ChanServ changed the topic of #xiki to: Trying out the new version of xiki shell! This channel is logged at http://irclog.whitequark.org/xiki/
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<thams>
If you have control-x'd something and it then puts up a new view, is there a way to go back to the one you were at before?
<trogdoro>
thams: hitting the ESC key should do it
<trogdoro>
thams: sometimes you have to hit it twice
<thams>
ESC seems to exit xsh most of the time!
<trogdoro>
once to stop the filter, and once to switch back to the last view
<trogdoro>
thams: ESC only exits when you have only a single view open
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<trogdoro>
if you have multiple views open, it switches between them
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<thams>
Hmmm....
<trogdoro>
thams: It usually shows “ESC Back” in the bottom bar
<thams>
So, I did xsh -tab, then expanded tutorial, then expanded topics, then expanded editing... hit ESC (nothing), hit ESC (left xsh )
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<thams>
Or, xsh -h, then selected a historical item, hit ^x, it executed and painted it into a new screen... but then I hit ESC and xsh quit
<trogdoro>
thams: in the first case, it didn’t open another view, so there was nothing to switch to
<trogdoro>
thams: in the 2nd case, same thing - just one view open
<thams>
Maybe I'm using the wrong term saying "view". It clears everything off the screen and puts the output of the executed or expanded command...
<thams>
If I'm looking at the history, hit the ^x on something, is there a way to go back to the history I was just looking at?
<trogdoro>
thams: Ctrl+Z to undo often works for those situations
<trogdoro>
thams: sometimes you have to type it a couple times (multiple undo)
<thams>
AH, so cool!
<trogdoro>
thams: or, if you ESC back to your shell, doing an up arrow to re-run the last command is another way
<trogdoro>
thams: btw, when it exits, it always saves your session
<thams>
so sweet!
<trogdoro>
thams: if you accidentally quit, you can type Ctrl+G in your shell to jump back to where you were
<trogdoro>
thams: and you can type “xsh -l” to list and navigate to previous xsh sessions
<trogdoro>
thams: and then re-run the commands or add more etc.
<thams>
Awesome.
<trogdoro>
thams: I’m heading home now, but will be back on in a bit
<trogdoro>
I’ll check the irc logs, so feel free to ask more stuff while I’m offline
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<Rainer_>
Hi. What is the best way to remove Xiki from my system (ubuntu 14.04.02)?
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<mac123456>
using xsh in mac is stuck with an emacs command.. What am i supposed to do. Thanks
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<thams>
I did the one-line installation of xiki. But I realize I’d like to try to contribute back via pull requests. If I simply clone the git repo to ~/xiki-master on my Mac, am I okay? Or has the installation process done anything special to it?
<trogdoro>
thams: that should be fine
<trogdoro>
thams: probably run the “clearxsh” shell command as well
<thams>
ok; why?
<trogdoro>
thams: it just clears out any running “xiki forker” process
<thams>
gotcha.
<trogdoro>
thams: it’s a process that stays running in between invocations, to make it fast each time you launch it
<thams>
I figured I’d start by adding to Faq and docs
<trogdoro>
thams: but, no, the installer doesn’t do anything special
<thams>
(as I’m learning the system)
<trogdoro>
thams: it just extracts the dir, creates ~/xiki, ~/.xsh, and updates .bashrc and .bash_profile
<trogdoro>
thams: great!
<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, creating entries under the “faq” command is probably a good place to start
<thams>
I was trying to presume what the various leading & trailing characters signify, for example. $ seems to indicate “run this in the shell”,
<trogdoro>
thams: indeed
<trogdoro>
I had a command for that at some point
<Sublim3>
trogdoro, Hi, I was wondering if there was a config file where I could set the browser. I am getting issues because I don't have firefox installed
<trogdoro>
a command that just shows what each char means
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: currently firefox is the only browser xiki can send javascript to
<thams>
: indicates the output of a previous command
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: though if you do commands that just open urls, it should use the default browser
<Sublim3>
Ohh I see
<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, shows what each symbol does
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: it’s a little inconsistent - some commands just tell the browser to run url’s, and some tell it to run javascript (the latter being firefox only)
<thams>
>> and << are markup only?
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: I’ve been wanting to add Chrome support for a while, but just haven’t gotten around to it
<Sublim3>
trogdoro, good to know
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: It probably won’t be that hard. There’s a ruby gem that starts up a browser (firefox or chrome) and can send javascript to it
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: the one everyone uses for browser testing
<thams>
trogdoro: Are you saying there *is* somethign that already explains what each char means?
<trogdoro>
thams: “> Foo” is a heading
<Sublim3>
you mean in your project?
<trogdoro>
>> Subheading
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: there’s a ruby gem that Xiki doesn’t use yet
<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, let me look for it
<Sublim3>
ohh
<Sublim3>
also I had to tell you your project made me thing of emacs org-mode except not for the 90's and having much more flexibility :p
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: yeah, there are some similarities, but a lot of differences
<Sublim3>
of course
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: org-mode seems really cool
<Sublim3>
well let me say xiki covers all org-mode did for me and better and adds many more features
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: nice! Glad to hear it!
<Sublim3>
also instead of org-mode generating pure html for the content with xiki you can all the nice bootstrap things
<trogdoro>
thams: I couldn’t find it > it was probably in one of my presentations
<thams>
Does << do anything? or did I just imagine seeing that?
<thams>
And are *trailing* characters sometimes significant?
<trogdoro>
thams: yes, “<< foo” when indented under a tree will make the item replace its parent before expanding
<trogdoro>
thams: it’s kind of an advanced one, there are a handful that the user will find more useful at first
<trogdoro>
thams: yep, sometimes trailing chars are significant
<trogdoro>
thams: and sometimes others in the middle are
<trogdoro>
(meaning if you type a url, it’ll be recognized as a url)
<trogdoro>
! ruby code
<trogdoro>
p ruby code, printing the output
<trogdoro>
^notes
<trogdoro>
> Heading
<trogdoro>
> Super-heading:
<trogdoro>
/directory/
<trogdoro>
xiki command
<trogdoro>
(no special syntax needed)
<trogdoro>
thams: I figure the main entry points for people looking for help in xiki will be:
<trogdoro>
$ xsh —help
<trogdoro>
$ xsh -help
<trogdoro>
Ctrl+K, help (typed within xsh)
<trogdoro>
thams: very cool you’re interested in helping to document! :)
<thams>
trogdoro: very cool you’re building this! I’m happy to try and help.
<trogdoro>
:)
<trogdoro>
thams: those 3 paths basically lead you to the “help” xiki command
<thams>
There have been a handful of things that, since I have beginner’s mind, probably make it easier for me to see the confusion for an initial user. (Especially one like me who hasn’t used Emacs since, well, about the time Emacs was born)
<trogdoro>
thams: cool, interested in hearing what the confusion points have been for you so far
<trogdoro>
thams: I’ve been observing a lot of people, and trying to gradually change features to make it more natural
<trogdoro>
thams: I made escape cancel things and close views that popped open
<trogdoro>
a month or so ago
<thams>
yeah, that helped!
<trogdoro>
seems like that was a big usability win so far
<thams>
(I had used xiki before too)
<trogdoro>
it was actually pretty tough to implement in emacs, so it took me a while to tackle it
<trogdoro>
thams: ah, then you probably experienced the “typing ESC gets me into more trouble than I was in, rather than getting me out of trouble” thing :)
<Sublim3>
was emacs your first choice because its your main editor?
<thams>
ahyup
<trogdoro>
thams: I watched so many people go through that
<trogdoro>
I’d actually been asking around for years on the emacs mailing list about how to capture escape, and kind of no one said it was possible
<trogdoro>
but I found a couple other emacs libs that did stuff with escape in different ways, and borrowed from the ways they implemented it
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: in practice, yeah, it’s because I’ve used emacs for years
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: but, the reason I’ve used it for years, is because it’s super-extensible
<Sublim3>
absolutely
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: even today, it’s really the only game in town, re an environment that runs in the shell and lets you customize everything
<trogdoro>
Sublim3: unless you want to role your own with ncurses I guess
<Sublim3>
heh that would be alot of work to achieve something at the heal of emacs
<thams>
Another confusion for me was the thing I was referring to last night, what i was (incorrectly) calling “views”. When I would ^x somethign and it would paint a new screen, I kind of thought I was going forward in a stack of screens that I could then retreet from
<trogdoro>
but it would probably take years to implement basic stuff like scrolling, saving, handling console resizing gracefully, incremental search, and countless other things emacs does for xsh
<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, I was thinking about that
<trogdoro>
thams: re pressing ESC exiting xsh, right?
<thams>
Yup
<trogdoro>
thams: I think you’re probably right that ESC shouldn’t exit when you’ve already done a couple things in xsh
<thams>
Maybe not.
<trogdoro>
thams: it should probably only exit if you’re in the process of doing the initial filter, right after launching it from bash
<trogdoro>
usually by typing ^X or ^R
<trogdoro>
thams: I think I actually had it like that at one point, and then unintentionally lost that nuance while fixing a bug
<trogdoro>
thams: I’ve had a similar intuition at times
<trogdoro>
thams: and had the feeling that it would almost be cool if ESC did undo as well as switched between views
<trogdoro>
thams: but my current thinking is that sometimes you’ll want to do one, and sometimes you’ll want to do other things
<trogdoro>
thams: one possible thing that might help convey the distinction is to show “^Z Undo” in the bottom bar when it’s relevant
<thams>
Another thing that wasn’t clear was this: when typing “mysql …..” I just assumed that was running mysql from the command line. But in reality I think it is running a xiki script, right?
<trogdoro>
thams: but the bottom bar is already so crowded :(
<trogdoro>
thams: a “xiki command”, yes
<thams>
Gotcha.
<trogdoro>
thams: you can run “$ mysql” to run the shell command
<trogdoro>
thams: xiki commands can be implemented as scripts, classes, literal menus, and several other ways
<trogdoro>
thams: and the scripts can be implemented in ruby, python, javascript, or bash
<trogdoro>
thams: re adding to the faq…
<trogdoro>
you can probably see, the 3 main “documentation-ish” options under “$ xsh -help” are:
<trogdoro>
“help topics”, “tutorial”, and “faq”
<trogdoro>
thams: and all three are mostly un-implemented :)
<trogdoro>
thams: “tutorial” will probably be a thing on its own, that will require some amount of thought and organization
<trogdoro>
thams: but “help topics” and “faq” can probably be just big lists of one-off tips and explanations
<trogdoro>
which will probably make it easier and less stressfull to put some documentation together
<trogdoro>
dang, there should be some irc convetion for tagging parts of a discussion
<trogdoro>
like, I would tag this part “documentation”
<trogdoro>
let me mess with their search feature, and see what a good convention might be
<thams>
Sweet.
<thams>
Another question…. if I do $ ls ^x
<thams>
and then start typing to “filter” out some of the results...
<thams>
is it simply ^z to undo what I filtered to get back so I can re-filter?
<trogdoro>
tag: documentation
<trogdoro>
tag > documentation
<trogdoro>
tag documentation
<trogdoro>
thams: that’s one of the ways
<trogdoro>
thams: sometimes you have to type ^Z a couple times, I think
<trogdoro>
thams: but, another way that often works is to collapse and expand it again
<trogdoro>
thams: so, just assuming we’re using the mouse, for simplicity
<trogdoro>
double-click on the “$ ls” line to collapse it
<trogdoro>
and double-click on it again to expand it, and that starts the filter again
<trogdoro>
thams: not sure if double-clicking works in the terminal you’re using
<trogdoro>
thams: but double-clicking is equivalent to doing a ^X on that line
<thams>
That’s another thing that i was confused about… when I re-expand, is it re-running the command? or just exposing something that has been hidden inside the editor?
<trogdoro>
thams: meaning, moving the cursor to that line, and typing ^X
<trogdoro>
thams: re-running the command
<trogdoro>
thams: xiki almost never has anything hidden
<thams>
Oh, and why does ^x somethimes need cursor to be at the beginning of the line, and sometimes not?
<trogdoro>
thams: you’re always looking at just a bunch of editable plaintext - what you see is what you get
<trogdoro>
so you can save it to files and re-use it later
<trogdoro>
thams: can you give me an example?
<trogdoro>
thams: I think in almost all cases, it doesn’t matter what part of a line a cursor is on when you ^X
<thams>
‘k, that was a fundamental surprise to me. In hindsight, it makes sense… but the magic of how it was working really made it look like you were folding stuff up somewhere.
<trogdoro>
thams: when you double-click, there’s a small exception - clicking on a bullet (“+” or “-“) only requires a single click (and just does what a double-click does)
<thams>
Let me look for example of ^x placement being significant.
<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, that’s been a point of confusion for other some other people as well
<trogdoro>
thams: though not a huge one, I think
<trogdoro>
thams: it’s kind of related to people being unfamiliar with the RETURN key adding a linebreak instead of running the command
<trogdoro>
I’ve got something that flashes and explains that the first few times people type return at the end of a “$ …” line
<thams>
Hmmm, now I can’t find an example of the ^x requiring special cursor placement.
<thams>
Oh, the cmd-enter thing is another problem for me. I use iTerm, and Cmd-enter puts the window to full-screen instead of passing it to xiki. :-(
<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, terminals don’t pass on Command+Enter or Ctrl+Enter
<thams>
(which is a bummer, because ^x is a hard key sequence to hit on an mac laptop
<trogdoro>
thams: so I’m using ^X instead
<trogdoro>
thams: do you have your caps lock key mapped to control?
<thams>
OH, I don’t. That’s a great idea.
<trogdoro>
OSX > System Preferences > Keyboad > Modifier Keys…
<thams>
omg, so much better.
<trogdoro>
thams: it could even be cool to have some of the “faq” or “help topics” items link to lines in this irc channel
<thams>
Heh.
<trogdoro>
looks like the whitelogger guys support searching and linking directly to lines in the log:
<trogdoro>
it even highlights the line for you, but it’s hard to see what’s highlighted - it’s not very distinct
<thams>
cool.
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<thams>
Would it be useful to have a mode that made xiki flow things more akin to a terminal… where it takes each command as I type it and just does the output and leaves the cursor on the following line, waiting for the next command? *then*, when I want to use Xiki filtering magic, I jump back to the previous command?
<thams>
(I don’t know if I expressed that very well)
<thams>
I.e.: if you figure my normal “terminal” workflow is a series of commands, and most of the time I just want the output, and then the thing is ready to just do another command....
<thams>
…but every once in a while, I want to re-do, or filter, or other magic.
<trogdoro>
thams: One thing that’s in place now that attemps to address that use-case is the integration with bash and zsh
<trogdoro>
the thinking is, you can just stay in bash if you want that flow
<thams>
Ah, of course!
<trogdoro>
then, when you want to do xiki-ish stuff, just do a ^R and you can edit around in your history
<thams>
But what if I want to go back to the command I ran 5 commands ago? (w/o re-running it)?
<trogdoro>
thams: ^R
<trogdoro>
thams: and there are a few other features that make jumping back and forth between bash and xsh really smooth
<trogdoro>
thams: mostly ^G
<trogdoro>
it “grabs” back and forth between bash and xsh
<trogdoro>
when you’re in xsh and you’ve typed a command, and you want to run it in the shell, type ^G on it
<trogdoro>
then when the command is done, type ^G in bash, and it takes you back to where you were in xsh
<thams>
smart
<trogdoro>
^G in bash always takes you back to the last place you were in xsh, even if you did ^Q the last time you exited xsh
<trogdoro>
so you can use xsh as sort of a place to keep notes, that you can sort of toggle on and off while you’re in your shell
<trogdoro>
thams: I think a video is the best way to document these use cases
<trogdoro>
in a way that gets people excited about them
<trogdoro>
thams: probably a bunch of videos
<trogdoro>
thams: I might start making a bunch of “10 second videos”
<trogdoro>
and releasing them every day or so
<trogdoro>
that succinctly demo specific features
<thams>
Videos are good for getting people excited about it…the problem with them is they aren’t good for referencing when you need to go back and see how to do something.
<trogdoro>
I think they’d be good fodder for hacker news and reddit
<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, having internal docs is definitely an important part of the picture
<trogdoro>
the videos would almost be more marketing than documentation
<thams>
For example: I was confused about how/where to edit the file that sets up the default SQL database connection.
<trogdoro>
but, the docs could have links to the videos, as a bonus
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<trogdoro>
thams: yeah, probably a “faq item” or “help topic item” would be good for that
<thams>
I’m on it!
<trogdoro>
thams: sweet :)
<thams>
(about to do my git clone)
<trogdoro>
thams: I’m thinking the “help topics” and “faq” commansd should be restructured so that there’s a separate file for each item
<trogdoro>
so, possibly a directory structure like this: