the-3.1 port suggestion (with JPEG attachment)

[none]

I have been using IBM's Xedit editor, and various incarnations, for
nearly 20 years, and am - ummm - somewhat abhored by the "basic" THE
installation which results in a old DOS-like editor. I realize that this
is the way that the package "comes".

Attached is a snapshot, "THE-3.1.true_IBM_appearance.jpg", of an
"advanced" installation that uses Xcurses (PDCurses-2.6), and makes THE
look just like the traditional IBM Xedit editor.

I would like to suggest that the FreeBSD the-3.1 port installation be
modified to either offer this "advanced" version of THE as comments ala
java, or as makefile options, or by default (best).

While it is possible that some people may be more familiar with KEDIT,
it is easy to provide for an XEDIT-like installation.

PDCurses is available from the same site as is THE. Its README file
mentions,

 The core curses package is Public Domain, but small portions of this
 package are subject to various copyright conditions.  Each directory
 in this package contains a README file. In each of these README files
 is a section titled "Distribution Status" which describes the
 distribution status of the files within that directory.


and the THE-3.1/x11/README states,

 The files in this directory are copyright Mark Hessling 1995-2000.
 This source code made be used without restriction when used with
 the PDCurses library.  Any other use of this source code requires
 written permission of the author, Mark Hessling (M.Hessling at qut.edu.au).

I would think that it would be possible to provide either PDCurses as a
FreeBSD port outright, or a port like java which requires the user to
download the source (where there is no authorization/agreement required)
to avoid any possible copyright entanglements, and then install it.

If this is not acceptable, then it would at least be nice to add make
comments like many other ports which offer specific feature options that
a user can select or act upon, independently.

I realize that not changing anything about the FreeBSD the-3.1 port
would be the simplest thing to do, but it is also a real waste of the
THE application to leave the user with such a difficult editor to use,
in its "default installation mode".

Simply changing the "--with-ncurses" CONFIGURE argument to
"--with-xcurses" will be sufficient to provide the more advanced THE
gui. I usually also add "--with-xaw3d", but I don't believe that it is
strictly required.

The only other note about the advanced THE interface is the use of two
lines in a user's .Xresources file to set the font size ala,

	the.normalFont: 10x20
	the.boldFont: 10x20


The current FreeBSD the-3.1 port already is linked to rexx-imc-1.76,
which is a very good REXX implementation (I have also used REXX for
nearly 20 years on IBM mainframes, Amiga, and Unix). Now I would like to
see this port linked to PDCurses (xcurses), or at least offer the user
some make comments about them pre-installing PDCurses beforehand, to
obtain the "advanced" THE interface.

Thank you.