↑

Notion

Pressing / in Notion brings up a full menu of content blocks you can choose to insert. You can shortcut this further by pressing / and then typing what you want.

How to center text: insert a block equation then use \text{}.

Shortcut Function
cmd + E turn text into inline code

Add inline equations

  • method 1: type 2 dollar signs, i.e., $$, followed by your eqn., then close with another 2 dollar signs.
  • method 2: type /inline equation

Add block eqn: type /math

Add quote blocks: type " followed by space to create a quote block.

DataCamp

DataCamp Classrooms grant full Teams access for six months for all members of the Classroom. Students and teachers have full access to every piece of content on DataCamp except courses on Tableau and Power BI. Additionally, teachers will have access to Teams admin features in the group dashboard like Assignments, Teams, Leaderboards, Reporting, and more.

Furthermore, DataCamp Classrooms accounts and their members gain access to an upgraded version of DataLab with more 2xCPU and 4 GB RAM and full access to DataCamp Certification and DataCamp Jobs.

VS Code

Layout

  • Secondary Side Bar is located toThe left of the editor region. It can be useful to see two views open at the same time. It is often used by the Copilot Chat.

  • Editor Groups

    By default, each opened editor goes into the same editor group and open new file as a tab to the right.

    You can create new editor groups in order to group similar or related files, or to allow side by side editing of the same file.

    Create a new editor group by dragging an editor to the side, or using one of the Split commands in the context menu to duplicate the current editor into a new editor group to the left, right, above, or below.

  • Panel (cmd + J)- An additional space for views below the editor region. By default, it contains output, debug information, errors and warnings, and an integrated terminal. The Panel can also be moved to the left or right for more vertical space.

Custom layout: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/configure/custom-layout

  • Read the webpage to see how to reorganize the default layout

Q: How to change Panel position?
A: Right-click on the Panel title bar > Panel Position > choose from Left | Right | Bottom | Top, default is Bottom. Or choose “View: Toggle Panel Position” from the Command Palette.

Explorer View

The Explorer view is used to browse, open, and manage the files and folders in your project.

  • Type cmd + P (Quick Open) to quickly search and open a file by its name.

Keyboard shortcuts

Command Palette > “Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts” to open the Keyboard Shortcuts editor.

Shortcut Function
dd use vim shortcut
cmd + J toggle Panel
ctrl + I Github CoPilot: Start inline chat (default shortcut cmd-I collapses with italic style)
ctrl + cmd + I open GitHub Copilot chat
opt + cmd + B close GitHub Copilot chat in the Secondary Side Bar
cmd + P search file names in the current workspace or project.
shift + cmd + P Bring up the Command Palette
cmd + opt + V Markdown Paste: convert rick text to Markdown, such as bold face.
cmd + opt + C Markdown Paste: paste code with auto-detecting language.
ctrl + ` ctrl + backticks;
User modified: toggle btw editor and terminal

Useful Extensions:

  • Markdown: Markdown Preview Enhanced, Markdown+Math, Markdown All in One
  • TeX: LaTeX-Workshop (this installs intellisense automatically)
  • Spell check, autocomplete: Code Spell Checker, intellisense

Extension Reload

Sometimes you need to reload an extension to apply changes.

Command Palette → “Developer: Reload Window”

  • This is equivalent to restarting VS Code, but it only reloads the current window and does not close the entire application.
  • A quick reload ensures that your environment is up-to-date and functioning as intended, preventing potential disruptions in your workflow.
    • Generally, changes in settings apply immediately, but some settings require a reload to take effect.

Find and Replace in Selection

  1. cmd + F to open Find/Replace
  2. Select your line of text
  3. Click the “Find in Selection” icon to the right (or using keyboard shortcut opt + cmd + L)
  4. Enter your find and replace characters in their inputs
  5. Click the “Replace All” icon

Close Find/Replace with esc.

Search Across Files

Press shift + cmd + F and enter your search term. VS Code will search over all files in the currently opened folder.

Command Palette approach: enter the Search: Quick Search command.

Search results are grouped into files containing the search term, with an indication of the hits in each file and its location. Expand a file to see a preview of all of the hits within that file. Then single-click on one of the hits to view it in the editor.

Language Identifiers

In Visual Studio Code, each language mode has a unique specific language identifier. That identifier is rarely seen by the user except in the settings, for example, when associating file extensions to a language:

"files.associations": {
    "*.myphp": "php"
}

Note that casing matters for exact identifier matching (‘Markdown’ != ‘markdown’)

Every language defines its id through the languages configuration point in the extension’s package.json file:

"languages": [{
    "id": "java",
    "extensions": [ ".java", ".jav" ],
    "aliases": [ "Java", "java" ]
}]

You can find a list of known identifiers in the language identifier reference.

Language Identifier
LaTeX latex
Markdown markdown
R r
R Markdown rmd
Quarto quarto
  • Note that all identifiers are in lower cases.

Version Control

Visual Studio Code has integrated source control management (SCM) and includes Git support out-of-the-box.

Use the Source Control icon in the activity bar to access the Source Control view.

Error: No source control providers registered.
Cause: Git built-in extension was disabled.
Fix: Go to Extensions, type: @builtin git, then Enable Git from the Git extension settings.

The Source Control view shows the details of your current repository changes: CHANGES, STAGED CHANGES and MERGE CHANGES.

When you select a file in the Source Control view, you will see the changes that you have made to that file in a diff editor.

File version control status

  • U - Untracked file
  • A - Added file
  • M - Modified file

Code Actions

Code Actions can provide both refactorings and Quick Fixes for detected issues (highlighted with red squiggles). When the cursor is on a squiggle or on a selected text region, VS Code shows a light bulb icon 💡 in the editor to indicate that a Code Action is available. If you select the Code Action light bulb or use the Quick Fix command ⌘., the Quick Fixes and refactorings control is presented.

If you have enabled GitHub Copilot, you can choose to fix with Copilot. This is a very convenient way to debug your code.

Q: What is refactoring?
A: Visual Studio Code supports refactoring operations (refactorings) such as Extract Method and Extract Variable to improve your codebase from within the editor. For example, a common refactoring used to avoid duplicating code (a maintenance headache) is the Extract Method refactoring, where you select source code and pull it out into its own shared method, so that can reuse the code elsewhere.

Snippets

Snippets files are written in JSON, support C-style comments (//), and can define an unlimited number of snippets. Snippets support most TextMate syntax for dynamic behavior, intelligently format whitespace based on the insertion context, and allow easy multiline editing.

  • a language snippet file

    Single-language user-defined snippets are defined in a specific language’s snippet file (for example javascript.json), which you can access by language identifier through Snippets: Configure Snippets.

    A snippet is only accessible when editing the language for which it is defined.

  • a global snippet file

    Multi-language and global user-defined snippets are all defined in “global” snippet files (JSON with the file suffix .code-snippets), which is also accessible through Snippets: Configure Snippets.

    File path: $HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/User/snippets

Create your own snippets: Code > Settings > Configure Snippets

Syntax

// in file 'Code/User/snippets/javascript.json'
{
  "For Loop": {
    "prefix": ["for", "for-const"],
    "body": ["for (const ${2:element} of ${1:array}) {", "\t$0", "}"],
    "description": "A for loop."
  }
}

  • “For Loop” is the snippet name.

    prefix defines one or more trigger words that display the snippet in IntelliSense. Substring matching is performed on prefixes, so in this case, “fc” could match “for-const”.

    body is one or more lines of content, which will be joined as multiple lines upon insertion. Newlines and embedded tabs will be formatted according to the context in which the snippet is inserted.

    description is an optional description of the snippet displayed by IntelliSense.

    scope optional property that takes one or more language identifiers, which makes the snippet available only for those specified languages. If no scope property is given, then the global snippet is available in all languages.

  • Use $1, $2 to specify cursor locations. The number is the order in which tabstops will be visited, whereas $0 denotes the final cursor position.

    The body of the example above has three placeholders (listed in order of traversal): ${1:array}, ${2:element}, and $0. You can quickly jump to the next placeholder with Tab.

    $0 is an optional special case that always comes last.

  • Placeholders are tabstops with values, like ${1:foo}. The placeholder text will be inserted and selected such that it can be easily changed. Placeholders can be nested, like ${1:another ${2:placeholder}}.

    The string after the colon : (if any) is the default text.

  • Variables: With $name or ${name:default}, you can insert the value of a variable.

    • TM_SELECTED_TEXT The currently selected text or the empty string.
  • With \ (backslash), you can escape $, }, and \.
  • Multilined body: simply wrap each line with double quotes.

Q: When using $TM_SELECTED_TEXT, if you type the prefix, the selected text will be overwritten. What to do with it?
A: VS code remembers the text. When you finish typing the prefix, the formatted text will show up accordingly.

// customer defined snippets
{
  "Colored Span Green": {
    "prefix": "cs-green",
    "body": [
      "<span style=\"color: #008B45;\">$TM_SELECTED_TEXT</span>$0"
    ],
    "description": "Insert a green colored span"
  },
  "Math Helper Parentheses": {
    "scope": "markdown, latex",
    "prefix": "\\(",
    "body": [
      "\\left($1\\right)$0"
    ],
    "description": "Insert parentheses with LaTeX math formatting"
  },
  "Math Helper Brackets": {
    "scope": "markdown, latex",
    "prefix": "\\[",
    "body": [
      "\\left[$1\\right]$0"
    ],
    "description": "Insert brackets with LaTeX math formatting"
  },
  "Separator":{
		"scope": "markdown, latex, quarto",
		"prefix": ["---", "dash"],
		"body": [
			"--------------------------------------------------------------------------------",
			"$0"
		],
		"description": "Insert a horizontal separator line"
	},
}

  • "scope": "markdown, latex" set scope to "markdown, latex" such that \( works inside dollar signs.

  • To escape double backslashes, you have to use \\\\\\\\ (8 backslashes).

    • In TextMate you can but must not escape a backslash with a backslash, so to insert 1 backslash have either \ or \\
    • In JSON you must escape a backslash with another backslash, so to insert 1 backslash have either \\ or \\\\, to insert 2 \\\\\\\\

List of user defined snippets:

prefix command
cs-green / cs-red/ cs-blue colored html span
\( \left(\right)
\[ \left[\right]
vec row vector
cvec column vector
mat variance matrix
--- or dash insert separator horizontal line
Note that in Rmd and qmd, since --- clashes with yaml, use dash instead.

Q: Is it possible to set max lines of a table printed in notebook?
A: The simple answer is NO. Seetings → Features → Notebook only limits the cell size of a pure text based output. It does NOT apply to outputs such as matrices, dataframes or other spreadsheet-like outputs (e.g. from the View() function in R.)

Configuration

Change settings of VS Code

  • Menu bar: Code → Settings (keyboard shortcut: cmd + ,)

    A useful feature is to copy the json for the settings of interest in the UI.

    copy as json

    When you hover over the title of the setting, a gear icon will appear, choose “Copy Setting as JSON” to copy the setting in json format.

  • Configuration file: change directly in the user settings file (settings.json)

Setting file locations:

  • macOS User Settings: Global settings that apply to all VS Code workspaces and projects

    Located in the user’s home directory in the VS Code application data folder: $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json

    Examples: Theme, font size, editor preferences, extensions settings, etc.

    Lower priority (can be overridden by workspace settings)

  • Workspace Settings: Project-specific settings that apply only to the current workspace/project.

    Located in .vscode/settings.json inside the project folder.

    Examples: Project-specific linting rules, build configurations, language settings for this project

    Priority: Higher priority (overrides user settings)

You can toggle between User and Workspace Settings by choosing the tab in the UI or if you are using the json file, you can determine which settings you are working on by looking at the file path.

Run Open Config Script to open config.js (a JavaScript configuration file):

  • define TeX macros KatexConfig, mathjaxConfig …

Q: What is the difference between .json and .js?
A: .json is a subset of .js, which stands for JavaScript.

  • If you store only data, use .json;

    You can think of .json as a YAML frontmatter in markdown.

  • if you have some sort of logic (functions, conditions, loops …), use .js.

Q: How to customize language-specific setttings?
A: Open User Settings → Type @lang:markdown into the search widget. This will show configurable settings for that specific language. Alternatively, you can change directly in the settings JSON file.

"[markdown]": {
    "editor.formatOnSave": true,
    "editor.wordWrap": "on",
    "editor.renderWhitespace": "all",
    "editor.acceptSuggestionOnEnter": "off"
  }

Q: How to preview a markdown file?
A: Two options:

  • Open Preview (⇧⌘V)
  • Open Preview to the Side (⌘K V)

Use either the keyboard shortcuts or click the Preview button.

  • Double clicking an element in the Markdown preview will automatically open the editor for the file and scroll to the line nearest the clicked element.

VS code: preview markdown

To set html preview using external browser, you need to change setting for the two extensions:

  • Quarto Preview: personally I prefer to use the build-in preview as it basically provides a live preview just like Markdown Preview Enhanced.
  • Live Preview: set to external browser, as Live Preview is more often used to preview the whole website.

Q: How to open the User settings json file?
A: Follow the following steps:

  1. Open the Command Palette (either with F1 or Cmd+Shift+P)
  2. Type “open settings”
  3. You are presented with a few options, choose Open User Settings (JSON)

You can change setting using the UI or there is a settings.json file which saves all configurations.

VS Code includes a button in the Settings UI gutter which can be used to switch between JSON and graphical view.

VS Settings

Q: How to spell check code and document?
A: Use the extension Code Spell Checker. Put your cursor in the word, use Cmd+. to show suggestions and select.

Q: How to ignore unknown words?
A: Go to Settings (⌘,) → cSpell.diagnosticLevel → Choose Hint from the drop down menu.

Q: How to show my installed extensions?
A: By default, the Extensions view will show the extensions you currently have installed, and all extensions that are recommended for you. You can use the Extensions: Focus on Installed View command, to show the installed ones.

Q: Disable Enter to accept suggestions as this confuses inserting a new line.
A: Set Editor: Accept Suggestion On Enter to off.

Markdown

Markdown Preview Settings: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/markdown#_markdown-preview

Q: How to get a preview of Rmarkdown?
A: Open settings.json, add the following code inside the braces.

/* this adds additional file extensions to markdown */
"files.associations": {
    "*.Rmd": "markdown",
    "*.qmd": "markdown",
},

A drawback of this setting is that you cannot run codes inside the markdown files.

Q: How to get autocomplete, syntax highlighting in Markdown?
A: Install Latex Workshop by James Yu → Switch Language Mode from Markdown to markdown_latex_combined.

This will disable markdown preview! Therefore, not recommended. ❌

Use Markdown All in One extension instead. ✅

Q: How to change the language for the selected file?
A: In the status bar, click the language indicator. This will bring up the Select Language Mode dropdown where you can select another language for the current file.

Q: How to change Markdown preview security?
A: You can change what content is allowed in the Markdown preview by clicking on the popup or running the Markdown: Change preview security settings command in any Markdown file.

Visual Mode and Source Mode

Visual Mode has inline preview of eqns, and in time preview of your markdown, like in Typora.

Side-to-side preview can be slow and the previewer can crash for a large file. That’s where Visual Mode comes in handy.

Markdown Preview Enhanced

Q: How to define MathJax macros?
A: You can configure MathJax by running command Markdown Preview Enhanced: Open MathJax Config.

Q: How to set Math Rendering Engine?
A: Run command Markdown Preview Enhanced: Math Rendering Option.

References:

Q: How to enable automatic numbering for MathJax?
A: Run Open Config Script (will open config.js, a JavaScript configuration file), and add

mathjaxConfig: {
  tex: {
    tags: 'ams',
    "macros": {
        bold: ["{\\boldsymbol #1}", 1], // use \bold as a shorthand
        indep: "{\\perp \\!\\!\\! \\perp}",
        // bold face capital letter
        bA: "\\boldsymbol{A}",
    }
  }
};

to tell the TeX input processor to use the AMS numbering rules (where only certain environments produce numbered equations, as they would be in LaTeX, e.g., \begin{equation}).

You can use \notag or \nonumber to prevent individual equations from being numbered, and \tag{} can be used to override the usual equation number with your own symbol instead (or to add an equation tag even when automatic numbering is off).

You can also define your TeX macros in config.js.

File path: /Users/menghan/.local/state/crossnote/config.js

Q: How to use dark theme for Markdown Preview Enhanced (MPE)?
A: Run command Markdown Preview Enhanced: Preview Theme, choose github-dark.css.

Q: How to get separate preview for individual files?
A: MPE has one preview tab for all files by default. You can change this by going to preferences > Markdown Preview Enhanced > Preview Mode > Set to Multiple Previews. Restart VS Code to activate the setting.

Customize CSS

Q: How to add a custom CSS to MPE?
A: To customize CSS for your markdown file, press cmd-shift-p and then run the Markdown Preview Enhanced: Customize CSS (Global) or Markdown Preview Enhanced: Customize CSS (Workspace) command.

The style.less file will open, and you can override existing style like this:

.markdown-preview.markdown-preview {
  // please write your custom style here
  // eg:
  //  color: blue;          // change font color
  //  font-size: 14px;      // change font size
  // custom pdf output style
  @media print {
  }

  // custom prince pdf export style
  &.prince {
  }

  // custom presentation style
  .reveal .slides {
    // modify all slides
  }

  .slides > section:nth-child(1) {
    // this will modify `the first slide`
  }
}

.md-sidebar-toc.md-sidebar-toc {
  // sidebar TOC style
}

ref: MPE Customize CSS

Configuration

There is a global config.js script that could be used to configure the Markdown Preview Enhanced extension.

Open command palette (⇧⌘P), then run Markdown Preview Enhanced: Open Config Script (Global) command to open it.

  • You can add your custom macros.
  • You can add more configurations to this script. A list of available configurations can be found here.

Below is an example of the config.js script:

({
  katexConfig: {
    macros: {},
  },

  mathjaxConfig: {
    tex: {},
    options: {},
    loader: {},
  },

  mermaidConfig: {
    startOnLoad: false,
  },
});

Markdown+Math

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=goessner.mdmath

Use KaTeX, which is supposedly a fast math renderer.

Function: Simplify the process of authoring and live previewing markdown documents containing math formulas.

Use: Typeset in your markdown source window and see the preview window live updating.

Define macros for mdmath

Option 1: use user settings

opt+, open preferences, add your macros directly there.

"mdmath.macros": {
        "\\indep": "{\\perp \\!\\!\\! \\perp}",
        "\\E": "\\mathbb{E}",
},

Option 2: save macros in a file and add the file path. The file take priority. That means the defined macros in option 1 will be ignored if a definition file exists.

Issue: This does not work somehow.

"mdmath.macroFile": "/Users/menghan/Documents/mac_setup/config_files/mdmath_macros.json",

After adding the macros in preferences, need to restart VS Code to enable them.

Quarto

You can install the Quarto extension from the VS Code Extension Marketplace.

But if you have associated .qmd with Markdown previewer as follows

"files.associations": {
   "*.Rmd": "markdown",
   "*.qmd": "markdown",
}

then it won’t be recognized by the Quarto extension and will be processed as a regular markdown file.

LaTeX-Workshop

Snippets: https://github.com/James-Yu/LaTeX-Workshop/wiki/Snippets#Handy-mathematical-snippets

The following works in markdown inside math environment

Prefix Command
__ _{$1}
** ^{$1}
... \dots

Environment snippets works directly in tex, you type B, a drop-down list will show up for you to choose.

  • The prefixes start with B and are followed by an abbreviation of the environment name.
  • The unnumbered versions of the environments are prefixed with BS, e.g., BSEQ for equation*.
  • In tex, these cmds work in both math and text environments.
  • However, it is more restrictive in markdown, where these cmds work only inside math environments ($...$)
Prefix Environment name
BEQ equation
BSEQ equation*
BAL align
BSAL align*
BGA gather
BSGA gather*
BMU multline
BSMU multline*
BIT itemize
BEN enumerate
BSPL split
BCAS cases
BFR frame
BFI figure
BTA table

@ suggestsion

LaTeX-Workshop provides an independent intellisense mechanism triggered by @. For example, you can type @a for \alpha. It works for most Greeks and have some useful mathematical helpers.

Prefix Command
@( \left( $1 \right)
@{ \left\{ $1 \right\}
@[ \left[ $1 \right]
@^ \Hat{$1}
@_ \bar{$1}

Code Spell Checker

Words not in the dictionary files will have a squiggly underline.

Its configuration starts with cSpell.

In text-based documents like .md and .qmd files, the spell checker checks all words. In code-based documents like .py and .R files, the spell checker only checks strings and comments.

Q: How to let cSpell ignore certain envoronments, such as code and math?
A: Add the following to your settings.json file:

// Configure spell checker to ignore certain patterns
"cSpell.ignoreRegExpList": [
  "/```[\\s\\S]*?```/g",  // Ignores fenced code blocks (```)
  "/`[^`\\r\\n]*`/g",     // Ignores inline code (`)
  "/@\\w+/g",             // Ignores @ mentions (like @username)
  "/\\$\\$[\\s\\S]*?\\$\\$/g", // Block LaTeX math ($$...$$)
  "/\\$[^$\\r\\n]*\\$/g"  // Inline LaTeX math ($...$)
]
  • The key is that the inline code config comes before the LaTeX patterns. This way, cSpell will first ignore anything in backticks, so $HOME (environment variable) inside backticks is not seen as LaTeX math.

Foreign language support

Here is an example of how to enable Norwegian Bokmål spell checking in VS Code using the Code Spell Checker extension:

  1. Install Norwegian Bokmål – Norwegian Bokmål dictionary extension for VS Code.

  2. Adding nb to the cSpell.language setting, will enable the Norwegian Bokmål dictionary. Example using both English and Norwegian Bokmål dictionaries:

    "cSpell.language": "en,nb",

Intellisense

IntelliSense is a general term for various code editing features including: code completion, parameter info, quick info, and member lists. IntelliSense features are sometimes called by other names such as “code completion”, “content assist”, and “code hinting.”

The inferred symbols are presented first, followed by the global identifiers (indicated by the abc word icon).

The editor supports tab completion, which inserts the best matching completion when pressing Tab.

Settings

// Controls if quick suggestions should show up while typing
"editor.quickSuggestions": {
    "other": true,
    "comments": false,
    "strings": false
},

GitHub Copilot

  • Open chat view: ^⌘I
  • Start inline chat: ^I (modified from ⌘I to avoid conflict with italic style)

Code Completion

Code Completion Quick Start

Settings

Q: How does inline suggestions work?

inline suggestions.gif
Source: @Mark, https://stackoverflow.com/a/68264996

Q: How to partially accept suggestions?
A: You might not want to accept an entire suggestion from GitHub Copilot. You can use

  • ⌘→  to accept the next word of a suggestion, and

  • ⌘] to accept the next line.

    Does NOT work; conflict with system indent.

Or you can hover the ghost text, a dialog (see below) will apear, click … to Accpet Line.

GitHub Copilot hover highlight
Inline Suggestion Dialog.

Q: How to see alternative suggestions?
A: For any given input, Copilot might offer multiple, alternative suggestions. You can hover over the suggestion and click < or > to navigate to any of the other suggestions. Keyboard shortcut: Option + ] to cycle through suggestions.

Q: How to make inline suggestions (ghost text) automatically disappear after a delay if you don’t accept them?
A: No native support for this feature yet.

Q: ESC which is both used for closing inline suggestions and for entering command mode in Vim, how to avoid conflict?
A: You can change the keybinding for inline suggestions.

{
  "key": "ctrl+u",
  "command": "editor.action.inlineSuggest.hide",
  "when": "editorTextFocus && inlineSuggestionVisible && vim.mode == 'Insert'"
}

This will allow you to use Ctrl + U to close inline suggestions while still using Esc for command mode in Vim.

Next Edit Suggestion

Copilot next edit suggestions (Copilot NES) is a feature that provides suggestions for the next edit you might want to make in your code.

  • Navigate to the Next suggested code changes with the Tab key.
    • You can then accept a suggestion with the Tab key again.
  • An arrow in the gutter indicates if there is an edit suggestion available.

You can hover over the arrow to explore the edit suggestion menu, which includes keyboard shortcuts and settings configuration:

Q: How to reduce districtions by edit suggestions?
A: To disable showing the code changes in the editor, enable the  editor.inlineSuggest.edits.showCollapsed setting in the Settings editor.

Q: How to delete chat histories?
A: When you have a long chat, Copilot takes time to load the conversation history and might get slow. Deleting the history helps Copilot to have quick reactions. In the chat window, click the icon, it will show history chats in the command palette. You can delete any chats from there.

Chat histories are stored in /Users/menghan/Library/Application Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage/[long-serial-number...]/chatSessions

Q: In chat window, set Enter to line break and Shift + Enter to submit.
A: Add the following settings to keybindings.json (Command Palette, type “Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts”):

{
    "key": "shift+enter",
    "command": "workbench.action.chat.submit",
    "when": "inChatInput"
},
{
    "key": "enter",
    "command": "-workbench.action.chat.submit",
    "when": "inChatInput"
},
{
    "key": "enter",
    "command": "editor.action.insertLineAfter",
    "when": "inChatInput"
}

To summarize the Enter behavior:

  • Enter now creates a new line in GitHub Copilot Chat
  • Shift+Enter submits your message

Explain different modes of Github Copilot:

  • Agent Mode 🤖
    • Complex, multi-step tasks that require planning and coordination
    • Tasks that span multiple files or require understanding project structure
    • When you need systematic problem-solving with multiple tool invocations
    • Research and analysis tasks that require gathering information from various sources
  • Edit Mode ✏️
    • Direct code modifications and quick fixes
    • When you know exactly what needs to be changed
    • Focused, single-purpose edits
    • Implementing specific functionality or bug fixes
  • Ask Mode 💬
    • Learning and understanding concepts
    • No code modifications
    • Educational and consultative

Choose AI Coorect Model

Model type Models
Fast coding GPT-4o
Claude Sonnet 3.5
Claude Sonnet 3.7
Gemini 2.0 Flash
Reasoning/planning Claude Sonnet 3.7 Thinking
o1
o3-mini

GitLens

Inline Blame

Q: How to disable inline blame?
A: Open Settings and type GitLens: Current Line, uncheck the Enabled box.

gitlens
GitLens toolbar in editors.

Q: How to remove GitLens’ toolbar in the open editor panel?
A: Set the following in the settings.json file:

"gitlens.menus": {
    "editorGroup": {
        "blame": false,
        "compare": false
    }
},

Restore to Previous Revision

Sidebar > GitLens Inspect > File History, all previous revisions of the file will be listed.

Find the version you want to restore to. You can open them to view or compare with the current version.

Right click the version you want to restore to, you have two options:

  • “Restore Changes (Checkout)” is equivalent to performing a git checkout <commit-id> <file-path> or git restore --source=<commit-id> <file-path> command. It specifically targets a file and restores its content to the state it was in at a particular commit. This is useful when you want to revert a single file to an earlier version without affecting other files or your current branch.

  • “Restore Previous Changes” leverages VS Code’s internal file history tracking, which can be useful for recovering lost work or reverting uncommitted changes. This is distinct from Git’s version control and operates on the local file system’s history.

Ref:

SQL Server (MSSQL)

FactSet: Connect to Azure SQL with Microsoft Entra authentication and SqlClient

FactSet uses Microsoft Entra ID as the authentication type. Microsoft Entra ID is previously known as Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)

Microsoft Entra authentication uses identities in Microsoft Entra ID to access data sources such as Azure SQL Database.

Active Directory Interactive authentication supports multifactor authentication technology to connect to Azure SQL data sources. If you provide this authentication mode in the connection string, an Azure authentication screen appears and asks the user to enter valid credentials. You can’t specify the password in the connection string.

Issue: cannot run SQL notebook as in Azure Data Studio

Q: How to pad line with dashes until 80 characters long. A: No quick fix. Can use vim to do this.

  1. Select the lines you want to pad.

  2. Press : to enter the command-line mode and type.

    :'<,'>normal 80A-<Esc>81|dw

    Command breakdown:

    • :'<,'>: Selects the current visual selection.
    • normal : Enters normal mode for the selected lines.
    • 80A-: Appends at the end of the line a dash (-) 80 times
    • <Esc>: Exits insert mode.
    • 81|dw: Moves the cursor to the column 81 (81|) and deletes the rest of the line (dw, delete until the beginning of next word; dashes count as one word).

    Note that :norm is a shorthand for :normal, which allows you to run normal mode commands on the selected lines.

  3. Press Enter to execute the command.

ref:

Q: How to share scripts among multiple projects in one solution? For instance, mathjax config file?
A: Unresolved yet …