On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 17:33:41 -0700 (PDT)
Phil <phil.s....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Today I started Leo to a Leo Tip (I like those!) suggesting use of
> the valuespace plugin. Ok, I'm game. I load it up, and..... I am
> completely clueless as to what this is good for. I have read the
> documentation, looked for help in this list, and I just don't get it.
>
> I'm assuming that it made it to a Leo Tip because it has value, which
> suggests to me that I might want to use it. But it's not at all
> obvious why (or how). What am I missing?
The valuespace plugin really really really needs to be split in two.
Ville Vainio who used to be more active in Leo wrote the original
valuespace plugin. It was a complex and complicated system for
spreading bits of information through a Leo tree and then collecting
them together, with various levels of evaluation, and then formatting
the results into output nodes. Kind of a free form database /
spreadsheet thing interspersed with whatever else you were using the
outline for. I've worked through it a couple of times and sort of felt
I've understood what's going on, but then forgotten it all again
shortly afterwards - it's that kind of complex.
It was a time when there seemed to be a new plugin being written every
day, and it defines a namespace, c.vs (i.e. a Python dict), where
results are stored between runs and available to other scripts.
So I wanted to write some expression evaluation commands with
persistent results and didn't want to add yet another plugin for
something relatively simple, so I added my commands to the valuespace
plugin:
vs-eval
vs-last
vs-last-pretty
vs-eval-block (more recent than the others)
vs-eval
Evaluate the selected text, if any. Done in the c.vs namespace, so
`a = 10` would cause c.vs['a'] to be 10. The result of the last
expression or assignment is printed in the log. Selects the next line,
handy for executing line by line.
vs-last
insert the result of the last vs-eval in the body
vs-last-pretty
as vs-last, but format with pprint.pformat
vs-eval-block
evaluate series of blocks of code in the body, separated like this:
# >>>
code to run
# <<<
output of code
# >>>
code to run
# <<<
output of code
...
e.g.
import datetime
datetime.datetime.now()
# >>>
2018-03-21 21:46:13.582835
# <<<
datetime.datetime.now()+datetime.timedelta(days=1000)
# >>>
2020-12-15 21:46:34.403814
# <<<
vs-eval-block inserts the separators, blocks can be re-run by placing
the cursor in them and doing vs-eval-block, and the cursor is placed in
the next block, so you can go back up, change something, then quickly
re-execute everything.
In my biased opinion those four commands are the most generally useful
Python evaluation commands in Leo. Results are persistent (not like
Ctrl-B execute-script), autocomplete works, you have syntax
highlighting (missing in the Python console), results can easily be
place in the body (e.g. "the cat is 7 years, or 7*365 days old" - want
to replace 7*365 with 2555? Select it, vs-eval, delete it, vs-last.
Every time someone's looking for that kind of functionality I point to
valuespace, and I'm sure nine times out of ten they get lost in all the
completely separate complexity you encountered.
I think the Tip meant to direct you to the vs-eval family of commands,
not all the rest of it.
Hmm, now I actually read the tip:
https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/issues/617
I see it does refer to the outline oriented spreadsheet aspect, but I
suspect that's just an editorial error - I really wouldn't put it on
that list for that - that's clever but so complicated I don't imagine
many people getting to grips with it. I've promoted valuespace
heavily for the above commands, I suspect that's why it ended up on
that list.
Cheers -Terry
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