scipad - Embedded Scilab text editor

Calling Sequence

scipad()

scipad(f)

scipad([f1,f2,...])

scipad f1 f2 ...

Parameters

• f, f1, f2... : file pathnames

Description

Scipad is an embedded Scilab text editor written in TCL/TK. It can be started with the "Editor" button on top of the main Scilab window, or from Scilab command line with the instruction scipad() or scipad f .

The same invocation adds further files to an already opened scipad session. Scipad allows Windows like edition modes. Keyboard shortcuts are defined for most possible editing actions and reported by the menu entries.

Additionally, the following shortcuts are defined:

The "Load Into Scilab" (Ctrl-lowercase-l) menu entry can be used to exec the file content into Scilab, while "Execute selection" (Ctrl-lowercase-y) passes the selected lines to the scilab shell using ScilabEval (i.e. execstr ).

Debugger

Scipad 2.0 or later includes a debugger (for .sci files only). The user can:

Set/remove breakpoints anywhere in the opened files. The breakpointed lines get pink background.

Configure execution. The user has to provide the function name to execute, its variable names, and variable values. To ease this step, a scan of the currently displayed buffer is implemented to look for functions defined in it, scan their names and variable names. All this is displayed to the user in a dialog for easy selection. First, he has to select a function in a spinbox, then eventually one of its variables. Once a variable is selected, the user can set/change its value (another dialog pops). Variable values and names are displayed in listboxes. The user can also add a new variable or remove already defined variables. This is in case the user changes the input variables of his function in the file, and he does not want to scan the buffer again (which causes all the variable values to reset to a null value, actually "").

Launch execution with breakpoints. Scipad execs the currently displayed buffer as well as all the opened buffers that contain functions, sends to Scilab the buffer as well as all the opened buffers that contain functions, sends to Scilab the setbpt instructions relative to all the breakpoints that have been set, and executes the selected function with the input variable values provided during the configure execution step. Then the execution is automagically stopped by Scilab at the first breakpoint.

At this point there are several possibilities for the user:

Continue up to next breakpoint. Scilab resumes execution, and stops at the next breakpoint or goes to the end of the file if there are no more breakpoints. The active breakpoint is emphasized in Scipad so that it can easily be identified.

Insert a new breakpoint or remove existing breakpoint during the debug. The breakpointed lines get pink background, and lines where breakpoints are removed restore their normal background. The new breakpoint configuration is taken into account for the next steps of execution or debug.

Execute step by step. This is currently not available (it is always disabled in the Debug menu). See proc stepbystep_bp in SCI/tcl/scipadsources/db_debugsession.tcl for further details about the problems encountered for this item.

Continue ignoring any breakpoint. Finish execution in Scilab as if there was no breakpoint at all: Breakpoints are removed from Scilab but kept in Scipad.

Abort debug. Abort execution in Scilab and cancel the current debug session in Scipad.

Remove all breakpoints. This allows to quickly remove all the breakpoints from both Scilab and Scipad.

At any time during the debug, a watch window can be displayed on user request. It allows to monitor any variable value, or change a variable value during a breakpoint stop and relaunch execution with the modified value. The watch window also displays the calling stack.

After the end of the execution, the breakpoints are removed from Scilab (but kept in Scipad).

In its current development state the debugger works well with functions, i.e. pure .sci files. Support of .sce files or mixed .sce/.sci files has been foreseen but not yet implemented. That means that a .sce file will not crash Scipad, which is the very least, but more, once a feasible solution for debugging this type of files is figured out, it should be easy to add the functionality in the Scipad source code. Anyway, if actually a debug is required in a .sce, you should first convert it into a .sci function just by adding (output_vars)=function foo(input_vars) / endfunction and that's it. The absence of breakpoints management for .sce is therefore not such a major drawback.

Remarks

Localisation: Scipad menues and messages can be translated to several languages. By default, they appear in the language of Scilab, which is either English or French (see setlanguage ), but other languages are being added. The localization in effect can be selected with the menu Options/Locale, and is remembered across sessions. Currently, the supported languages are: "de" (German) ,"eng" (English), "fr" (French), "it" (Italian), "no" (Norwegian), "se" (Swedish).Further languages can be added by creating the proper translation file and putting it in SCI/tcl/scipadsources/msg_files/. If you plan to do such a job, please check the file SCI/tcl/scipadsources/msg_files/AddingTranslations.txt for detailed instructions, and consider to contribute it to the community.

Drag and drop: DnD has been implemented in Scipad for moving around text, for dropping selected text from and to external applications, and for opening files or for list of files.

Dragging one or more files from an explorer and dropping to Scipad will open the file(s) in Scipad. Doing the same with a directory will open recursively all the directory contents (beware!)

For text selected within the Scipad window, the possible actions are move (just use mouse button-1) and copy (Control button-1). Text selections can be moved or copied also between different Scipad subpanes, when tiling is active.

Drag and drop capabilities in Scipad rely on the TkDnD package (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkdnd). Presence of this package should be automatically detected by Scipad, enabling the corresponding features at that time. Windows and linux-i386 binary versions of Scilab are currently shipped with Tkdnd. If not, here are some installation instructions:

Windows platforms: Download the full package (currently tkdnd-1.0a2.tar.gz), and uncompress it somewhere. Copy the content of lib\tkdnd and paste it into SCI\tcl\tk8.4\tkdnd. That's all!

linux-i386 platforms: Download the rpm package (currently tkdnd-1.0-b2.i386.rpm). Install it with rpm -U (may have to force --nodeps if it doesn't recognize an existing tcl installation). If you have a source version of Scilab and an installation of tcl-tk, check where they are installed (e.g. /usr/share/) and move the newly created directory /usr/lib/tkdnd1.0/ to there. If you have a binary version of Scilab, move tkdnd1.0/ to SCI/tcl/, where the supplied tcl-tk binaries are.

Known Issues:

The commands passed are output on the Scilab window, but are not recorded in the history.

Bugs: There are still a few... Details can be found in file SCI/tcl/scipadsources/BUGS

Examples

   scipad SCI/scilab.star 

See Also

edit ,   manedit ,   edit_error ,  

Authors

Scipad is derived from tknotepad written by Joseph Acosta;

Mathieu Philippe, INRIA, 2001;

Enrico Segre, Weizmann Institute, 2003-2005;

Francois Vogel, 2004-2005.