I sent it again from the email address through which you contacted me. Hope it works this time! Maybe others got spam-binned too.

By the way, we never received your screenshots and narrative. Try sending them again.

desktop_blog_feedback@mathworks.com

-Ken

Due to a not-so-great response, I’ve yet to get three screen shots and narratives. So… there are t-shirts available to the next couple of people who send their info in!

-Ken

Mike and I will gather up all the screen shots and explanations you send in, and then post a blog with all that good info next week.”

I cannot be the only one who emailed you guys a screenshot! “next week” …?…

Thanks! That is some good information and great tips. When you get your hands on MATLAB R2009b, try docking the help browser to see if that enhances your layout.

I keep only MATLAB on Desktop 3 for example, so to switch to MATLAB application, I just press Ctrl-F3. To switch to another application, web browser, for example, I switch to the first desktop etc. So, I rarely need to use Alt-Tab, and that way, I can be sure that I will switch to MATLAB when I press Ctrl-F3.

I use two monitors, a 22′ LCD and a 17′ CRT. I keep the Command window on the right monitor, maximized; and the editor window on the left monitor, again maximized. I don’t use Workspace, Current Directory etc. I sometimes go full screen to get even more space, using Alt-F11 in KDE.

I use the window switching shortcuts a lot (Ctrl-0 for command window, Ctrl-Shift-0 for the editor, Ctrl-4 for the doc). I usually use common commands like cd, pwd to navigate through directories, and use the edit command extensively to open files, rather than rely on the GUI. Sometimes I have several files, and rather than trying to select the correct file from the tab bar, I simply type ‘edit filename.m’ to switch to it. (Actually, I rarely type that whole thing thanks to auto completion by the up arrow key, I usually simply type ‘ed’ and then press Up.) To open a particular file in which I remember which variable was used, I use a function ‘g’ to search for that variable, it finds the file using ‘grep’ in File Exchange, and I simply click the hyperlink to open the file in the Editor.

The g function is below. I use the grep created by us here ( http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/9647 ) but made the following modifications to ignore case by default, and print line numbers by default:
———–
Change line 84 from
‘-i’ true 0 [] 0 ‘ignore case’
Change line 89 from
‘-n’ true 0 [] 0 ‘print line number’
———–

function g(string,r)
% Searches for the string in m files
% Usage:
% "g snr" searches for snr in the current dir
% "g snr 1" searches for snr in the current dir and subdirs

if ~exist('r'), r = 0; end
if r
    grep('-r', string,'*.m')
else
    grep(string,'*.m')
end

I use emacs-style keybindings, and smarttab. Other than these, I have some shortcuts, but use them rarely. I use emacs when I’m not programming a GUI, and when I don’t debug.

One last tip for KDE users is that when I press F1 to read documentation in command window, Alt-F5 which maximizes the window works for that little documentation window, so I don’t have to switch to Doc viewer, or I can view two Docs simultaneously.

Sounds like a nice setup. We’d love to see screen shots (you can email us at desktop_blog_feedback@mathworks.com if you’d like to share).

-Ken

You can move the document bar to the right (or left or top) in R2007a. Note that you can easily jump between files in the MATLAB Editor by using the Open Selection from the context menu (Ctrl+D via the keyboard on Windows or Shift+Cmd+D on the Mac).

-Ken

A technical description of the solution underlying this utility can be found here: http://UndocumentedMatlab.com/blog/EditorMacro/

Note that this utility, although tested for Matlab versions 6.0 (R12) through 7.7 (R2008b), relies on undocumented and unsupported Matlab functionality which may break in future Matlab releases.

Feedback welcome
enjoy :-)

Yair