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.)

Name	Default	Description
Colors
-cursor `colorname`	yellow	The color used to highlight the selected item in the editing window.
-metacolor `colorname`	blue3	The color used for place holders.
-keywordcolor `colorname`	#802000	The color of keywords and other built-in syntax.
-paper `colorname`	grey90	The background color in most areas displaying text.
Fonts
-fontfamily `family`	new century schoolbook	Font used for user identifiers
-varslant `slant`	`i`	Variables are displayed in italic, but you might prefer them in roman (use `r`).
-delimfamily `family`	`fontfamily`	Font used for keywords and delimiters.
-fontsize `size`	3	The font size used in the editing window. 0=tiny, 3=medium, 6=huge.
-commentfont `font`	Roman, medium weight based on `fontfamily` and `fontsize`	Font 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]	no	Makes the menu window faster but uglier.
-untypedmenu [yes\|no]	no	Makes the menu show all identifiers in scope, not only those that can be used to refine the current goal.
-simplerefine [yes\|no]	no	Set 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 `length`	10	How many commands to save in the undo buffer
Plugin options
-plugins [yes\|no]	no	Enables (or disables) all plugin modules
-plugins `p₁:...:p_n`	no	Enable specific plugin modules. The argument is a colon-separated list of plugin names. Currently known plugin names: GF, AGF & Dummy.
-langs `l₁:...:l_n`	`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]	no	Disable 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.