I've just pushed an update to SlyEdit and made a merge request; one of the changes is that SlyEdit now has a user setting to choose their desired UI mode (Ice/DCT/Random) from within SlyEdit (the user settings menu can be brought up using the Ctrl-U hotkey).

The implication of this is that the command-line parameter to specify the UI mode is no longer required, and you can have just one entry for SlyEdit in your Synchronet external editor configuration. If you decide to keep the two SlyEdit entries for now, SlyEdit will still work, so you can wait on changing it if you want.

After the SlyEdit update is committed to the Synchronet repository, if you decide to change your external editor configuration to just have one SlyEdit entry, you'll likely want to change its internal code (to just "SLYEDIT"). Before you do that, though, I made a JS script that will list users who appear to be using SlyEdit, which you may want to use. You can download it here:

http://digdist.synchro.net/usersUsingSlyedit.js

Before changing your SlyEdit entries in your Synchronet editor configuration, run that (either on your BBS PC with jsexec or remotely in the terminal) and note down the users it lists. Then after you change your editor configuration to only have one SlyEdit entry, edit the users in the list and ensure they have SlyEdit selected as their message editor.

I apologize in advance for the inconvenience, though I think this will make for a cleaner setup (and as mentioned, SlyEdit will continue to work as configured). Also, with this change, users can change their SlyEdit UI mode on the fly from within SlyEdit, which I think could be a handy feature.


This is an example configuration for SlyEdit in SCFG's external editors section:

Name SlyEdit
Internal Code SLYEDIT
Command line ?SlyEdit.js %f
Access requirements ANSI AND COLS 80
Native Executable No
I/O method FOSSIL or UART
Use Shell or New Context No
Record Terminal Width Yes
Word-wrap Quoted Text Yes, for 79 columns
Retain Ctrl-A Codes in Quotes Yes
Automatically Quoted Text All
Editor Information Files QuickBBS MSGINF/MSGTMP
Handle Soft CRs N/A
Strip FidoNet Kludges No
Support UTF-8 Encoding Yes
BBS Drop File Type None

(And Digital Man, if any of that looks like it could be improved, feel free to let me know)

Nightfox

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Hey Nightfox!

On Thu, Mar 05 2026 17:38:40 -0600, you wrote:

I apologize in advance for the inconvenience, though I think this will
make for a cleaner setup (and as mentioned, SlyEdit will continue to
work as configured). Also, with this change, users can change their
SlyEdit UI mode on the fly from within SlyEdit, which I think could be a handy feature.

Couple of questions regarding this..

If one were to keep both entries in the editor selection list:

1) Can a user still change their UI mode from within SlyEdit?

2) Still using the above scenario, if a user exited SlyEdit, and then re-entered, would it automatically go back to their original editor selection since it is still forced on the command line?

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
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Re: Re: SlyEdit update regarding UI modes
By: Nick Boel to Nightfox on Thu Mar 05 2026 06:14 pm

If one were to keep both entries in the editor selection list:

1) Can a user still change their UI mode from within SlyEdit?

Yes.

2) Still using the above scenario, if a user exited SlyEdit, and then re-entered, would it automatically go back to their original editor selection since it is still forced on the command line?

No, it will use the mode that the user chose in their user settings. After the user makes a change to their user settings, their settings will be saved, including this new option. So in this scenario, the user's setting will override the command-line option used in the Synchronet editor entry.

Nightfox

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Hey Nightfox!

On Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:35:44 -0800, you wrote:

No, it will use the mode that the user chose in their user settings.
After the user makes a change to their user settings, their settings
will be saved, including this new option. So in this scenario, the
user's setting will override the command-line option used in the
Synchronet editor entry.

Ok. So the old command line option is basically only used if there is no user setting (so basically as a default, until the setting is changed by the user at some point, if they do so at all)?

I guess I'm just making sure keeping things the way they are will continue to work as I would expect it to. If users don't make said change in their user settings, they will get what they chose when they applied (or even, the fact that I have SlyIce as the "default" during the application process).

Then, once changed by a user their choice will stick.

Thanks!

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
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Re: SlyEdit update regarding UI modes
By: Accession to Nightfox on Fri Mar 06 2026 11:42 am

Ok. So the old command line option is basically only used if there is no user setting (so basically as a default, until the setting is changed by the user at some point, if they do so at all)?

I guess I'm just making sure keeping things the way they are will continue to work as I would expect it to. If users don't make said change in their user settings, they will get what they chose when they applied (or even, the fact that I have SlyIce as the "default" during the application process).

Then, once changed by a user their choice will stick.

Yes, that's how it should work. I did some testing before committing the change and it looked to behave as expected, but feel free to let me know if you see any issues.

Nightfox

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