How to browse source

[john-floren-gravwell]

After looking through the screenshot thread, I see that I can for example (FILESLOAD STARBG) and then call (STARBG), and that's cool, but it leaves me with two questions:

1. What's the best way to browse the source of STARBG? I used the file browser to "See" the file, and from there I can select & Meta-o to edit functions, but is that the way you'd do it in practice?
2. Is there a listing anywhere that describes where other files to load might be found (I'm browsing the lispusers directory now but there's a lot and the names are cryptic... and if there's any way to tell file browser to show me the parent directory, I haven't figured it out, so browsing is slow)

[pamoroso]

1. Are you looking for ways of browsing source specifically from the File Browser? From an Exec you can directly call (ED STARBG :DONTWAIT) even if the file isn't already loaded (you may be prompted whether to load the file). This works for most other functions in LispUsers, library, and system modules.
2. I'm not sure what kind of listing but I don't think it's available. Do you mean a listing of the additional files, if any, to load for a multi-file program besides the main file? To show the parent directory from a file browser, execute Recompute > New Pattern and make sure the pattern ends in >..>, or just delete the last component of the path.

[john-floren-gravwell]

Ah, thank you, I'd somehow missed that Recompute had a sub-menu. Are there key shortcuts for any of these functions? I've been please to find that I can click & drag to move and resize windows, but it would be nice to have some quicker way of closing windows, or to open a file in the browser, or to recompute, etc.

[nbriggs]

One thing that got written long ago was a background menu item "Inspecticide" which closed all the Inspector windows. Then FileBrowsericide and SEditicide got written, and together with SlamWs (close all windows intersecting (or is it contained within?) a region) it was collected in lispusers/WDWHACKS. You can look at the source to see how those work. People would add the (loading of) useful packages to their personal "lisp init file". Lots of people wrote useful hacks and published them.

[nbriggs]

@john-floren-gravwell using "See > Scrollable & Pretty" is not a bad way to look at the source. In practice, you'd LOAD the source and use (DC filename) to get an SEdit (structure editor) on the "COMS" of the file, which are the commands executed by the file package to create the source file from what's in memory. From the SEdit on the file coms, you'd meta-O to get editors on the individual functions.

There's typically a documentation file for each lispusers package -- file foo will have foo.tedit -- which is opened with TEDIT (the text editor), the easiest way to get TEDIT on a file you've got visible in the FileBrowser is to select it (left click) and then click "Edit" in the browser menu.

I think we have all the TEdit files converted to PDFs, but I don't have the link to hand.

[pamoroso]

The "summary" column of this spreadsheet provides short descriptions of what most LispUsers modules do, including some with no documentation.

The LispUsers TEdit files converted to PDF are available here https://files.interlisp.org/medley/lispusers/ It is part of this website https://files.interlisp.org/medley/ which provides a browsable version of the Medley source tree with TEdit files converted to PDF.

[rmkaplan]

Scrollable and Pretty is now the default, you shouldn't have to go to the submenu. It brings up the file in a read-only Tedit window. The difference between See and Edit, when you are looking at something that Tedit can display, is that See is Readonly and Edit would allow you to Edit. But it is a *very* bad idea to edit a lisp source file with a text editor. The See command will also open a separate (non-Medley) window if applied to a pdf file.

…

On Dec 23, 2025, at 1:22 PM, Nick Briggs ***@***.***> wrote: @john-floren-gravwell <https://github.com/john-floren-gravwell> using "See > Scrollable & Pretty" is not a bad way to look at the source. In practice, you'd LOAD the source and use (DC filename) to get an SEdit (structure editor) on the "COMS" of the file, which are the commands executed by the file package to create the source file from what's in memory. From the SEdit on the file coms, you'd meta-O to get editors on the individual functions. There's typically a documentation file for each lispusers package -- file foo will have foo.tedit -- which is opened with TEDIT (the text editor), the easiest way to get TEDIT on a file you've got visible in the FileBrowser is to select it (left click) and then click "Edit" in the browser menu. I think we have all the TEdit files converted to PDFs, but I don't have the link to hand. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2421 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AQSTUJK46R6SWMCZKSOVNN34DGXCNAVCNFSM6AAAAACP4FTGROVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKMZTGAYDKNA>. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.

[pamoroso]

You can also browse the Medley sources from the shell on Linux or other Unix derivatives. Navigate the source tree with cd and ls and view Interlisp files with lsee which needs to be in your path. The lsee script formats the code with appropriate text attributes and displays it with less.

[masinter]

There is also a copy of all of the Interlisp source files (LISPSOURCEFILEP) and TEdit files available all converted to PDF under https://files.interlisp.org/medley/

For example:
https://files.interlisp.org/medley/lispusers/Addressbook.Tedit.pdf
is the documentation for the ADDRESSBOOK LispUsers package, and
https://files.interlisp.org/medley/lispusers/ADDRESSBOOK.pdf
is the source for it.

The idea was to make sources and documentation available to people who didn't want to run Medley.