Editable Macros

[bmowder]

And I'll say again what I've said before: I'd be pretty happy if I could just backspace while recording, and continue recording an existing macro (including backspacing into the end of the existing). This would probably do 75% of what I'd want in the way of editing macros. Not totally happy, but it would relieve a lot of the frustration.

Edward

Hear! Hear! this one feature would take a LOT of the sting out of macro creation!

[kengrubb]

I'd be pretty happy if I could just backspace while recording

I guess I'm not understanding the problem because I can record a backspace operation as part of Macro.

Just tried it to confirm it works.

Obviously I'm not understanding something.

[paleolith]

By "backspace" I mean delete the last recorded action. In other words, allow the "tail" of the macro to be truncated and replaced and/or extended. My assumption is that this would be much simpler to implement than a complete macro editor and/or macro language.

Edward

[Ajax4Hire]

Add my vote for Editable Macros is essential to TextPad.

Available in VIM and many others.

I can give you many specific examples as to why it is necessary.
Here is a general reason to ponder:

You record a macro but miss-type one item, need to edit it;
You record a macro to bracket all text with <i>~~</i>
Now you want to edit that macro to change <i> to <x>

Let me know where to send the check for Macro Editor.

[dglane]

I have purchased several TP licenses -- personal and work. Been a user for many years. I really need editable macros.

The most recent scenario involves text files that I receive in which I must do tons of replaces. The search/replace may vary from file to file but is largely the same. So I'd like to create one or two macros that I can customize for each file rather than manually performing numerous searches/replaces every time I get a file. There are also patterns of replaces that would be so much easier to copy and edit with editable macros.

Please offer editable macros.

[kc311man]

Add me to the list of people that want this...

[Kiwi6469]

Add me to the list of people that want this.

[toniest]

Ditto!

[dougcrews]

Add me to the list of people who want this feature.

[Ryck]

For all those who bemoan the lack of editable macros, like myself, this topic has been around forever. I laud the offer of additional payment for development made in an earlier post, and which I also support.

However, after researching the topic, the sad fact may be that regardless of all the noble suggestions and ideas, this may be beyond the control of TP developers. My strong suspicion that the macro, as well as the dictionary components, were licensed from other developers, entities which may no longer exist. If this is the case, disassembling and reconstructing TP is a questionable undertaking. One must not dismiss the lack of continuing developer interest, or availably.

The solution is made even simpler. Just dump the (possibly) defunct macro engine in Textpad and introduce VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) package from Microsoft which Microsoft licenses out rather cheaply. Once hooked-in, the developer can enhance it with language flavorings that suits his application.

So many existing Textpad macros are made defunct. Since the defunct macros were not editable anyway, I'm sure they were small to begin with and can be easily redone.

[jeffy]

I believe your suggestion is different from mine.

My suggestion is not that TextPad should provide programming functionality, but that it should provide the means to integrate it with other tools that provide that functionality.

Exactly. The point is not to get perfect, uber-functionality macros, the point is to make it easier to automate TextPad (such as with Phrase Express or Macro Scheduler). Non-editable macros make this difficult, but even worse is the ridiculous limitation of 64-macros, and the not-so-unrelated issue of all macro key-commands being obliterated when you delete or rename a macro--even when you do so in the built-in editor.

[BryceS]

I'd really like to be able to edit my macros, maybe if they were stored as XML it would be fairly intuitive on how to do edits on them.

Use case:
I am processing large (20000 lines) documents.
I have to run regex macros across them to correct regular ocr errors (dealing with very old fonts and low quality) and change formatting so they can load properly into our database.
I've tried doing a lot of the work with 'sed' but some things are better handled by textpad macros.
The problem is I have to keep recreating the macros to modify them to get them just right (doc formats change slightly with each one). Often it is as simple as adding an extra character to a regex search that is part of the macro - this is very frustrating to have to record the complicated stuff all over again with no typos! Especially when there may be twenty or more steps to a macro involving a number of regex searches.

As a long time user of textpad can you please give this some priority.

Regards,
Bryce S.

[ineuw]

The only current possibility is to use AutoHotkey, but only in Windows. It does not work with Windows emulators like Wine for Apple OS or Linux. (both are Linux). I was told on the AutoHotkey forum that Linux does not allow Wine to make low level calls like keyboard macros.

AutoHotkey with Regex is very sophisticated, and I am also cleaning up OCR text on Wikisource using the same.

Here is an example of a simple search and replace of two periods with a single period followed by space, using AutoHotkey Regex.

;two periods side by side

clipboard:=regexreplace(clipboard, "\.(?=\.)", ". ")

I hope this helps.

[ben_josephs]

Does your regex replacement really do what you say it does?

Unless AutoHotKey's regex engine is exceptionally non-standard that command will replace a pair of adjacent full stops with a pair of full stops separated by a space. That is what it does, correctly, in TextPad.

[ineuw]

Yes, that is exactly what it does. The example replaces occurrences

of this: .....
to this: . . . . .

Both TextPad and AutoHotkey are based on Perl. At the bottom of this page it indicates the source.

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/misc/RegEx-QuickRef.htm