Re: GNU readline ability in the front end
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg73957] Re: GNU readline ability in the front end
- From: David Bailey <dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 01:22:05 -0500 (EST)
- References: <es6dah$s1p$1@smc.vnet.net>
Frank Hu wrote: > I'm new to Mathematica and like it. My main complain is the Frontend > lacking basic command line editing facilities. Specifically: > > 1. Line editing. I know there are basic Emacs key-bindings and Cmd- > l recalls the previous input. But what about recalling all previous > inputs? I'm not talking about re-evaluating the n-th input (In[n]), > but actually get back what I typed and make slight modifications, > without using the mouse. > 2. Command history. Is there anyway to store and restore command > history automatically, so I don't have to save every session to a > notebook? > 3. Filename auto-completion. Cmd-k completes commands, how about > filenames? > 4. Also, what's with the one-level undo? How difficult is to have > multi-level undo? > > I know there's JMath, but it does only text. Am I missing something > or the Frontend indeed is insufficient in this regard? > > Frank > I certainly agree about undo - once you build the mechanism to do one level undo, why not extend it to multi-level - most machines have plenty of memory! Regarding point 1 - is it completely reasonable to require never to use the mouse? You only have to click into a previous input cell to be able to alter it and re-execute your code in place - or paste a copy somewhere else and re-execute that. I would also have thought that notebooks provide a much better facility than a command history solution! You can always re-open a notebook and continue to add to it - which gives you a command history spanning several sessions! I never use the In and Out functions - they seem to be a hang over from the days when Mathematica did not have a front end. I think the answer lies in your first sentence - use Mathematica for a couple of weeks and you will wonder what the problem is! David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk