switch to IDL 8: no more F1 help shortcut, and other issues

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Last Post 07 Jul 2011 06:45 AM by anon

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anon

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07 Jul 2011 06:45 AM
I have just performed the switch to IDL 8, using MacOS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. Many new features, many language improvements, it has been tempting to switch for a long time now... A significant software upgrade usually doesn't come without some hassle, and so does IDL 8. For now the most annoying thing is the apparent impossibility to get online help on the command at the cursor by simply pressing F1. I've tried almost everything: - moving the cursor to the position and selecting the command from menu works. - assigning a different keyboard shortcut to the help-about-selected: no effect - assigning F1 as a shortcut for another command: works perfectly (so the system isn't swallowing the F1 keystroke). - deleted/renamed all config files to have IDL create new ones: still F1 doesn't bring up the help What can I do? Also I haven't found a way to move the cursor in the console by more than a single letter. I often used the alt-cursorkey shortcut to skip entire words in a single keystroke. Any idea for this one? Looking forward to your replies, Peter

Deleted User

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12 Jul 2011 11:41 AM
Hi Peter, I too was unable to get F1 to work for help. Like you, I got it to work for other commands. I'm not sure what could be going on, but note that one can right click on text to get a context menu that has "Help on Selected Item". We have a bug logged against it, but right now it's low in the queue. I'll add you to the bug, which will give it more weight. With regard to moving the cursor around in the console and editor, the usual Mac keyboard combinations should work. Namely, the arrow keys will move the cursor one character. Adding in the "option" key as a modifier jumps the cursor by one word and "command" jumps the cursor to the beginning or end of the line. Adding in the "shift" key will cause the jumped text to be selected. Hope this helps. Cheers, Doug ITT VIS

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13 Jul 2011 02:06 AM
Hi Doug, thanks for your reply! Good to hear the problem hasn't been unnoticed. Good to hear, too, that there is a rather straight-forward workaround by using the context menu. Well, it still requires to switch from keyboard to mouse, which means a break in the workflow, but it's not too bad! I realized that the option key plus cursor keys works when editing commands from the history. It still doesn't work most of the time in a command I've just typed. This wasn't the case with IDL 7. Shift-select works as intended. For what it's worth, I'm on IDL 8.0.1, my institute hasn't upgraded to 8.1 yet. Cheers, Peter

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