Re: Migrating to 3.8 GUI version

[John W. Eaton]

On 12/29/2013 11:20 AM, Colin Beckingham wrote:
> Many thanks for the 3.8 version. I have it working, both CLI and GUI, on
> openSUSE 13.1. This version seems to have resolved my longstanding issue
> with sporadically poor plot window control. I'm looking forward to
> delving deeper into the capabilities of the GUI.
>
> One of the issues that arises when migrating from a CLI version to GUI
> is the handling of pauses. It is convenient to stop a script to see what
> is happening from time to time. In CLI mode the pause is good (provided
> it works consistently) but in GUI mode it might be better to have a
> breakpoint. Pauses are particularly confusing in GUI since if you are
> working from the editor the script can stop without warning and since
> the message to continue is sent to the CLI window you can miss it
> completely.
>
> I tried replacing the pause()s with keyboard()s but this made things
> worse since a keyboard() command seems to be different from a
> breakpoint.
>
> How to replace pause()s with breakpoints in an efficient manner (ie
> find/replace)?

If you are using pause as a debugging tool, I recommend that you try 
setting breakpoints interactively in the GUI editor instead.  Then you 
can do nice things like step through the code and watch the pointer move 
forward to the next line or next breakpoint.  The workspace viewer also 
follows the current function, so you can easily see what variables are 
defined.

It might also help to detach the editor window from the GUI so you can 
view the command window and editor simultaneously.  It's also possible 
to have the command and editor windows both docked in the main window 
but not overlapping.

jwe