Komodo Planet Pipe

History feature in Komodo 5.1.0 alpha 1

trentm — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:08:00 -0800

We released Komodo 5.1.0 alpha 1 today! Get it here:

http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/releases/5.1.0a1/

Please try it out and give us your feedback:

email	http://listserv.activestate.com/mailman/listinfo/komodo-beta
bugs	http://bugs.activestate.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Komodo
forums	http://community.activestate.com/products/Komodo

This is the first release of Komodo 5.1 on the way to a planned final release around ~~mid-May~~ [Update: mid-March. Subconsciously I keep hoping for more time. :)]. (I'll write about our Komodo 5.1 plans in a separate post). Here I want to talk about Komodo's new "History" feature.

History overview

Komodo's History feature is like your browser's history, but for the editor. Back and Forward buttons in the toolbar. Same default keybindings as in Firefox ¹. Simple.

Komodo's history is a bit different than a browser's. In a browser, you have a separate history session for each tab. This doesn't make as much sense for an editor. Komodo's history is per-window ². That means that the Back button will move you back to the last place you were, be that in the current file or in another file in the same window. This means that jumping back:

after a Go To Definition, or
after opening a new file, or
after jumping to a find result

is as easy as clicking "Back".

More than any new feature in Komodo, the first time we hooked the feature up it felt immediately useful. Of course, this is just an alpha release so there is lots of polishing to do. Read on for some of the other things we hope to do with this.

Future work

Some other things Komodo will be able to support with this:

Opening recent files quickly. Chances are good that a file you want to open in your editor is a file you've edited before (and recently). The history database now provides Komodo with the data it needs to support that.
Find in recent files. Often I'll want to look at some snippet of code that I remember writing in the last few days, but can't remember what file (or even what project) that was in.

Support '' command in Vi-mode. From the Vim help:

'' `` Move to the position before latest jump.

Hooking Back and Forward into the MS Intellimouse's (and other mice, I suspect) side buttons -- as is the default in Firefox.

Backend code

For those interested, most of the backend of the history system is here in "editorhistory.py" in the Open Komodo subversion repository.

For JavaScript code (most interesting to Komodo extension developers) there is a new ko.history API with the most relevant methods being:

ko.history.note_curr_loc(view): Tell the history system to note the current editor location before jumping somewhere.
ko.history.history_back(n): Go back n locations.
ko.history.history_forward(n): Go forward n locations.

Komodo's history database shares some ideas with Firefox 3's Places database. In particular the idea of splitting visited locations (URLs in Firefox, editor locations in Komodo) and visits into separate database tables was helpful. They are, of course, both SQLite3 databases.

The keybindings aren't yet there for Mac OS X in alpha 1. They will be there for alpha 2. ↩
Currently it is shared by multiple Komodo windows, but will be changed to be per window. ↩

RobH's sketches for the Komodo logo

trentm — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:52:00 -0800

Rob Hernandez is an ex-ActiveState employee. When he worked here he was responsible for the excellent designs that became the ActiveState critter logos -- since, and still, used on t-shirts and for ActiveState application logos.

I was happy to see that he recently put up some of his work on Flickr:

including his sketches for the Komodo head logo:

The latter are the precursor to the current Komodo IDE and Komodo Edit head icons:

Here is the full set

And if you are more into the realism thing, check out this Komodo head.

"duplicate line or selection" in Komodo

trentm — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:46:00 -0800

I saw this blog entry this morning:

Duplicate Line/Selection in Komodo 5

Exploring the ability to create macros and bind them to key commands in Komodo IDE. I'm reposting the below macro that duplicates the lines or the current selection. Thus functionality was previously is Zend Studio 5, went missing from 6, and thanks to the macro, is available in Komodo. Enjoy!

...

I thought I should mention the Komodo bug -- Extend functionality of the "duplicate line" function -- on which Eric added a new core command to Komodo to do just this... with the added bonus that it also works for block/column selections. This was added just yesterday. Here is the checkin to Komodo Edit's repository. The nightly builds of Komodo 5.1.0a2 from last night has this in it:

Komodo IDE: http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/nightly/komodoide/latest-trunk/

Komodo Edit: http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/nightly/komodoedit/latest-trunk/

You can assign any key to this command in Komodo's "Editor | Key Bindings" preferences panel. The command name is "Editor: Duplicate Line or Selection".

Find highlighting and Linux/x86_64 support in Komodo 5.1a2

trentm — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:41:00 -0800

We released Komodo 5.1 alpha 2 a couple of days ago (shame on me for not announcing until now). Get it here:

http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/releases/5.1.0a2/

Please try it out and give us your feedback:

email	http://listserv.activestate.com/mailman/listinfo/komodo-beta
bugs	http://bugs.activestate.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Komodo
forums	http://community.activestate.com/products/Komodo

This is the second release of Komodo 5.1 on the way to a planned final release around mid-May. There are a few goodies worth talking about in this release. (See my post about Komodo 5.1a1 here.)

Find highlighting

Komodo now highlights find/search matches in your buffer. Here is a short video showing it off. Sorry, no sound. This is my first screencast. :)

Here I'm doing a couple of searches using Komodo's Vi mode. That highlighting makes a big difference for helping your eyes find where you want to navigate to.

Find highlighting is one of those "well, duh" features that we are now able to add with indicator support in Komodo's editing component Scintilla. Indicators in Scintilla allow one to put visual markers on regions of the editor buffer independent of the syntax coloring information. Before indicators, syntax coloring styling and other styling (squiggly underlining for syntax errors/warnings, find highlighting, ...) had to share 8-bits of data for each position (i.e. each character). That was awkward (playing with bit masks) and limiting (ran out of space in, e.g., HTML which uses 7 of those 8 bits for all the different syntax coloring styles). Another example is Komodo's Tabstops -- which were made a lot more usable in 5.0 because of what we could do with indicators.

Linux/x86_64 support

We've added support for a new platform: Linux/x86_64. This is our first native 64-bit platform build. Linux x86_64 installs are getting to be quite common, and typically the default install of Linux distros on x86_64 don't include the 32-bit compatibility libraries. This means that attempting to use Komodo's 32-bit Linux build wouldn't work out of the box (it tends to work fine once the distro's 32-bit compat libs are installed) -- and hence was a common support issue. Hopefully, no more. As well, Linux/x86_64 users will possibly enjoy a slight performance benefit.

Localization patches from Davide Ficano (l10n)

Way back in the heady days of 2008 (before Komodo 5.0 was released) Davide Ficano (aka dafi) made this post on Komodo's forums:

Localizing Komodo using Babelzilla dream team

that kicked off some starter work towards localizing Komodo. One of the necessary steps to getting good localizations of Komodo was to update Komodo's chrome to more rigorously use DTDs for XUL (we were using these fairly well) and string bundles for JavaScript code (we weren't doing so well here). Dafi whipped up a bunch of patches for this. Todd has finally managed to get those all checked in, so that Komodo is now in a pretty good state to start being localized.

Other stuff

In addition to the above, Komodo's History feature is coming along:

The same keybindings as your browser for Back/Forward should be working on all platforms.
The side mouse buttons on 5-button mice should work for navigating the history.
This history will now properly handle cleaning out URLs from finished remote debugging sessions.

As well we've a few more goodies that should be ready to show for a beta 1 release in a week or two. As ever, try out the Komodo nightly builds for the very latest stuff:

http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/nightly/

hyperlinks in Komodo 5.1.0b1

trentm — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:46:00 -0700

We released Komodo 5.1 beta 1 yesterday! Get it here:

http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/releases/5.1.0b1/

Please try it out and give us your feedback:

email	http://listserv.activestate.com/mailman/listinfo/komodo-beta
bugs	http://bugs.activestate.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Komodo
forums	http://community.activestate.com/products/Komodo

This is the third release of Komodo 5.1 on the way to a planned final release very soon (hopefully within a week or two). Here are a few goodies in this release. (See my previous posts about the Komodo 5.1a1 and Komodo 5.1a2 releases.)

Hyperlinks

Many IDEs that have code intelligence support allow you to Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on a Mac) on a symbol to Go to Definition. Here was Komodo's feature request for that. This is now implemented in Komodo 5.1b1.

However, we've gone one step further and made a generic system where Ctrl+mouse-hover will underline interesting regions (hyperlinks) in your text for clicking on. The most common type of hyperlink is a symbol for "Go to Definition". However other types of hyperlinks include:

Colors in CSS (including CSS in HTML files):
As in Firebug, you'll get a swatch of the color when hovering over the color. What's more, Ctrl+click will bring up the system's color picker with which you can change the color.
HTTP and FTP URLs:
Ctrl+click will load that URL in your browser.
Regular expression mapping to an HTTP URL.
Currently 5.1.0b1 includes a regex to map occurrences of "bug \d+" to the appropriate bug in ActiveState's bug database. Eventually we'll have a preferences dialog where adding these mappings will be easier, but for now here is how you can add your own.
A generic handler to do whatever you can think of.
The hyperlinks above are all implemented with a simple mechanism in Komodo's ko.hyperlinks JavaScript namespace. You can add your own handlers to do other things. Following how the regexhandler works is a good place to start. We'll try to give more examples later.

Note: The hyperlink types other than "Go to Definition" are only in Komodo IDE (i.e. not in Komodo Edit) for the 5.1.0b1 release. So, if you want to play you should either use Komodo IDE 5.1.0b1 or use the latest nightlies.

koext updates

koext is a command-line tool for helping in building Komodo extensions. There are some great Komodo extensions that users have been building here. However, it is far from as easy as it should be to dig in and build Komodo extensions. Part of the solution is the koext tool. (Another part is documentation for extension authors, but that is a story for another time.)

We've started doing some updates to koext again (see the change log). Recent changes are working towards making it easier to have a quick development cycle -- i.e. make it so that to test a change to your extension you just need to:

make your edit;
possibly run koext build --dev, e.g. if you changed an IDL file; and
re-start Komodo

Instead of the more laborious:

make your edit;
run koext build to build a new .xpi file;
re-install that .xpi in Komodo;
re-start Komodo

In a subsequent post I'll describe how I setup to build a Komodo extension. Here is a brief intro to koext from way back

Other stuff

A quick list of other feature work, notable bug fixes and fixed annoyances in Komodo 5.1.0b1:

Komodo's new "History" feature now has session support which is currently used to make your history specific to a single Komodo window.
In Komodo IDE, the History now shows the section title for locations in the History. This can make the "Recent locations" menu a lot more useful:
In XML (and HTML and PHP, etc.) files, clicking on a tag will briefly flash (highlight) the matching tag (bug 81606).
Komodo's "jump to matching brace" now works as you'd expect for opening and closing tags in XML/HTML (bug 43239).
We've done some crash fix work so that Komodo 5.1b1 should be more stable that 5.1a2. It is hard to quantify and we continue to look for crash issues in Komodo.
Greatly improved the annoyance of it being very hard to grab the bottom-pane and sidebar splitters on Mac OS X (bug 80756).
Fixed the annoyance of being unable to resize Name/Type/Value panes in Locals/Globals debugger window (bug 80566).
fix: codeintel: calltips cannot show unicode doc comments http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=70448
Added a "duplicate line or selection" command.
Added Korean and Japanese JIS encodings (bug 80890).

As well there is more coming. Try out the Komodo nightly builds for the very latest stuff:

http://downloads.activestate.com/Komodo/nightly/

Komodo 5.1 released (fast open, history, hyperlinks, etc.)

trentm — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:41:00 -0700

We (ActiveState) released Komodo 5.1 today! Get it here:

Komodo IDE: http://www.activestate.com/komodo/

Komodo Edit: http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/

Komodo IDE 5.1 is a free upgrade for Komodo IDE 5.x license holders. Your license entitles you to run Komodo IDE on any of the platforms we support (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux). Komodo Edit 5.1 is, as ever, open-source and free.

Fast Open dialog

On to the features. A goodie in the Komodo 5.1.0 release that wasn't in the previous releases is the new fast-open (a.k.a. "Go to File") dialog.

Fast open in Komodo 5.1 from Trent Mick on Vimeo.

The fast-open dialog is a quicker way to open files for editing. Komodo needed it: the system native File Open dialogs can be a pain (ever try to go up one directory in the Mac OS X File Open dialog?), poking around in a Komodo project tree to find just the file you want is slow. Worse than slow, it is distracting. With the fast-open dialog you typically just need to type a few characters in the base name of the file you want to open and hit <enter> to open the file.

The fast-open dialog makes it easy to:

switch to open tabs (especially useful if you have many many files open in Komodo),
open recent files (tieing in with Komodo 5.1's new History feature),
open files in the current directories (i.e. the directories of currently open files), and
open files in your current project.

The filter textbox supports multiple tokens, so while a search for 'mark' with match:

Markdown.pl
markdown2.py
markdown.php
markdown.py

a search for 'mark py' will match:

markdown2.py
markdown.py

Re-open recently closed tabs

A feature I love in Firefox is Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd+Shift+T on the Mac) to re-open the most recently closed tab. Komodo now has that.

Hyperlinks, Find highlighting, History

On the road to this Komodo 5.1 release we introduced hyperlinks in Komodo 5.1b1:

find highlighting in Komodo 5.1a2:

editor history in Komodo 5.1a1:

and support for a new platform -- Linux/x86_64.

Along with dozens of bug fixes, XML/HTML tag highlighting and jump to matching tag, upgrades to our xdebug builds for PHP 5.3 debugging, and regular nightly builds for Komodo IDE and Edit... this is a good release. Try it out:

downloads	Komodo IDE \| Komodo Edit
forums	http://community.activestate.com/products/Komodo
email	http://listserv.activestate.com/mailman/listinfo/komodo-discuss
bugs	http://bugs.activestate.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Komodo

Komodo 5.1.1: fixes, path mode in Fast Open dialog, Perl::Critic integration

trentm — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:50:00 -0700

We (ActiveState) released Komodo 5.1.1 today. Get it here:

Komodo IDE: http://www.activestate.com/komodo/downloads/

Komodo Edit: http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/downloads/

Or, if you are currently running Komodo 5.1.0, click "Help > Check for Updates...". This is a bug fix release and is recommended for all users. See below for details.

Bug fixes

Two important bug fixes in this release are:

Fixed problem in re-generating the variable tabs in the debugger (Komodo IDE) which caused slowdowns and hangs when debugger was run repeatedly. (Bug 82518, bug 82542, bug 82426, bug 82557).
Fixed a bug where closing a tab would switch to the wrong remaining tab causing potential problems, such as the Komodo window titlebar no longer updating properly (bug 82474).

See the Release Notes for a full list of changes.

A couple new features

This release also include two tweaks to existing features that didn't quite make the final 5.1.0 release.

Fast Open dialog

The Komodo 5.1.0 release included the new "Fast Open" dialog. In Komodo 5.1.1 the fast open dialog now has path mode support. This means that you can now use the fast open dialog for opening:

an absolute path: /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
a relative path (where relative is relative to the directory of every tab you have open in your Komodo window): ../foo.py
a path under your HOME directory: ~/wrk/coolstuff.rb

Note that the latter also works on Windows if you manually set a HOME environment variable to whereever you tend to put your files. For example, on Windows XP, I certainly don't use "C:\Documents and Settings\trentm" as my main working directory.

PerlCritic

Perl users of Komodo can now easily get syntax checking results from Perl::Critic -- "a static source code analyzer based (mostly) on Damian Conway's book 'Perl Best Practices.'". To setup you just need the "Perl-Critic" and "criticism" Perl modules installed. With ActivePerl you can do this:

ppm install Perl-Critic
ppm install criticism

Then select the warning level in Komodo's "Perl" preferences panel. This screenshot shows the result of "Brutal" warnings on Gisle Aas's LWP::UserAgent.

Users interested in more in-depth analysis and integration with Perl::Critic should take a look at ActiveState's Perl Dev Kit 8.0.

General information

downloads	Komodo IDE \| Komodo Edit
forums	http://community.activestate.com/products/Komodo
email	http://listserv.activestate.com/mailman/listinfo/komodo-discuss
bugs	http://bugs.activestate.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Komodo

Komodo: about.com's Webdesign pick of the week

trentm — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:31:00 -0700

Nice to see Komodo Edit get about.com's Webdesign/HTML blog's pick of the week:

This week I took a look at the latest version of my favorite XML and HTML text editor: Komodo Edit. The new version adds in some nice features like history and search highlighting. I still find this editor to be the best free XML and text HTML editor you can get for any operating system. I use it every day.

Those interested should also look at Komodo IDE.

Komodo 5.1.3 released

trentm — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:29:00 -0700

We (ActiveState) released Komodo 5.1.3 today. Get it here:

Komodo IDE: http://www.activestate.com/komodo/downloads/

Komodo Edit: http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/downloads/

Or, if you are currently running any previous Komodo 5, click "Help > Check for Updates...". This is a bug fix release and is recommended for all users. See below for details.

Bug fixes

Some bug fix highlights:

The fast open (aka "Go to File") dialog had a few improvements:
- Tab now autocompletes instead of moving to the next match. This makes it much more natural (if you're used to the shell) to navigate directories in the dialog. (Bug 82677)
- Removed duplicates in "Go to File" list. (Bug 82705)
- Current search is aborted when the "Go to File" dialog is closed. (Bug 82529)
- Added Ctrl+n & Ctrl+p keybindings for down/up navigation for Emacs-heads. (Bug 82678)
Komodo's Vi Emulation is ever improving:
- Comment/uncomment working correctly in visual line mode. (Bug 82369)
- Fixed visual line selection mode indent/dedent problems. (Bug 82368)
- The cc command now maintains line indentation. (Bug 82707)
There have been a number of improvements for using Komodo's color schemes and package (.kpz) files. More on that in a separate post later this week.
One of the side-effects of the work for color schemes is the addition of
```
 <notificationbox id="komodo-notificationbox"/>
```
in komodo.xul. This may be of interest to Komodo extension authors that would like to use a notificationbox instead of alert dialogs or other mechanisms to give feedback to users.
Eventually I think Komodo's editor tabs should also grow a notification box -- as Firefox has one for each browser tab.
Again, goofy from babelzilla has been diligently providing localization patches for Komodo: bug 82580, bug 82819, bug 82821, bug 82822, bug 82824, bug 82825.
A bug where terminating run commands on Windows would not always work was fixed. (Bug 82655) The right answer for being able to kill a process and its child processes on Windows is to use a Windows Job object. Answer courtesy of Benjamin Smedberg's killableprocess.py. Komodo now uses code based on this. I'd like to find the time to get something based on this into Python's core subprocess module.

See the Release Notes for a full list of changes.

Komodo extensions

For those who haven't noticed, Stan Angeloff has been doing some spectacular work in his HTML Toolkit and Tab Abbreviations Komodo extensions.

What about 5.1.2?

There was a bug in the Komodo 5.1.2 release from yesterday that broke attempts to terminate processes on Windows. This most commonly could affect debugging in Komodo IDE.

General information

downloads	Komodo IDE \| Komodo Edit
forums	http://community.activestate.com/products/Komodo
email	http://listserv.activestate.com/mailman/listinfo/komodo-discuss
bugs	http://bugs.activestate.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Komodo

Komodo Hacks: Extract Method

Brandon Corfman — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:05:00 -0800

Today's hack allows you to highlight a section of existing Python code in Komodo and refactor it into its own separate method.

Like yesterday's hack, Extract Method uses Bicycle Repair Man for its functionality. If you didn't catch the procedure for including the BRM package into Komodo, see my last post.

You can download the macro here. Install it into Komodo by using the Import Package option under the Toolbox menu.

Usage notes:

Just highlight a section of code, and double-click on the Extract Method macro in the toolbox. The macro will prompt you for the name of the new method and then perform the refactoring operation.
Before refactoring, Komodo will prompt you to save your file if necessary. (This is a requirement of BRM.)
After refactoring, Komodo will tell you that your file has changed and prompt you to reload it. Go ahead! You should see your changes in the updated file. If you don't like what you see, you can Undo the changes, via the Edit menu or CTRL-Z.

One more BRM macro to go, coming tomorrow!

Komodo Hacks: Rename Occurrences

Brandon Corfman — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:32:00 -0800

This Komodo hack allows you to rename all occurrences of a variable or method name wherever it appears in your code. This is the last of my macros this week that uses Bicycle Repair Man; if you missed my previous post on how to get the BRM package into Komodo, it can be found here.

You can download the macro here. Install it into Komodo by using the Import Package option under the Toolbox menu.

Usage notes:

Highlight a variable or method in your code and double-click on the Rename macro in the toolbox. The macro will prompt you for the new variable or method name and then perform the rename operation.
Before refactoring, Komodo will prompt you to save your file if necessary. (This is a requirement of BRM.)
After refactoring, Komodo will tell you that your file or files have changed and prompt you to reload them. Go ahead! You should see your changes in the updated file(s). If you don't like what you see, you can Undo the changes, via the Edit menu or CTRL-Z.
Rename Occurrences may not always work like you expect. As an example, you'll want to rename method names where they are originally defined; otherwise, the renaming will only be local and not propagate throughout your code.

Tomorrow's hack: integrating PyLint into Komodo.

Komodo Hacks: Integrating Pylint

Brandon Corfman — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:51:00 -0800

UPDATE: Todd left a comment on how he didn't like Pylint's verbosity. You can add a -e option to the command line to show errors only instead of stylistic warnings.

UPDATE: I see this hack has already been covered by John and Mateusz.

I'm not enjoying today's hack as much as I'd like. Pylint is great, but getting it installed and configured is much more painful than it should be. For one thing, Logilab has configured a .egg file for Pylint so that you can ostensibly use easy_install to get it on your system -- but the .egg doesn't load any of the other dependencies that are needed. Very frustrating. Consequently, we'll go about the install process manually. I'm writing the steps below from a Windows perspective, but I've tried to note where a Unix install is slightly different.

How to get PyLint installed and configured for Komodo:

Download Pylint and the Pylint dependency modules from Logilab's site: logilab-common and logilab-astng. The download links are in the upper-left corner of the page.
Extract all the packages from step 1, preserving the folder structure. WinZip is the best for this on a Windows system; if you have a Unix-based OS, you can use gunzip -c [MODULE].tar.gz | tar -xf - or similar.
Open up a command prompt, make sure your Python executable can be found in your PATH, and type python setup.py install inside the extracted common, astng, and pylint directories in turn.
Change to your Python installation's scripts directory.
Type pylint --generate-rcfile > standard.rc at the command prompt to create a Pylint configuration file. (If you're using a Unix system, you'll need to prefix the pylint command with a ./ )

Now you're ready to download Run Pylint macro here. Install it into Komodo by using the Import Package option under the Toolbox menu.

Additional configuration is needed to set up the macro for your system:

Right-click on the Pylint macro in the toolbox and click Properties.
Change the path to pylint in the Command text box to match the location of your python installation's scripts directory. Also, if you're using a Unix system, you'll probably need to remove the quotes around the %F in the text box as well. (Can someone verify this for me?)
Change both the directory paths in the Environment Settings list to match the location of your Python installation as well.

Usage notes:

Double-clicking on the Pylint macro in the toolbox will run pylint on the currently viewed file and print a report in the Command Output tab. Each line in the report can be double-clicked, and Komodo will jump to the matching line in the file.
The standard.rc file that was generated in step 5 above can be edited to customize the types of errors/warnings that Pylint will generate. The .rc file is commented thoroughly so you should be able to figure out what's going on with a little study and experimentation. As an alternative, pylint can also be customized with command-line parameters; type pylint (by itself) at a command prompt to see all the different possibilities.

Tomorrow's hack: beefing up context-sensitive help for Python under Windows.

Komodo Hacks: Improving Python Help in Windows

Brandon Corfman — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:27:00 -0800

This last hack for the week beefs up the context-sensitive help for Python in Komodo. By default, the Shift-F1 help in Komodo does a Google site search on docs.python.org for the current word under the cursor. I prefer instead to use the HTMLHelp manual that comes with my standard Python installation since it's often much faster and efficient than a web search.

You can download my Python Help macro here. It brings up your local Python reference with an HTMLHelp API call, with the current word under the cursor placed in the Index tab. Simple but effective.

Notes:

This Help macro remaps the F1 key to bring up the Python manual instead of bringing up Komodo's internal help, since I use language help much more than IDE help. You can always change this in the macro Properties if you're used to Shift-F1 instead.
You should also check the macro code to make sure that the local of my Python installation (c:\python24) matches yours, or you'll need to change it.

I've got more ideas percolating but they'll have to wait until another week! Hope these hacks make your work with Komodo and Python more enjoyable.

Komodo Bonus Hack: Explore Project Directory

Brandon Corfman — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:58:00 -0800

Alright, one more hack ... this is so simple it may not be worth mentioning, but I find it really useful. It's also not Python specific.

I've written a quick Run Command that brings up Windows Explorer located inside your current project directory. Besides giving you a quick access to file operations on your project, it's also convenient for Komodo Edit users that use TortoiseSVN (or similar tools) for source-control purposes.

If you're a Unix GNOME user, you're not out of luck: you can change the Run Command to use "nautilus" instead of "explorer", for similar results.

You can download the Explore Project Directory file here.