More on editing macros, etc.

[Gary Morris]

I'm fairly new to TextPad, but I like it. I read a lot of the posts here, and ran across one about decoding the macro format to allow editing. That is a good idea, and I even went to the website :
http://www.jeffyjeffy.com/code/textpad/ ... index.html
There doesn't appear to have been a lot of action so far, and I for one would really love to see this feature implemented. As a programmer myself, I'm sure I could help as time permits, but only if there are others helping as well. I'm not going to try and do this alone, but I would help.

In addition to editing capabilities, I have been wondering if it would also be possible to implement some kind of coding logic that will allow looping, conditional statements, and/or other enhancements to make it close to a real scripting language of sorts. That kind of thing would make TextPad almost indispensible to someone like me (and I'd wager that a lot of others would agree!).

I'd like to hear opinions from other folks on this subject. Sure, it would be possible just to write another editor with these features, but we already have one that has a lot, so why not just add this to it instead? I remember a DOS editor called QEDIT that had a macro language that was very flexible. If it weren't so old and slow I'd still be using it. There were so many mundane tasks that could be automated with it, and I wrote and edited many macros back in those days. If it could be done then, it can be done now.

[Jahandar]

I mentioned this to someone else earlier, but I think you'd like it to.

Textpad is great for text, but for advanced macros with scripting features as you describe, I use a program called QuickMacros. It has a scripting language similar to VB, and is expandable. You'll be suprised how much it can do. It can create normal macros, and also add custom toolbars to any program, create dialog boxes, call DLL functions, etc. QM and Textpad work very well together, and allow me to work more efficiently.

QuickMacros has become shareware ($30) since 2.x. Alternatively, older versions are still available for download at various websites.

For more information, head to: www.quickmacros.com

[gmorris]

I've got it now. This seems like a good little program, and probably would be the solution to the scripting macro. Works for all Windows apps. It takes a while to get used to, but I'm sure I'll be testing it out quite a bit!