Alfa

Command line syntax

Alfa is started with one of the commands

alfa [ rtflags ] [ - flags ]
ualfa [ rtflags ] [ - flags ]
where
alfa
starts alfa with traditional western european language settings.
ualfa
Starts alfa with various settings to support Unicode, including choosing alternative fonts that cover larger sets of Unicode characters than the default fonts.
rtflags
is an optional list of flags for the Haskell run-time system. A useful flag is -HheapsizeM, which sets the heap size to heapsize megabytes. The default is 30 (25 in older versions), which is enough for editing small documents. A 30MB heap is too big if you run Alfa on a computer with 32MB of RAM or less.

flags
is an optional list of flags interpreted by Alfa. See below. Notice the single - preceding these flags.

Command Line Options

The following flags can be used to change fonts, colors etc. (You can also use fudget library command line options.)

NameDefaultDescription
Colors
-cursor colornameyellow The color used to highlight the selected item in the editing window.
-metacolor colornameblue3 The color used for place holders.
-keywordcolor colorname#802000 The color of keywords and other built-in syntax.
-paper colornamegrey90 The background color in most areas displaying text.
Fonts
-fontfamily familynew century schoolbook Font used for user identifiers
-varslant slanti Variables are displayed in italic, but you might prefer them in roman (use r).
-delimfamily familyfontfamily Font used for keywords and delimiters.
-fontsize size3 The font size used in the editing window. 0=tiny, 3=medium, 6=huge.
-commentfont fontRoman, medium weight based on fontfamily and fontsizeFont used for comments.
Menu and interaction options
-autoabstract [yes|no]no Set the initial value of the Auto Abstract option in the Options menu.
-onlyrefine [yes|no]no Set the initial value of the Only refinements from context menu mode option in the Options menu.
-quickmenu [yes|no]noMakes the menu window faster but uglier.
-untypedmenu [yes|no]noMakes the menu show all identifiers in scope, not only those that can be used to refine the current goal.
-simplerefine [yes|no]noSet the initial value of the Simple Refine option in the Options menu. This option enables a simpler refine tactic (that only substitutes fully saturated applications).
-completions [yes|no]no Set the initial value of the input mode option to Completions in the Options menu.
-undo_history length10 How many commands to save in the undo buffer
Plugin options
-plugins [yes|no]noEnables (or disables) all plugin modules
-plugins p1:...:pn noEnable specific plugin modules. The argument is a colon-separated list of plugin names. Currently known plugin names: GF, AGF & Dummy.
-langs l1:...:ln all Restrict the active languages used by the GF plugin to the given list.
-GF [yes|no]no Sets some options appropriate when working with the AGF (sic) plugin. (At present same the as -autoabstract yes -onlyrefine yes.)
The rest
-norec [yes|no] noDisable recursion.
-quantifierdots [yes|no]no Activates an alternative quantifier notation. See the history entry for 990503.
-utf8 [yes|no]no Activate Unicode support. Files are saved in the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode. This option is enabled when starting alfa with the command ualfa, which may also switch to fonts with support for more Unicode characters than the default fonts.
-trace [yes|no]no Enables some extra diagnostic messages on stderr, mostly intended for debugging Alfa.

Thomas Hallgren