Recent Menu

The Recent menu allows editing or loading recently-used projects, files, and source code definitions by simply selecting them from a history list rather than re-browsing for them from scratch. This is especially useful for retrieving things that were being used in the previous invocation of lisp, since they are no longer present upon restarting Lisp.

The number of items in each submenu is the value of the recent-limit configuration property.

The submenu for each history list will be unavailable (grayed out) if there is nothing in the history for that type of item. This will be the case in a freshly installed Lisp, or in a fresh invocation of Lisp if the prefs.cl file was deleted (since the history lists are kept there along with the configuration options).

If a submenu contains the same file name more than once, this indicates distinct files in different directories. To find out which file is which, hold the mouse briefly over the submenu until the tooltip appears with the full pathname for the menu-item currently under the mouse. (The tooltip delay is controlled by the menu-tooltip-delay configuration property, which defaults to 1500 milliseconds.)

The items on the menu are:

• Open Project -- Displays a submenu of projects that have recently been opened, loaded, or saved, either in the current invocation of Lisp or a recent one. Selecting one of the projects opens it as the current project for editing. See also File | Open Project, which prompts for a project to open.

• Load Project -- Displays a submenu of projects that have recently been opened, loaded, or saved, either in the current invocation of lisp or a recent one.

  Selecting one of the projects loads it for general use in the IDE.

  A project may be loaded initially either with the File | Load menu command or by calling the function load-project. Any number of projects may be loaded simultaneously in the IDE for testing or for use as utilities, though only a single project may be the current project, and thus opened for development.

• Open Editor File -- Displays a submenu of files that have recently been opened in the IDE editor, either in the current invocation of Lisp or a recent one. Selecting one of the files edits it in the IDE editor. (If the file is already in the editor, it is found there rather than creating a second editor buffer.) The file may have originally been edited either directly from the File | Open menu command, or indirectly, for example from a Search | Find Definition command or Search | Find in Files command.

• Load File -- Displays a submenu of files that have recently been loaded into the Lisp environment, either in the current invocation of Lisp or a recent one. The file must have originally been loaded with File | Load (or its toolbar button). Selecting one of the files loads the file.

• Edit Definition -- Displays a submenu of source code definitions that have recently been edited in the IDE editor. The definition must have originally been edited by using the Search | Find Definition, the Search | Quick Find Definition menu command, or the Search | Find in Files menu command or one of their shortcuts. Selecting one of the definitions edits its source code in the IDE editor.

  Note that this particular Recent submenu will not retain its history from one Lisp session to another, unlike the other Recent submenus. This is due to problems with reloading function name symbols into a fresh lisp where the symbol packages no longer exist. The history is still available within a given Lisp session though.

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This page was not revised from the 8.1 page.
Created 2010.1.21.