# 4 Session control ¶

The `File` menu has sections to manage the work session in Xmaxima. The ‘`Batch file`’ and ‘`Batch file silently`’ sections are equivalent to Maxima’s commands `batch` and `batchload`, which can also be used in Xmaxima. The advantage of those two options is that they will open a dialog box that will allow you to navigate through your directories, until you find the one that you are looking for.

The ‘`Restore Maxima State`’ (`Alt-i`) section allows you to reload the state of a Maxima session that you saved using the ‘`Save Maxima State to File`’ section. The latter saves the state as a Lisp file using Maxima’s `save` command.

The ‘`Save Maxima Input to File`’ (`Ctrl-a`) section saves each input line as Maxima code using the Maxima `stringout` command. This code can be manually edited in a text editor and loaded into Xmaxima using ‘`Batch file`’.

In the menu `Edit` there is also an option ‘`Save console to file`’ which will save the complete contents of the text window into a file. The input and output will be saved as they look on the screen, and not as they were originally written.

The option ‘`Input prompt`’ (`Alt-s`) will repeat the last input label sent back by Maxima. That will be useful if you are working on a text that is not near the last input label and you want to move quickly to the last input.

Option ‘`Interrupt`’ (`Alt-g`) can be used to interrupt a calculation. And the option ‘`Restart`’ will end the current execution of Maxima; a new Maxima process will be invoked, so the input prompt will start again as `(%i1)`.

This document was generated on January 16, 2026 using gtexi2any.