# Intellisense

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/intellisense/1031>\
**Category:** Archived Topics\
**Created:** [March 10, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/intellisense/1031 "2009-03-10T21:04:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jonathan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/aeb1de/32.png) [@Jonathan](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Jonathan)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/intellisense/1031/1 "2009-03-10T21:04:05Z")

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Would it be possible to include something similar to intellisense in FPMI? This would be useful in both the jython section and the expression language. I find I have to constantly click on the function button to see what parameters the lookup function takes. If a tooltip would pop up while I type it would make for a great feature.

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**Author:** ![Carl.Gould](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/carl.gould/32/7262_2.png) [@Carl.Gould](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Carl.Gould)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2009, 1:29am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/intellisense/1031/2 "2009-03-11T01:29:53Z")

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You aren’t the first to request this feature, believe me. Its on “the list”. That said, it isn’t trivial, and there are a number of more pressing features, so I wouldn’t expect it too soon.

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**Author:** ![skenealy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@skenealy](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/skenealy)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 7:04pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/intellisense/1031/3 "2009-07-15T19:04:18Z")

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On a related note, a vim-like (or even vi-like) mode for the editor would be super. Or, better yet, having a setting to change the default editor to something installed on the local computer, like all the UNIX terminal applications do with the EDITOR variable.

It’s not a very pressing issue, but it’d be nice to avoid copying and pasting code between editors, as well as getting ‘:wq’ out of all my minor edits 🙂

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**Author:** ![Carl.Gould](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/carl.gould/32/7262_2.png) [@Carl.Gould](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Carl.Gould)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/intellisense/1031/4 "2009-07-15T20:25:30Z")

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Duly noted, althought I’m not sure how the external editor thing would work since we aren’t dealing with files here…

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**Author:** ![skenealy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@skenealy](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/skenealy)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/intellisense/1031/5 "2009-07-15T22:04:21Z")

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For an example of the external editor, refer to a program like mutt, a console email program that you’d find on just about any linux box. When you go to type an email, it launches whatever editor is listed in the EDITOR environmental variable. I don’t believe it ever stores a file - instead, it stores the text in a buffer and returns it to mutt when it’s done running.

I’m not sure how the buffer is passed… probably through a pipe, but that wouldn’t work on Windows. Some popular editors have a client/server mode or ftp mode - perhaps that could be used? I believe vim, emacs, and notepad++ all have this functionality.

It’s not really a feature I’d expect to ever get implemented, but as you probably know, most programmers love their editor more than their family, so it’d be an awesome present nonetheless.