Function Repository Resource:

InformationPopup

Source Notebook

Add a way to quickly access symbol information inline by displaying a popup

Contributed by: Lukas Lang

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["InstallMenuItem"]

permanently adds a menu item to call up an inline symbol information popup.

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["InstallMenuItem",MenuKey[…]]

permanently adds the menu item with the specified hotkey.

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["Palette"]

creates a palette with a button to call up the information popup.

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["Remove"]

removes any permanently installed changes.

Details

The information popup created by ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"] is effectively based on the output of Information[sym], where sym is the currently selected symbol.

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"] can be used to quickly look up information such as the attributes or usage of a symbol without needing to evaluate anything in a separate cell.

The cursor/selection needs to be within the symbol of interest, with the selection being expanded if only parts of the symbol name are selected.

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["InstallMenuItem",…] effectively installs a paclet named ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"].

The menu item can be removed again by using ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["Remove"], or by uninstalling the ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"] paclet manually.

In ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["InstallMenuItem",MenuKey[…]], the MenuKey[…] expression can be anything supported by the MenuSetup.tr system menu configuration file.

The menu item can be found in Help ▶ Display Inline Information, with the default hotkey being

+F1 on Windows and Linux, and

+F on macOS.

Typical settings for the menu item hotkey are of the form MenuKey["letter",Modifiers→{mod₁,…}], where the mod_i are one of "Shift", "Control", "Command" and "Option".

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"]["AddMenuItem",…] can be used to add the menu item to the current front end session only.

ResourceFunction["InformationPopup"][] brings up the information popup for the selection in InputNotebook[], and can be used to call up the popup from custom buttons and menus.