[IPython-user] using with emacs

[Fernando Perez]

On 6/3/06, Stefan van der Walt <stefan at sun.ac.za> wrote:
> Strange, I believe you also run a fairly recent install of Dapper?
> Krishna's trick breaks IPython on my machine too (and I verified with
> the latest SVN just now).

Yes, I'm running a fully up-to-date dapper here.

I seem to remember you run GNOME, while I use KDE.  Try Krishna's
trick inside konsole, and see what happens.  I just opened
gnome-terminal, and this is what I get:

longs[~]> echo "" | ipython
Python 2.4.3 (#2, Apr 27 2006, 14:43:58)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 0.7.2 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?       -> Introduction to IPython's features.
%magic  -> Information about IPython's 'magic' % functions.
help    -> Python's own help system.
object? -> Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? prints more.


In [
1
]: 


In [
1
]: 


So it does exit correctly, but the prompts get messed up.


> How can I produce more useful feedback on this problem?

Well, I'm honestly not too sure.  This looks like a terminal-related
problem, but those can be very, very tricky to debug.

A few shots into the dark:

- open in emacs a shell with M-x shell, and run ipython there.  What
happens?  Also, echo $SHELL in there, this is what I get:

longs[ipython]> echo $TERM
dumb

- in ipython, try:

import os;print os.environ['TERM']

as well as in your normal terminal.  What's the answer? Any difference
(there shouldn't be)?

- test the echo ""|ipython trick in various terminals.  Here are my results:

 * konsole, xterm, rxvt: all OK

 * gnome-terminal: broken prompts (shown above).

I remember years ago having no end of problems with gnome-terminal and
ipython, so maybe they broke their handling of ANSI escapes again. One
more reason to use KDE ;)


Cheers,

f