Help text should leave current cell active

[michaelaye]

Currently (0.13.1), when executing a cell like this one to see the help text:
cmd?
will activate the help text sub-window, but it also will proceed to a new cell leaving the previous one in the notebook history with nothing else than the cmd? text inside.
Would it not be better if the cursor stays in the cell that created the help text, and, as a plus, even move the cursor one backwards, before the question mark, and select the question mark, so that the next text written will overwrite the question mark?

[takluyver]

That would certainly be nice, but I think it's one of those things that's tricky to do well. The frontend doesn't know the meaning of what's in the cell, it just sends it to the kernel. And the kernel doesn't know about the frontend.

I guess it would be quite simple for the frontend to check if the code is a single line ending with a ?. But even there, you have to be careful:

f = f + 1    # What does this mean?

[ivanov]

@michaelaye does Ctrl-Enter partially solve this for you? It'll keep the cursor in the same cell, execute it, and highlight all of the text in that cell. That last part might not be something that you want, though.

Also, you're doing x? where x is a callable, you can also just type x(<tab> to get its doc string to pop up.

[ivanov]

To add to what @takluyver is saying - imagine doing a "Run all" for a notebook with many cells - you certainly don't want it to stop executing and leave active any cell where you happen to have left behind a ? query...

[michaelaye]

But if my suggestion would work, there wouldn't be any left behind ? query... ;)

[michaelaye]

Out of interest: Which part currently knows that the comment with an ending ? like the one given by @takluyver is not something to be sent to the help viewer? Because nothing bad happens with that...

[takluyver]

See this function:
https://github.com/ipython/ipython/blob/master/IPython/core/inputsplitter.py#L208

(Note that whole area is due for rearrangement in PR #2447, and subsequent
work)

[Carreau]

Le 1 déc. 2012 à 00:59, Paul Ivanov a écrit :

@michaelaye does Ctrl-Enter partially solve this for you? It'll keep the cursor in the same cell, execute it, and highlight all of the text in that cell. That last part might not be something that you want, though.

Also, you're doing x? where x is a callable, you can also just type x( to get its doc string to pop up.

it does not need to be a callable, [ numpy( will work, but don't tell anyone it's a feature not a bug ] but it is really useful .

As for leaving foo? I think it is a reason of consistency between frontend as you can't edit previous input in console.

Matthias

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[takluyver]

On Dec 1, 2012 9:41 AM, "Bussonnier Matthias" notifications@github.com
wrote:

As for leaving foo? I think it is a reason of consistency between
frontend as you can't edit previous input in console.

In some cases, though, it does put the last input at the next prompt, minus
the ?. That serves much the same purpose.

[ellisonbg]

I do think it is probably important to be consistent with the behavior of
the terminal on this one. I also think that this is a perfect place to use
Ctrl-Enter. I guess I am just agreeing with what others have said.

Cheers,

Brian

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 2:44 AM, Thomas Kluyver notifications@github.comwrote:

On Dec 1, 2012 9:41 AM, "Bussonnier Matthias" notifications@github.com
wrote:

As for leaving foo? I think it is a reason of consistency between
frontend as you can't edit previous input in console.

In some cases, though, it does put the last input at the next prompt, minus
the ?. That serves much the same purpose.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/2633#issuecomment-10915796.

Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger@calpoly.edu and ellisonbg@gmail.com

[ellisonbg]

The new modal UI changes all of this, not relevant any longer.