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93 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
93 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
---
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layout: markdown
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title: FAQ
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---
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# FAQ
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These are the frequently asked questions about the *boxes* program and their answers.
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These questions are *actually* "frequently asked". For general information on the *boxes* program, installation
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instructions, and information on box design creation please refer to the
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[*boxes* documentation]({{ site.baseurl }}/docs/).
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<a class="bxOffsetAnchor" name="q1"></a>
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### Q. 1. What is a text filter program?
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There is a [separate page]({{ site.baseurl }}/docs/filters.html) explaining this. *Boxes* is mostly used as such a
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filter program.
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<a class="bxOffsetAnchor" name="q2"></a>
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### Q. 2. I have compiled and installed boxes, but when I run it, I get an error message "input in flex scanner failed"!
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Upgrade to version 1.0.1 or later. Versions prior to 1.0.1 gave this error message when the config file they were
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trying to read was in fact a directory. The global config file name is */usr/share/boxes* on most systems. This is the
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name of the file, not the name of a directory into which a config file would be placed.
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<a class="bxOffsetAnchor" name="q3"></a>
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### Q. 3. Boxes destroys my tabs!
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By default, all tab characters are replaced by spaces. However, you can change this behavior using the `-t` option
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(since version 1.1). The `-t` option only affects leading tabs. Tabs which end up inside the box are *always* converted
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into spaces.
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Note that you can also set the tab stop distance (== how many spaces per tab) using the `-t` option.
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<a class="bxOffsetAnchor" name="q4"></a>
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### Q. 4. "Can't read file C:\TEMP\VIO44.TMP" when calling boxes from vim
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On Windows, this error message may appear instead of a box when *boxes* is called from vim. This is not a problem of
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*boxes*. In fact, it's a misleading message from the vim editor which is supposed to tell you that *boxes* is not in
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your PATH. Solution: Copy *boxes.exe* and *boxes.cfg* to a directory which is in your PATH. (thanks *Jeff Lanzarotta*,
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05-Jul-00)
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<a class="bxOffsetAnchor" name="q5"></a>
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### Q. 5. Compilation
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Detailed information on how to build *boxes* from source is collected on the
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[build page]({{ site.baseurl }}/build.html).
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In addition to that, the following issues have occurred:
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- Warnings from flex or bison:\\
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If you get warnings from flex or bison, do a `make clean ; make` from the top level directory. The following warning
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is harmless:
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lexer.l:1309: warning: `yy_flex_realloc' defined but not used
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It's a known bug in flex, and has no impact on *boxes*. You can safely ignore this warning. Recent versions of flex
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no longer produce this warning, so today, you probably won't see it anymore.
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- `Bad address` on *boxes* execution after compiling on a 64bit system:
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This may happen when the system you are compiling on is 64bit. Boxes is only a 32bit program, so the compiler may
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have to be forced to 32bit by adding the `-m32` option. (Thanks to
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<span class="atmention">[@stefanow](https://github.com/stefanow)</span> for
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[supplying](https://github.com/{{ site.github }}/issues/7){:target="_blank"} this information!)
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In order to do this, use the following command line (works with current sources):
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make CFLAGS_ADDTL=-m32 LDFLAGS_ADDTL=-m32
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- Compilation on SLES:\\
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On SLES, you might need to add `-std=c99` as observed by
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<span class="atmention">[@mathomp4](https://github.com/mathomp4)</span> in
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[#74](https://github.com/ascii-boxes/boxes/issues/74#issuecomment-784371446).
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<a class="bxOffsetAnchor" name="q6"></a>
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### Q. 6. Character Encoding
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Since v2.0.0, *boxes* supports different character encodings for input/output text. The config file, however, is
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still ASCII (we are working on that). *boxes* normally picks up your system encoding, which on most systems, is simply
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UTF-8. You can override this behavior with `-n`. *boxes* shows what it thinks is the system encoding when you call
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`boxes -h` - the displayed default value for `-n` is the system encoding.
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