Re: Emacs with Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg116568] Re: Emacs with Mathematica
- From: David Bailey <dave at removedbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 05:25:15 -0500 (EST)
- References: <ijlehe$r34$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 18/02/2011 09:35, Just A Stranger wrote: > I've been finding the notebook interface terribly lacking for basic text > editing. A lot of mouse moving, not a whole lot of keyboard combinations > to move the cursor and highlighting. > > I've found two emacs mathematica mode packages. Anyone ever used these? > Had any trouble with them? (I'm not too concerned with pretty-print, so > that is not an issue.) > > Is the notebook interface really lacking in program editing power, or > am I missing something? Have any of you found any better solutions than > resorting to some old emacs package last updated in 2005? > > Thanks :) > I like to put code into .m files, because these seem to edit more conveniently than .nb files - in particular, the text does not move about as you add brackets! Using an external text editor is only really feasible for .m files, but even there, you have the problem that a lot of Mathematica characters appear in the form \[Alpha]. Depending on what you are doing, this can be a real pain! While the built-in editor may not have all the features of your favourite text editor, it has one feature that I find invaluable. Starting from the cursor position, you can progressively expand the selection to successively larger expressions by pressing Control-. (or the equivalent in non-Windows environments). This lets you pick out a whole expression taking care of operator precedence and bracket counting. You can also do this with multiple fast mouse clicks. David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk