Re: making something autoexecute before normal execution
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg116825] Re: making something autoexecute before normal execution
- From: David Bailey <dave at removedbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 05:24:24 -0500 (EST)
- References: <ik84g4$n6q$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 25/02/2011 11:40, John Fultz wrote: > On Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:23:14 -0500 (EST), Josh Burkart wrote: >> hello, >> >> i'm interested in making an autosave package (since i'm always losing my >> work when mathematica crashes! argh). my idea was to force the kernel to >> execute an autosave type function, which would be no problem to code, >> every time the user basically presses ctrl+return to send stuff to the >> kernel to execute. >> >> i know there is, for example, the $NewSymbol system function which, if >> set by the user, is always run whenever a new symbol is encountered. is >> there something similar for whenever the kernel executes anything? >> obviously it would have to be only when a user actually hits ctrl+return >> or the like, not at every level of the execution stack! >> >> any help appreciated! >> thanks, >> josh b. > > There is an option in the front end (in the Option Inspector) called > NotebookAutoSave which, if set to True on a notebook, will do exactly what > you're asking for. It has the somewhat silly behavior of causing beeps every > time you do evaluations in a never-before-saved notebook, so you probably > wouldn't want to set it globally, but it's certainly easy enough to set it on > any given notebook. > > Sincerely, > > John Fultz > jfultz at wolfram.com > User Interface Group > Wolfram Research, Inc. > Of course, ideally the FrontEnd would never crash, so autosave would never be necessary. I don't use autosave myself, because it is possible to make a catastrophic mistake - such as deleting all cells - that is then autosaved over the file (I assume it works that way, I have never used it). However, I find that there are a lot of circumstances in which Mathematica seems frozen - too frozen to quit the kernel via the menu - where it is possible to recover the FrontEnd by killing the kernel process some other way. I have an icon to do this using the Windows taskkill.exe program. Very occasionally this simply crashes the FrontEnd, but I would say it is 95% successful. David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk