BLISS shell typing helper

To serve the demand of a simplified syntax when entering commands in the bliss shell (without additional parenthesis and commas compared to ‘spec’) a typing helper has been put in place. It is hard to respect both:

• the python code syntax
• enable users to type commands in similar way as they are used to in Spec

Activating and deactivating typing helper

This can be done using F7 and the status can be checked on the bottom of bliss shell.

Typing in the shell

Info

Here, ⏎ represents pressing the Enter key and ␣ represents pressing the space bar.

Lets look at the wm command as an example. Let us say we want to see the position of two motors m0 and m1.

In order for BLISS to be able to interpret the command we need to do:

$ wm(m0,m1)⏎

In ‘Spec’ one would have typed

$ wm␣m0␣m1⏎

The typing helper will map this way of typing the command to the proper python syntax without having to type ( , , and ) manually. It replaces ␣ by ( or , where appropriate. Further it replaces ⏎ by )⏎ in case this complets the input, or ()⏎ in case a the input reprensts a python callable. An example:

$ wa⏎

is transformed into

$ wa()⏎

The insertion behaviour of ⏎ is also applied to ;.

Objects info

In order to ease the acces of BLISS objects, a shell typing short-cut has been implemented: if a name of a BLISS object is typed and then ⏎ is pressed, the return value of __info__() method (if implemented) is printed.

This method is intented to return a human readable string containing information about the objects: name, class, configuration details etc.

This information can be customized for each type of object. See Advanced objects info for some implementation.

For example, any Axis will display it’s name, controller and state. But additional information can be added case by case.

VSCANNER Example:

DEMO [1]:  sampy⏎
 Out [1]:  axis name: sampy
               state: READY (Axis is READY)
           controller: <bliss.controllers.motors.vscanner.VSCANNER object at 0x7fe0bf0c2fd0>
           ###############################
           Config:
             url=rfc2217://lid213.esrf.fr:28206
             class=VSCANNER
             channel letter:X
           ###############################
           ?ERR: b'OK\r'
           ###############################
           '?INFO' command:
           firmware version   : VSCANNER 01.02
           output voltage     : 0.200001 0.500205
           unit state         : READY
           ###############################
           $
           Max. number of lines: 3276
           Internal time step (microsec.): 50

           Current settings:
              LINE -0.100193 0 1 C
              SCAN 0 0 1 U
              VEL 0.001 0
              LTRIG MASK
              PTRIG MASK
              PIXEL 0 0
              HDELAY 0
           $
           ###############################