You can configure MULTI to use another editor in place of MULTI's built-in Editor with the configuration strings: usealternateeditor,usextermforalternateeditor, editor and editorLaunch. These options are accessible from the GUI by choosing Config > Options... > Editor Tab > More Editor Options.... For more information on these variables, see Chapter 9, "Configuring and customizing MULTI" or Chapter 10, "Configuration commands". usealternateeditor (which corresponds to the "Alternate editor" checkbox in the GUI) means that MULTI should use a third party editor instead of the build-in editor. usextermforalternateeditor (corresponds to "Use Xterm for alternate editor" checkbox) means that MULTI will launch the editor inside an xterm window; use this option if your editor is non-graphical. editor (corresponds to the "Executable" text field) should be set to the command name of the third party editor, and editorLaunch (corresponds to "Command line arguments" text field) to a string which indicates the format of arguments that the Editor expects. Within editorLaunch, the following special escape sequences are recognized:
%FILE0 Filename (first file name if there are multiple ones).
%FILES Where the rest of the file names should go if the editor can accept multiple file names.
For example, here are configurations for commonly used editors:
usealternateeditor: On
usextermforalternateeditor: On
editor: vi
editorLaunch: "+%LINE %FILE0"
usealternateeditor: On
usextermforalternateeditor: Off
editor: emacs
editorLaunch: "+%LINE %FILE0 %FILES"
usealternateeditor: On
usextermforalternateeditor: Off
editor: notepad
editorLaunch: "%FILE0"
Depending upon your PATH environment variable, you may need to specify the full path to the Editor.