#Command line editing
7 messages in this thread
Duff,
Any chance of some command line buffering control in R12? It sure would be
nice to intercept the command before it was passed to the interpreter…AND
be able to F3 the previously typed command in for retyping.
Brian (I *hate* tablets… and mice – although mice are necessary)
Brian – A command recall/edit facility has been requested often. We've
prototyped a few, but have yet to find a suitable solution. I doubt we'll
have one for R12. Some of the issues involve mouse/digitizer picks (should
they be replayed too? Should they be editable or replaceable by new point
picks?); configuration dependence (will the screen picks and such recorded
in one configuration be playable in another?); what's the proper
granularity of a recorded item (command name only? plus keywords? plus
point picks? What about transparent commands?); if a particular command
selects objects, should the same objects be used upon reissuance? What if
they no longer exist? And then there are the driver issues…
nondestructive text cursor movement and editing on the command/prompt line
is not supported by any AutoCAD display driver today (as far as I know),
although it could be done via a dialogue box…
We'd like to hear from you and others about these issues and any others you
might feel are important regarding this very desireable feature. How would
it serve you best?
Duff,
My initial reaction is to request that it be rather simple — more like the
DOS command recall. QDos III goes further into allowing a command history
to be popped up and a past command either run or selected for editing. I
don't think that mouse PICKS should be recalled, although I think that the
return button could recall the command without entering it, allowing one to
edit the command first. As for granularity (nifty word), I think that
anything typable is fair game, which would include keywords,
transparencies, etc. Selected objects are recalled with the Previous
selection option already… the only improvement I would make is to provide
one more selection before that: Former. This would give you keyboard
control over Last, Previous, and Former selection sets. And I don't see why
deleted entities cannot be reselected. The (entdel) toggles the existence
of entities anyway, doesn't it? It would be similar to the OOPS Previous, i
have to use to undo a command and get the selection set back (tedious, but
better than reselecting entities). I don't see any need to worry about
configurations, or "destructive cursor movement" — DOS doesn't seem to
have these problems… and I don't know Unix <g>. Besides, I *hate*
dialogue boxes — it should have been apparent from the Macs that it is a
great pain to constantly shift between the mouse and keyboard. I have to
give Autodesk a jeer for that one 😉
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[Continued]
The other issue is command interception, such as with Lisp. It is very
awkward to have to Undefine commands to provide interception; one would
have undefine numerous commands to provide any kind of usable features,
such as AutoSaves or intercepting the Plot command to update a Drawing
Management attribute. I could probably think of dozens of uses for such a
feature. One last beef… Why in the world does a PLOT command disable the
Undo History?! There are many times that I want to plot a divergent scheme
and then go back (without having to maintain a series of Wblocked files).
It is funny that UNDO will go back past a SAVE or WBLOCK, but not a PLOT. I
was really baffled by why one could not do this. Is the PLOT command so
separate from the rest of the program that it disables the link? Or is the
assumption that if one PLOTs, they would never want to go back <smirk>?!
FWIW, thanks for your interest and patience in letting me vent some spleen!
Brian Boatright
Brian – Thanks for your thoughts on this subject. I suspect we'll just sit
back and compile them, and see if a consensus emerges.
In the beginning, PLOT was a totally separate program… then the Main Menu
was developed to allow you to switch among the "separate" Drawing Editor,
Configurator, Plot, and Prplot programs. PLOT from within the Drawing
Editor has always exited from the Drawing Editor, done the plot, and
restarted the Drawing Editor (thereby resetting the Undo file). That's
also why AutoLISP doesn't run during a PLOT. With the demise of the Main
Menu in R12, it may be possible for us to fix these things.
Rather than *command* interception, I think we're converging toward an
object/method-oriented approach, where applications will be able to receive
notice of events taking place, and be able to patch themselves into the
pipeline to deal with those events occurring to their objects/files. But
don't expect that in R12.
Duff:
We are *eagerly* awaiting that noun/verb relationship!!
Larry
Duff:
I'd say start out small, if necessary. A command history set similar to
the way 4DOS does theirs shouldn't be too hard. I'd think you might get
away without putting mouse picks, digitizer picks, etc into the first
go-round for clarity, with the promise that it will be considered in the
future.
Larry