Week 3- Mel and Script Editor Help

Learning about Maya is interesting and entertaining. I am now developing the tools to help myself through the Maya Interface more efficiently.

Through this tutorial, I discovered some valuable knowledge about new ways to program in Mel.
http://www.cgsutra.com/autodesk_maya_tutorials/mel/chapter_02/ch02_script_editor.php

The Command Shell is a window that one can program in, related closely to the "input" window in the Script editor. When a line of code is written and submitted for processing, the "Result" line is displayed right underneath the command.

The History menu within the Script Editor is extremely efficient.
1. Batch Render Messages - has a Script Editor display.
2. Echo All Commands -all the commands and their results show up in the history display in the Script Editor.
3.Show Stack Trace- for script files loaded into Maya from another source, this option shows the script and any errors it has along with numbered lines.
4. Suppress options - customize the feedback in the history window of the Script Editor.

The Command menu in the Script Editor is awesome for accessing fast documentation or flags for a command with the Quick Help option. A new tab can be made in either Mel or Python for a number of purposes, like to have additional scripts open, notes, or to dock feedback quickly from the history window.
If you need flags that are related to a certain command, you can access Quick Help by right clicking and going to Quick Help. One can right click over a flag and open the Command Documentation. The Help Menu for Maya is great and I will be exploring it fully.

I typed -r  into Quick Help and was provided with this information:

How to use the "help" command:

To get quick help for a particular command, type:

help <commandName>

To get in-depth documentation for a particular command, type:

help -doc <commandName>

To get a list of all available commands whose names match a pattern, type:

help -list <regular expression>

For example, to show all commands starting with the letter "b", type:

help -list "b*"

To go to the general on-line documentation, use the Help Menu, or type:

help -doc

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In addition, Mel scripts function in the Python window of the Script editor but to "initialize" Mel, this line of code is necessary.

                               import maya.cmds

This is to access all the Maya commands (cmds).