Macro recording on-the-fly text

[Bob Hansen]

Problem:
When recording a macro using Find/Replace, the values entered into the boxes are recorded. This happens even when using Cut/Paste vs. typing. This means that a separate macro must be created for any new value, to Mark All, to change the Replace values, etc.

Enhancement:
While recording, allow macro to be Paused, wait for user input.
Have an option on the dialog box to permanently record the value entered, or to accept new values with every future playback.
After entering value, and selecting option, continue macro recording.

Option 2:
Provide macro editing. And allow macros to be created to do that editing.

Thanks for listening.

[jeffy]

Enhancement:
While recording, allow macro to be Paused, wait for user input.
Have an option on the dialog box to permanently record the value entered, or to accept new values with every future playback.
After entering value, and selecting option, continue macro recording.

Rather than--or optionally, in addition to--user input, accept the currently selected word, as the find command normally does.

[rzed]

Another solution (better, I think) would be to allow an alternative way to enter find or replace parameters. It would be useful to do something like this: find the next occurrence of <THIS_TAG> in a document, and *then* find the next occurrence (from that point) of <BOLD>. Translate everything between that tag and the following </BOLD> to upper case. Repeat to end of file.

Prompting for user input for every iteration of both searches would be tedious and annoying. Maybe a regular expression could be used for this instance, but there are a lot of cases where figuring out the right regex would take far more time than just using an iterative macro.