only needs one pointer to this the Ce home page. The HTML documentation also contains an index of all the help files and the users guide.
Ce is written with a mindset of not wasting real estate on the screen. This allows the maximum number of text lines to be viewed at one time.
Ce in binary form is distributed freely. It is no longer connected to a license manager. No warrentee or indemnity is supplied in the free version. Fixes and support will be provided on as time allows. Maintenance my be purchased, in which case every effort will be made to resolve any problems quickly and satisfactorily.
The binaries for Ce are supplied free of charge. Since the source is available, you are free to port to any platform you like. If you send me the port package, I will add it to the web site with proper credit. (stymarAtcoxdotnet) Questions are welcome. "Can Ce do this and how do I build a key defintion to do something type questions can be submitted to stymarAtcoxdotnet Bob.
* - Subject to available swap space.
** - Variations based on length of lines.
*** - initial file size, you can still add lines.
This is a summary of changes from Ce release 2.6.2 to 2.6.3 (04/14/2020)
There are minor changes in processing data from the shell in ceterm which improves the processing of progress bars like those seen in scp, sftp, and Linux yum update.
There was an issue, where after a while pasting from X paste buffers did not work. The wrong data was pasted. The data pasted was what was in the paste buffer when a previous ce or ceterm shut down if that ce or ceterm owned the paste buffer. The data was stored in a file during shutdown. This was used when the X paste buffer could not be found. That part was normal behavior. The problem was not being able to find the X paste buffer. This was due to an optimization whereby if there were no key definitions for a key release, the key release events were ignored. On newer versions of the X server, they would stack up in the X server queue and eventually the XIfEvent call ran out of tries before it was found.
There is a work around for the 2.6.2 version of Ce. Create a key definition for an up key.
For example: "kd ^1U msg hello ke".
What this key definition will do is if you press
ctrl-numeric 1, when you release the key it will put hello in the message pane in the lower
right of the window. This makes sure the program is looking at key up events and the events
do not stack up.
Notes on setting up Linux (Gnome 2) front panel startup and hot keys for ceterm
This is a summary of changes from Ce release 2.6.1 to 2.6.2 (12/14/2005)
A bug introduced in release 2.6.1 caused certain command syntax error messages to be trucated to 4 bytes. This has been corrected.
When you press the CDE "Exit" button under Solaris 9, it sends a SIGHUP interupt instead of a "WM_SAVE_YOURSELF" message. Ce now traps this signal and creates a crash file (.CRA) if there are unsaved changes.
Under the Gnome environment (Linux and Solaris), Ce is now able to correctly save its state when you log off. Before, you would get a message about having to restart the service manually. Now Ce complies with the XSMP protocol so it handles this correctly. Support for the KDE environment under Linux is improved.
Note that there are now separate Solaris 2.8 and 2.9 versions of ce. The 2.8 version works fine on 2.9 but not the other way around. The 2.9 version of Ce contains calls to the XSMP (X Session Manager Protocol) code which was added in Solaris 2.9. It is used with the Gnome desktop so that you can save the current session. If you are only using CDE, you can use the Solaris 2.8 version across the board.
-bell {y | n | visual | VISUAL}
Ce.bell : {y | n | visual | VISUAL}
This option defaults to 'y'. Setting the value to "n"
suppresses the generation of an audible beep on certain
events. Setting the value to "visual" causes the window to
flash reverse video instead of making a noise. A lower case
"visual" flashes the DM Output window. An uppper case
"VISUAL" flashes the main window. Note that only the first
character of "y", "n", "visual", and "Visual" is examined.
This is a summary of changes from Ce release 2.6 to 2.6.1 (07/25/2005)
Security fixes.
A buffer overflow was found in ce/ceterm which could be exploited
to get root access on a machine if the ceterm was setuided to
root. ceterm does not need to be setuid'ed on any supported
platform. It is recommended that the setuid be dropped on any
existing copies of Arpus/Ce. One side affect of dropping the
setuid is that ceterm will not be able to update the utmp file and
thus will not appear in listings produced by the who command. The
who command is a poor excuse to run setuid'ed. Earlier versions
of UNIX OS's required the setuid to open a pseudo-terminal. The
buffer overflows have been corrected.
cntlc
Special command to place under the <ctrl>-c key (press
and hold the Ctrl key and then press c).
Many editors use the <ctrl>-c sequence to do a copy to the
clipboard. However, terminal emulators use <ctrl>-c as
an interupt. The cntlc command morphs into an interupt if
the window is a ceterm and there is no text highlighted. Otherwise
it morphs into a copy command. This is the default in new
installs. For existing $HOME/.Cekeys files, it is recommended
that you replace the definition for ^c with:
kd ^c cntlc -h ^c PRIMARY ke
Release 2.6 contains the following changes: (3/28/2005)
Scrolling on highlighted drag.
By default, the left mouse button highlights the text it is dragged
over on press and does a copy on release. The added behavior is
that if you drag the mouse out of the window, the window will begin
scrolling in that direction.
Updates to use the new pseudo terminal calls in Linux Fedora Core 2 (Available since Redhat 8) are added. The old way stopped working on Fedora Core 2. Also added to the RS6000 AIX version.
reload
Reload file from disk.
This command deletes the current memory copy of the file and
replaces it with a fresh copy loaded from disk. If the memory
copy of the file has been changed, a confirmation prompt is
requested. A prompt for this command to be executed is
generated when ce detects that the disk copy of the file has
been changed external to ce.
-l option to xp
The -l option has been added to the xp command. It causes
the cursor to be placed at the end of the pasted area rather
than the beginning. It is ignored if the -r option is
specified.
kd F4 ax -l ke # paste and put cursor at end
09/09/2004
Added Release compiled for Fedora Core 2. This release will work on
Red Hat 8, Red Hat 9, and Fedora Core 1 also. This release for Linux
does not require setuid.
Release 2.5.5 contains the following changes:
Ceterm support for Linux is improved. Linux colorization controls output by ls and other commands are handled. (Be careful of colorizing to the background color).
Modifications to support oddities of the Hummingbird Exceed window manager have been added.
The X Resource Ce.vcolors has been added to allow the selection of the colors used in Linux colorization. The default is the colors used in a gnome terminal.
Ce has an ECCN number of ear99.
ARPUS/Ce can be downloaded via via web access from http://www.styma.org/ce/ce/download_ce.html free of charge.