In Using Understand with an external editor – SlickEdit I explained how to hook up Understand to run with SlickEdit. As a follow up, here are the commands to setup the same Understand menu inside of EMACS, Visual Studio, and Vi. Do let me know if I made any mistakes here since I’m not an expert on these editors.

EMACS

Add the following lisp to your .emacs file to open the Understand right click menu when C-c u is pressed (thanks for the correction Guillaume):
Note: this assumes the understand executable is in your path

(defun understand-word-at-point ()
  "Run understand menu for the word at point."
  (interactive)
  (setq understand-command
        (concat
           "understand -existing -contextmenu " (buffer-file-name)
           "-text "(current-word)" -line "
           (number-to-string (count-lines (point-min) (point)))
           " -col " (number-to-string (current-column))
   )     )
  (shell-command understand-command)
)
(global-set-key "\C-cu" 'understand-word-at-point)

Visual Studio

Step 1: Add Understand to Visual Studio’s External Tools

• On the Tools menu, click External Tools
• Click Add
• Type "&Understand Menu" in the Title box
• Type "C:\Program Files\STI\bin\pc-win32\understand.exe" in the Command box
• Type "-existing -contextmenu $(TargetPath) -line $(CurLine) -col $(CurCol) -name $(CurText) in the Arguments box
• Click OK

Step 2: Add a keyboard shortcut to Visual Studio

• On the Tools menu, Click Options
• Expand the Environment Folder and select Keyboard
• Type "Tools.ExternalCommand" in the box labeled "Show commands containing"
• Select the ExternalCommand associated with the "&Understand Menu" External Tool. If "&Understand Menu" was 8th on the list (default) then select Tools.ExternalCommand8
• Click the box labeled "Press shortcut key(s)". Type in a keyboard combination such as Ctrl+U or Ctrl+`
• Click Assign
• Click Ok

Vi

Add the following to your vi startup file -.vimrc, _vimrc, etc. Note: this assumes the understand executable is in your path:

Linux/Unix courtesy of Devin)

:command! UMenu silent: exe "!understand -existing -contextmenu %:p -line " line(‘.’) " -col " col(‘.’) " -text <cword> &" | redraw!
map <C-u> :UMenu<CR>

Windows: (thanks for the help Ilguiz):

command UMenu silent: exe join(['!understand -existing -contextmenu "$(cygpath -w "%:p")" -line ', line('.'), ' -col ', col('.'), ' -text ', '<cword>', ' &']) | redraw!
map <C-u> :UMenu<CR>

Tags: external editor

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Tips, Understand 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.